Catholicism in Britain and France Since 1789

CATHOLICISM IN BRITAIN AND FRANCE SINCE 1789

This page intentionally left blank

CATHOLICISM IN BRITAIN AND FRANCE SINCE 1789

EDITED BY FRANK TALLETT AND NICHOLAS ATKIN

THE HAMBLEDON LONDON

AND

PRESS

RIO GRANDE

Published by The Hambledon Press, 1996 102 Gloucester Avenue, London NW1 8HX (UK) PO Box 162, Rio Grande, Ohio 45674 (USA) ISBN 1 85285 100 7 (C) The Contributors 1996 A description of this book is available from the British Library and from the Library of Congress

Typeset by The Midlands Book Typesetting Company, Loughborough Printed on acid-free paper and bound in Great Britain by Cambridge University Press

Contents

Preface

vii

List of Contributors

viii

Abbreviations

x

Introduction

xi /. BRITAIN

1

France and England: The English Female Religious from Reformation to World War Dom Aidan Bellenger

2

Devotional Stereotypes in English Catholicism, 1850-1914 Mary Heimann

3

Discrediting the 'Catholic State': British Catholics and the Fall of France Joan Keating

4

5

The Catholic Church and Education in Britain: From the 'Intransigence' of 'Closed' Catholicism to the Accommodation Strategy of 'Open' Catholicism Michael P. Hornsby-Smith Change and Continuity in British Anti-Catholicism, 1829-1982 John Wolffe

3

13

27

43

67

II. FRANCE 6

Religion, Region and Counter-Revolution: The Example of the Petite Vendee 87 Frank Tallett

87

vi

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

7

Female Religious Orders in Nineteenth-Century France Ralph Gibson

8

Female Martyrdom and the Politics of Sainthood in Nineteenth-Century France: The Cult of Sainte Philomène Caroline Ford

9

10

11

105

115

God, Man and Satan: Strands in Counter-Revolutionary Thought among Nineteenth-Century French Catholics Geoffrey Cubitt

135

Catholicism and Nationalism in France: The Case of the Federation Nationale Catholique, 1924-39 James F. McMillan

151

Les Maîtres du Maréchal: Catholic Schoolteachers in Vichy France, 1940-44 Nicholas Atkin

165

Preface

The essays collected here were originally delivered at a two-day conference on 'Catholicism in England and France since 1789' organised by the Department of History at the University of Reading. The editors wish to thank all those who read papers as well as the delegates who provided a lively forum for discussion, thereby helping the authors to bring their ideas to fruition. Special thanks extend to the Department of History for its financial support, and to Mrs Liz Griffiths for her unstinting energy and enthusiasm with respect to the administration of the event. Very warm thanks also go to Martin Sheppard of Hambledon Press for his editorial advice.

List of Contributors

Nicholas Atkin is Lecturer in History at the University of Reading. He is the author of Church and Schools in Vichy France, 1940–1944 (New York, 1991) and joint editor (with Frank Tallett) of Religion, Society and Politics in France since 1789 (London, 1991). He is currently finishing a biography of Marshal Pétain. Aidan Bellenger is a Benedictine monk and historian. His publications include The French Ecclesiastical Exiles in England, 1789-1815 (London, 1986). Geoffrey Cubitt is Lecturer in History at the University of York. He is the author of The Jesuit Myth: Conspiracy Theory and Politics in Nineteenth Century France (Oxford, 1993) and of several articles on French political and religious history. Caroline Ford is Associate Professor at Harvard University and is the author of Creating the Nation in Provincial France: Religion and Political Identity (Princeton, 1993). In 1992 she was awarded one of the two Pergamon Prizes for the best essays in European Studies. Ralph Gibson was educated at Adelaide, Oxford and Lyon. Since 1969 he has been at the University of Lancaster, where he is now Senior Lecturer in History and French Studies. His major book is A Social History of French Catholicism, 1789–1914 (London, 1989). He is currently working on the history of female orders in France. Mary Heimann is a Research Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge. She is the author of Catholic Devotion in Victorian England (Oxford, forthcoming) and is an associate editor of the new Dictionary of National Biography. Michael Hornsby-Smith is Reader in Sociology at the University of Surrey. His main publications include Roman Catholics in England (London, 1987), The Changing Parish (London, 1989) and Roman Catholic Beliefs in England (London, 1991). He is co-author of The Politics of Spirituality to be published shortly. He is currently working on the relationships between religion and

List of Contributors

ix

politics, in particular the influence of the Roman Catholic Church on the development of social policies in Europe. Joan Keating is post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Politics in the University of Wolverhampton. James F. McMillan is Professor of European History at the University of Strathclyde. He is the author of Housewife or Harlot: The Place of Women in French Society, 1870-1940 (Brighton, 1981); Napoleon HI (London, 1991) and Twentieth-Century France: Politics and Society, 1898–1991 (London, 1992) as well as numerous articles on modern French history. Frank Tallett is Lecturer in History at the University of Reading. He is the author of War and Society in Early-Modern Europe, 1495–1715 (London, 1992) as well as several articles on French religious history. John Wolffe taught History at the University of York before becoming Lecturer in Religious Studies at the Open University. He is the author of The Protestant Crusade in Great Britain (Oxford, 1991) and God and Greater Britain: Religion and Material Life in Britain and Ireland, 1843-1945 (London, 1994).

Abbreviations

ACA AD ADD AM AN CEC CEP CIVIC

Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops • Archives Departementales Archives Departmentales, Doubs Archives Municipales Archives Nationales Catholic Education Council Certificat d'études primaires Council for the Investigation of Vatican Influence and Censorship CSG Catholic Social Guild DES Department of Education and Science FCJ Faithful Companions of Jesus FNSDEL Federation Nationale des Syndicats Diocésains d'Enseignement Libre NS & N New Statesman and Nation PRO Public Records Office PRS Protestant Reformation Society SOS Sword of the Spirit SRS Scottish Reformation Society SVG Socialist Vanguard Group

Introduction Nicholas Atkin and Frank Tallett

At first sight the history of Catholicism in Britain and France appears markedly dissimilar.1 Since the Reformation the Roman church in both countries has proceeded down divergent paths. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the French church retained an impressive institutional structure. This was in spite of the upheavals of the revolutionary and Napoleonic period, and the anticlerical assaults of the Third Republic. Together, these challenges removed the privileges and almost all the temporal goods that the clergy had enjoyed under the ancien régime. In common with other western European countries, there was a decline in levels of religious observance. Decline was far from universal, however, and it was characterised by pronounced regional and social variations.2 Catholicism has maintained a powerful presence in French society and continues to be a central element in national politics. In England, the Henrician and Elizabethan legislation, culminating in the Act of Supremacy and Act of Uniformity of 1559, went much further than the Napoleonic Concordat (1801) and Law of Separation (1905) in dismantling the institutions of the Catholic church. The legislative restrictions attaching to the profession of a faith which was not that of the majority were only slowly relaxed. In 1791 the penal restraints on practice were abolished; in 1829 civil disabilities were largely removed; and in 1850 the diocesan hierarchy was restored, with the establishment of thirteen sees.3 Despite these gains, a strong stigma continued to be associated with the practice of Catholicism in Britain. It retained many traits of a 'fortress faith', at least until the Second Vatican Council of 1965.4 Accordingly, 1 For a comparative overview of religion in modern Europe see H. McLeod, Religion and the People of Western Europe, 1789-1970 (Oxford, 1981). 2 For a recent synopsis of research on levels of practice, see G. Cholvy, La religion en France de la fin du XVIIIe à nos jours (Paris, 1991), pp. 123–34. See also the pioneering work of G. Le Bras, Etudes de sociologie religieuses (2 vols, Paris, 1955), which contains the well-known map by Boulard illustrating differences in patterns of religious observance, pp. 324-25. 3 For a persuasive interpretation of the historical experience of English Catholicism, see J. Bossy, The English Catholic Community, 1570-1850 (London, 1975), passim. 4 M.P. Hornsby-Smith, Roman Catholics in England: Studies in Social Structure since the Second World War (Cambridge, 1987), p. 21.

xii

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

the Catholic community in Britain comprised groups often perceived to be on the margins. Admittedly, it was represented at the very top of society, in a way that nonconformists were not, by the duke of Norfolk and several other Catholic landed peers. It also attracted its fair share of intellectual converts, the most notable of whom was John Henry Newman, the onetime leading light of the Oxford Movement. Yet for the most part it was composed of refugees from Europe and, more importantly, Irish immigrants who were coming to Britain in large numbers even before the famine of 1846. By the second half of the nineteenth century the Irish made up around 80 per cent of the Catholic population, although they were concentrated in several urban pockets.5 Given the outwardly contrasting religious histories of the two countries, the theme of Catholicism in Britain and France may seem a perverse choice for a book. The intention, however, was not to provide a chronological and anecdotal overview of the Catholic church on both sides of the channel. Excellent institutional histories of the church in each state are already abundant. 6 Instead, the objective was to illuminate certain themes in the religious experience of each country. To this end, the present study focuses on selected and cognate aspects of Catholicism. Inevitably, certain themes are excluded. It is arguably a lacuna in this collection of essays that there is nothing specific on the Irish dimension, although several contributors signal the profound influence of Irish Catholicism on politics and religious behaviour in Britain. 7 For instance, in the aftermath of Catholic Emancipation the votes of Catholic Irish Nationalists often had a significant bearing on British parliamentary politics, especially at the time of Parnell. Additionally, the composition of the English Catholic clergy after 1829 was substantially affected by the

5 A. Hastings, A History of English Christianity, 1920-1985 (London, 1986), pp. 133-34. See also R. Currie, A. Gilbert, L. Horsley, Churches and Churchgoers: Patterns of Church Growt in the British Isles since 1700 (Oxford, 1977), on the statistics of Catholicism. 6 Such histories often combine wide insights. On France see, for example, A. Dansette, Histoire religieuse de la France contemporaine (2 vols, Paris, 1948-51); G. Cholvy and Y.-M. Hilaire, Histoire religieuse de la France contemporaine, 3 vols (Toulouse, 1985—88); A. Latreille, R. Remond, J.-L. Palanque, E. Delaruelle, Histoire du Catholicisme en France, 3 vols (Paris, 1962); and F. Lebrun (ed.), Histoire des catholiques en France (Toulouse, 1980). On England, see G.A. Beck (ed.), The English Catholics, 1850-1950 (London, 1950); O. Chadwick, The Victorian Church, 2 vols (London, 1966); A. Hastings (ed.), Bishops and Writers: Aspects of the Evolution of Modern English Catholicism (London, 1977); D. Mathew, Catholicism in England (London, 1948); E.R. Norman, The English Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1984); idem, Roman Catholicism in England (London, 1985). 7 A useful starting-point on the church and Catholicism in Ireland and their significance for British politics is D.A. Kerr, Peel, Priests and Politics: Sir Robert Peel's Administration and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 1841-1846 (Oxford, 1982). Also see J. Gumming and P. Burns (eds), The Church Now: An Enquiry into the Present State of the Catholic Church in Britain and Ireland (Dublin, 1980) and E.R. Norman, The Catholic Church and Ireland in the Age of Rebellion, 1859-1873 (London, 1965).

Introductio

xiii

introduction of priests from Ireland. To do full justice to the diversity of the British Isles would, however, have required a far larger volume than this. The editors have therefore deemed it appropriate to limit the coverage presented here. Constraints of time and space have also meant that other themes which might potentially have been included have had to be omitted. There are, for example, no chapters devoted specifically to antisemitism, secularisation, the impact of science, Catholic involvement in social reform, or relations with the papacy and Protestants. Nor are key intellectual figures, such as Newman, Manning, Tyrrell, Barruel, de Maistre, Le Play and Jannet, given separate treatment. Several other important themes are dealt with in the context of essays on divergent topics. Women, for example, feature in several papers, highlighting the gender-specific nature of Catholicism.8 Women comprised the major proportion of the personnel of the church in nineteenth-century France. Here, as in Britain, they were often responsible for the delivery of Catholic educational and social services. It also appears that in both countries women were more regular than men in their attendance at mass, though there are indications that gender differences in levels of religious observance are becoming less acute in the twentieth century. 9 The gender-dimension of Catholicism is one that would repay further research. The present volume suggests some lines of enquiry. It also provides a background to the current debates in the Anglican communion over the role and position of women within the priesthood. A further theme which underlies several essays is that of church and state. All the contributors are acutely aware of the role and importance of church-state relations. After all, these are a staple of many religious histories of the period.10 Yet rather than go over well-trodden ground, the authors have focused upon broader political issues. Chief among these is the relationship between Catholics and the nation. In post-revolutionary France the idea of the nation has meant different things to different people. Under the ancien regime, French unity had been built upon the alliance of throne and altar; after 1789, it was reconstructed largely on the basis of patriotism. Because the church 8 This is an aspect which has recently attracted considerable attention from historians, especially those of France. Among the extensive literature see B. Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class: The Bourgeoises of Northern France in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1981); J. Kendall, The Origins of Modern Feminism: Women in Britain, France and the United States, 1780—1860 (London, 1985); and the collection of essays in, The Church and Women, Studies in Church History, 27 (Oxford, 1990). 9 See R. Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism, 1789-1914 (London, 1989), pp. 180-84. See also J.F. McMillan, 'Religion and Gender in Modern France: Some Reflections', F. Tallett and N. Atkin (eds), Religion, Society and Politics in France Since 1789 (London, 1991), pp. 55-66, for a thought-provoking analysis. 10 On church-state relations in France see J. McManners, Church and State in France, 1870-1914 (London, 1972), which is much wider in its coverage than the title suggests.

xiv

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

had opposed the Revolution which had created the grande nation, the nationalist credentials of Catholics were frequently called into question. The ultramontane outlook of many clerics made it difficult to deny the accusation that they lacked patriotism, especially in the recriminations which followed French defeat at the hands of Prussia in 1870.11 Only with the Ralliement did the church make a conscious, and not wholly successful effort, to shake off such charges. It was not really until the so-called Union Sacree of 1914 that Catholicism aligned itself on the side of the nation.12 In his contribution, James McMillan examines one highly significant, yet little-studied, variety of nationalism associated with the church during the first half of the twentieth century. 13 This was expressed principally through the Federation Nationale Catholique (FNC). Founded in the wake of the election of Herriot's anticlerical Cartel des Gaudies of 1924, the FNC set out to recover the 'lost liberties' of Catholics. Thus it sought to overturn the restrictive legislation governing religious orders and, more generally, to rechristianise France through a programme of political action imbued with Christian principles. This brand of Catholic nationalism — or national Catholicism as it might be better termed — had much in common with the integral nationalism of Charles Maurras and the Action Franchise.14 In the event, the FNC's epousal of right-wing policies merely revivified nineteenth-century hatreds. Its programme of action also had much in common with the early rhetoric of the Vichy regime. Not surprisingly, then, the organisation was an early and enthusiastic supporter of the Petain government, which it perceived as a 'divine surprise' capable of returning France to its Christian roots.15 Across the Channel, Catholics also found it difficult to articulate their relationship to the state. Whereas French governments between 1801 and 1905 at least recognised Catholicism as the religion of the majority, in Britain it was clearly the faith of a minority. Moreover, the loyalty of that minority to a Protestant polity was constantly called into question. The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828 acknowledged that it was possible to be, simultaneously, a nonconformist and patriotic citizen. Yet there was great hesitancy about extending the same assumption to Catholics because of their supposed loyalty to a foreign power. Emancipation the following year came about not through a belief in toleration for its

11

In this context, see the damning indictment of E. Renan, La reforme intellectuelle et morale de la France (Paris, 1871). 12 J. Fontana, Les Catholiques franqais pendant la premiere guerre mondiale (Paris, 1990). 13 See below, pp. 151-63. 14 On the relationship between Catholicism and integral nationalism see O. Arnal, Ambivalent Alliance: The Catholic Church and the Action Franfaise (Pittsburg, 1985). 15 On the wider question of Christians in Occupied France see W.D. Halls, Politics, Society and Christianity in Vichy France (Oxford, 1995).

Introduction

xv

own sake: it was forced upon government by a pragmatic concern to avoid civil war in Ireland.16 The impression of Catholicism as an alien element in British society was reinforced by the disproportionate number of Irish immigrants among the ranks of practising Catholics. It did not help to calm fears that these Irish newcomers expressed a religious fervour which contrasted markedly with the declining religiosity of Anglicans and nonconformists. The reestablishment of the hierarchy in 1850 generated fresh fears about 'Papal aggression'. An exultant Dr Wiseman, the newly-created archbishop of Westminster, initially presented this as a triumph over Protestantism. Anxieties about Vatican intentions towards Britain were subsequently fuelled by the efforts of Manning, Wiseman's successor, and Cardinal Merry del Val, a member of the Curia, to Romanise the English church. In his own words, Manning wanted, 'Downright, masculine and decided Catholics - more Roman than Rome, and more Ultramontane than the Pope himself.'17 Although an older English Catholic tradition austere, restrained and Cisalpine - never entirely disappeared from the laity, by the First World War it exerted scarcely any influence at all over a clergy which was overwhelmingly ultramontane in outlook. Given the influence of ultramontanism, which reflected a love of order, hierarchy and discipline, it is hardly surprising that after 1918 some Catholics flirted with fascism. Mussolini, in particular, attracted admiration for his signature of the Lateran Treaty of 1929, which appeared to resolve longstanding difficulties between the Italian state and Rome. Others, in the Chestertonian mould, were anxious for a moral rejuvenation to reverse the tide of nineteenth- and twentieth-century materialism. They praised the Duce for his corporatist policies which augured a new spiritual order.18 Because mainstream intellectual Catholicism was enamoured of fascism, dissenting voices such as those within the People and Freedom organisation, a fledgeling Christian Democratic grouping, found it hard to get a hearing. In her essay, Joan Keating argues that this situation only changed with the outbreak of war in 1939.19 Terrified of being marginalised still further by being associated with support for a right-wing Latin bloc, comprising 16

The political union with Ireland, passed in 1800-1, brought some 5,500,000 Irish Catholics under direct rule from Westminster. This figure represented more than a third of the total population of England and Wales. See Chadwick, Victorian Church, i, pp. 8—9. 17 Manning, quoted in J. Derek Holmes, More Roman than Rome (London, 1978), p. 225, cited in Hastings, English Christianity, 147. There was an irony in the fact that the church leaders were instrumental in the process of Romanisation, given that the reestablishment of the hierarchy had been sought by many British Catholics as a means of freeing themselves from papal control. 18 R. Griffiths, Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933—1939 (Oxford, 1983), pp. 18-25. 19 See below, pp. 27-42.

xvi

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

Spain, Italy and France, British Catholics now sought to prove their democratic credentials. Foremost in coordinating the Catholic position was Cardinal Hinsley who launched the Sword of the Spirit (SOS), very different in aims from the FNC. As a consequence, London emerged briefly as the centre of those ideas which inspired Christian-democratic parties in post-war Europe. One measure of the success of the Hinsley-led initiative was that British Catholics, who had hitherto been perceived as suspect outsiders, now began to come in from the cold as they acquired an appreciation of how to operate within a pluralist, democratic country. Despite these developments, British Catholics remained objects of lingering mistrust in the post-war years. This was, perhaps, only to be expected given that the well-springs of anticatholic sentiment were deep, reaching back to the Reformation.20 In a panoramic survey drawing upon theology, ideology and organisation, John Wolffe demonstrates that such prejudices were more than just a legacy of the past.21 After Emancipation, these antipathies emerged as a contemporary response to the religious, political and constitutional conditions of the early Victorian age. By the twentieth century feelings against Rome had moderated, although a hard-core of anticatholics, concentrated especially in Northern Ireland and areas of Scotland, continued to maintain their steadfast opposition to all aspects of popery. However much they tried, Catholics could not slough off the accusation of anti-patriotism for, in a very real sense, Protestantism has remained linked to a sense of national identity. In France anticlericalism had been a perennial feature of the ancien regime."212 Anticatholic sentiment, however, emerged out of the upheavals of 1789 due to the apparent unwillingness of the church to align itself firmly on the side of the nation. So the scene was set for a century of intermittent conflict between Catholics and Republicans that reached a crescendo in the 1880s and early 1900s.23 Naturally enough, Catholics themselves had to make sense of, and come to terms with, the legacy of the past. Geoffrey Cubitt explores Catholic interpretations of 1789 and the ways in which these evolved during the nineteenth century. He depicts

20

E.R. Norman, Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England (London, 1968), p. 16. See below, pp. 67-83. See also his important book, The Protestant Crusade in Great Britain, 1829-1860 (Oxford, 1991). 22 There is no single work dealing with anticlericalism in this period; however, it is explored in J. Queniart, Les hommes, I'eglise et dieu dans la France du XVHIe siecle (Paris, 1978); and B. Plongeron, La vie quotidienne du clerge franfais au XVHIe siecle (Paris, 1974). For the period after 1815 see R. Remond, L'anticlericalisme en France depuis 1815 a nos jours (Paris, 1976). 23 On the conflicts between Catholics and Republicans, see T. Zeldin (ed.), Conflicts in French Society: Anticlericalism, Education and Morals in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1970); and R. Gibson, 'Why Republicans and Catholics Couldn't Stand Each Other in the Nineteenth Century', in Tallett and Atkin (eds), Religion, Society and Politics in France, pp. 107-20. 21

Introduction

xvii

the interplay between three different ways of explaining the Revolution: as the work of divine providence; as the work of Satan; and as the product of human agency, usually imagined as conspiracy.24 By situating these disparate strands within a wider intellectual framework, his essay charts the rise of a counter-revolutionary ideology which formed a central plank in a platform of French Catholic thinking about the modern world. It was the very intensity of this body of ideas that helped to distinguish French Catholicism from its British counterpart. A prime target of anticatholic sentiment was the religious orders. The Emancipation legislation in Britain forbade the admission of new members to male communities. The male and female congregations in France endured even tighter controls, especially during the Revolution and under the Third Republic when Emile Combes, the Radical prime minister, attempted to ban their teaching activities. On both occasions, monks and nuns fled to England for safety thus reversing the flow which had characterised the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when English Catholic religious had sought refuge in France and the Netherlands.25 This interchange forms the basis of the wide-ranging essay by Dom Aidan Bellenger. As he demonstrates, many of the continental bishops had been less than welcoming to the influx of English religious during the early modern period. By contrast, Catholic bishops in Victorian England generally valued the refugees from France, who were joined by recruits from Ireland, recognising that they comprised the mainstay of the church's social services.26 The brand of social Catholicism offered by the religious, with its emphasis on self-help, education and charitable work, also had an appeal to elements of middle-class Victorian society. Antipathy was not far beneath the surface, however. The anglicisation of the orders was always limited: France remained the model with respect to their statutes and liturgy. Their apparent 'foreignness' was always liable to excite the latent anticatholic prejudices of the English. In spite of the hostility that they had to endure, the religious orders staged something of a comeback in nineteenth-century France. The growth in the numbers of female religious in particular was phenomenal. By the 1870s there were almost 130,000 women in religious communities, compared with fewer than 13,000 seventy years earlier. They now comprised 24

See below, pp. 135-50, and his, The Myth of a Jesuit Conspiracy in France, 1814-1880 (Oxford, 1993). 25 On the number and variety of religious orders in England see P.P. Anson, The Religious Orders and Congregations of Great Britain and Ireland (Worcester, 1949); on the role of women's congregations see S. O'Brien, 'Terra Incognita: The Nun in Nineteenth-Century England', Past and Present, 121 (1988), pp. 110-40. 26 See below, pp. 3-11. There had initially been tension between the orders and the English church. The former resented the encroachment of the bishops on their educational work in particular. Matters were resolved to the general satisfaction of both parties by the bull Romanos pontifices in 1881. See Norman, The English Catholic Church, p. 273.

xviii

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

about three-fifths of the whole clergy, seculars and regulars combined. Especially noteworthy was the high percentage of women who opted to become congreganistes rather than join a traditional order. By 1880 they represented over four-fifths of the female clergy.27 Yet the internal history of the women's communities is not well understood, partly because their archives are not easily accessible. Ralph Gibson's essay is all the more valuable, therefore, since it is based on the private papers of three female orders from the diocese of Perigueux. After an examination of the reasons that led women to join religious communities, he paints an evocative picture of what it was like to live and die within a convent.28 The area in which the religious orders on both sides of the Channel displayed a particular expertise was education, thus maintaining a tradition that went back to the Counter-Reformation of the sixteenth century.29 One historian has suggested that 'the Church in England had, in proportion to the number of Catholics, more convent schools than the Church in any other part of the world . . .'30 In France, too, the orders provided most of the teaching personnel in Catholic schools. However, this was to change in the aftermath of the discriminatory legislation of the early 1900s. Increasingly, teachers in Church schools began to be drawn from the ranks of the laity. Nicholas Atkin's essay, focusing on the Nazi Occupation of France, illustrates something of the condition of this lay personnel who by the 1930s comprised over 85 per cent of teachers.31 These secular replacements for the religious demonstrated an impressive sense of vocation that was not always recognised by the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Bishops remained wedded to the employment of the regulars in teaching. There was, in any case, a shortage of funds. Disillusioned by the lack of support which they received from the episcopate, and excited by the promise of Petain's revolution nationale, in 1940 these Catholic teachers looked forward towards a more prosperous future. They were soon disappointed by the response of both government and church leaders. Unlike members of the FNC, the teachers were one section of French Catholic opinion that rapidly became disillusioned with the Vichy regime.32 27 On the female religious see above all C. Langlois, 'Les effectifs des congregations feminines au XIXe siecle: de 1'enquete statistique a 1'histoire quantitative', Revue d'histoire de I'eglise de France, 60 (1974), pp. 44-53; his magisterial, Le Catholicisme au feminin: les congregations franc^aises a superieure generate au XIXe siecle (Paris, 1984); and his, 'Le Catholicisme au feminin', Archives des sciences sociales des religions, 57 (1984), pp. 29-53. 28 See below, pp. 105-13. 29 On the influence of the Catholic Reformation on education in France see F. Furet and J. Ozouf, Lire et ecrire: I'alphabetization des frangais de Calvin a Jules Ferry (Paris, 1977), p. 70. 30 Hastings, History of English Christianity, p. 144. 31 See below, pp. 165-82. 32 On the wider issues of Catholics and education during the Occupation see N. Atkin, Church and Schools in Vichy France, 1940-1944 (New York, 1991).

Introduction

xix

During the twentieth century, Catholic schooling in Britain was also faced by a series of challenges. In his essay, Michael Hornsby-Smith examines the church's struggle to retain a grip on the upbringing of the young.33 Whereas the Scottish bishops had secured a favourable settlement with the state by 1918, it was not until 1944 that the Catholic episcopacy of England and Wales succeeded in establishing a substantial measure of control over aided schools. Even then, the hierarchy had to contend with a series of fresh problems. Demographic changes from the mid 1960s considerably reduced the number of Catholic establishments. The educational reforms of the 1980s, in particular the introduction of the National Curriculum and the entitlement to 'opt out', further reduced the control of the bishops over their schools. Moreover, there is uncertainty about the extent to which Catholics should use the education system to assert their distinctiveness in a multi-faith and multi-cultural society. A similar problem confronts the church in those areas of France where there is a substantial Islamic community.34 In short, Catholic schooling in both countries faces an uncertain future as the twenty-first century looms. The classroom is only one forum in which the church has sought to inculcate a sense of piety. It has also nurtured other forms of religious observance. Mary Heimann's essay on devotional stereotypes in English Catholicism is one of the few studies to date which concentrates specifically on the actual practice of the Catholic faith.35 Popular religiosity expressed itself in a variety of ways: saying the rosary; following the Stations of the cross; participating in processions and pilgrimages; and using medals and scapulars. In the second half of the nineteenth century the voluntary search for a more emotive piety cut across divisions of race and class, providing a strong point of affinity for Catholics from very different backgrounds and of dissimilar temperaments. However, it also encouraged a ghetto or sanctuary mentality. Small wonder, then, that Catholicism in Britain has been characterised as a 'fortress faith'. Caroline Ford explores the theme of devotion in France by focusing upon the cult of Sainte Philomene.36 This Christian martyr of the third century had allegedly been murdered for resisting the sexual advances of the Emperor Diocletian. Within eighty years of the discovery of her remains in 1802, her cult had grown to an astonishing level. This was all the more surprising since she was largely a figment of imagination.

33 See below, pp. 43-65. See also H.O. Evenett, The Catholic Schools of England and Wales (Cambridge, 1944) and M. Hornsby-Smith, Catholic Education: The Unobtrusive Partne Sociological Studies of the Catholic School System in England and Wales (London, 1978). 34 See the essays in M. Cornick (ed.), Beliefs and Identity in Modern France (Loughborough, 1990); A. Costes et al. Culture, religion et citoyennete, la laicite a I'epreuve de ^immigration (Paris, 1985); and S. Sellam, L'islam et les musulmans en France (Tougui, 1987). 35 See below, pp. 13-25. 36 See below, pp. 115-34.

xx

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

By the First World War, she had ceased to exercise much allure. In her analysis of the rise and decline of Philomene, Caroline Ford shows how patterns of devotion were closely attuned to contemporary attitudes and needs. The cult's popularity owed much to France's revolutionary legacy, the increasing importance of female religious vocations and the church's search for legitimacy in the aftermath of 1789. Conversely, the decline of Philomene's appeal had as much to do with the fading memory of the upheavals of the 1790s, the shifting attitudes of the clerical hierarchy and the gradual abatement in levels of religious vocations as with the archaeological discoveries that called her authenticity into question. Significantly, the gap bequeathed by the demise of her cult was occupied by other saints, notably Sainte Therese and Sainte Jeanne d'Arc, who better served the altered requirements of early twentieth-century popular devotion. As might be expected in a country as diverse as France, popular devotion frequently retained a pronounced regional dimension. Frank Tallett's essay highlights this aspect of Catholicism.37 In his analysis of the Petite Vendee, an uprising in the east of France (1793), he underscores the intricate relationship between counter-revolution and Catholicism. It has long been recognised that the changes initiated by Paris were welcomed by some areas but rejected elsewhere. The reasons behind the varying provincial responses are, however, less well comprehended. The essay argues that, while local circumstances were always going to be important in influencing reactions to the Revolution, historians have been unwise in playing down the significance of religion as a key factor producing counter-revolt. However, our appreciation of what religion meant to those who fought in its defence needs to be refined. In particular, greater attention ought to be paid to Catholicism as a component of regional identity. In Britain devotion was not as regionally nuanced as in France. This reflected not only the smaller geographical extent of the country, but also the success of the church hierarchy in Romanising religious practice. Here, then, is one area where the history of Catholicism in the two countries has been markedly dissimilar. Yet, as the essays in this volume suggest, there have been several shared themes in the experience of the Catholic church and its laity. To begin with, the faithful in both countries have had to confront and redefine their relationship with the state; a process that is still ongoing. This has raised questions about Catholic patriotism and loyalty. Secondly, in coming to terms with the extension of state powers, the church has frequently been called upon to adjust its internal structures. In their response, Catholics have displayed some flexibility and have succeeded in maintaining a sizeable institutional presence. Thirdly,

17

See below, pp. 87-104.

Introduction

xxi

the history of the countries under review has been characterised by the expression of profound anticatholic sentiments, although it is only in France that anticlericalism has been a pronounced feature of the country's political and social life. Fourthly, faced with declining religious fervour, the church has employed a number of devices to retain the loyalty of the faithful. While these measures include the development of new forms of devotion, the most important means has been education. Finally, as these essays have underscored, there has been a particularly fruitful interchange of personnel and ideas between Britain and France. Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789 suggests that the history of Catholicism in the two countries is not as dissimilar as might at first be imagined. It also demonstrates that, often unbeknown to one another, anglophone religious historians have frequently displayed the same approaches and concerns in dealing with a shared set of problems. The results of their research may well assist the church as the twentieth century draws to a close. For in both countries it is increasingly confronted with comparable challenges: how, for example, to combat a decline in the levels of religious observance; and how to assert the faith yet not give offence to members of other religions? Only time will tell whether the response of the Catholic church to these challenges will be the same in Britain and France.

This page intentionally left blank

I BRITAIN

This page intentionally left blank

1 France and England: The English Female Religious from Reformation to World War Dom Aidan Bellenger

The monastic historian, Dom David Knowles (1896-1974), reflected in a letter written to a friend in 1939 about a convent of his acquaintance in Ealing, West London, that 'all the nuns are deaf, and I am surrounded by old ladies experimenting in every kind of acoustical machine or holding their wimples away from their ears. Those that aren't deaf are French.'1 I do not expect that this is the official Benedictine line on nuns but, looking at the titles of both religious congregations and individual convents, there is undoubtedly a very strong French influence on the women religious in England. This essay will look at the continuing relations between England and France in the area of women's religious congregations within the English Roman Catholic community in the period from the Reformation to the early part of the present century. I will use the words 'order' and 'nun' in their colloquial rather than technical sense throughout. Strictly speaking only those in Solemn Vows should be called nuns, and all others should be given the title of sisters. A similar distinction exists between 'religious orders' whose members take solemn vows (religious of 'consecrated life') and 'religious congregations' whose members take simple vows (religious of 'apostolic life'). Again, I have used order in its common but not technical usage. In the last century and a half the religious life has been more characteristic of the female rather than the male sex. Before the Reformation this was not the case and the dissolution of the monastic houses revealed the predominance, at the close of the middle ages, of the male religious.2 After the Reformation the religious orders, and with them, the church

1 D.A. Bellenger, 'Dom David Knowles and Outram Evennett: A Correspondence,' Downside Review, 110 (1992), p. 228. 2 At the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII there were some 650 monastic houses and about 200 communities of mendicants. Of these some 140 were nunneries, more than half Benedictine, with twenty-five Cistercian and perhaps eighteen of Augustinian canonesses. The far greater number and variety of women religious comes out clearly in P.F. Anson, The Religious Orders and Congregations of Great Britain and Ireland (Worcester, 1949), which remains an indispensable guide. It supplements and to a large extent replaces P.M. Steele, The Convents of Great Britain (London, 1902).

4

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

became gradually feminised. By the middle of the seventeenth century there were in France, and in most other Catholic countries in Europe, more nuns than there were monks and friars.3 In the nineteenth century the trend was further exaggerated. The number of nuns in France grew from 13,000 in 1808 to 130,000 in 1880.4 During the period from the late sixteenth to the late seventeenth century a number of English convents were established in continental Europe, mainly in France and the Netherlands. They included Benedictines at Brussels, Cambrai and Paris, Augustinian canonesses at Bruges, Louvain and Paris, and Poor Clares at Gravelines.5 These communities, although English in their membership, were principally dependent on the local church for their spiritual and temporal welfare even if in some cases English-speaking chaplains were available. Their relationship with England was principally through the small schools they ran, which were not only for the aspirants to the religious life but also for lay English Catholics who preferred or who were rich enough to provide a Catholic and continental education for their children. The education provided by these English Catholic schools was on a more proficient level than that provided by similar establishments (of a non-Catholic persuasion) in England but it probably lacked the rigour of the Catholic academies for boys and was always on a small scale. The girls benefited from the wide culture of the European cities even if this only amounted in fact to 'finishing'. 'Music, dancing and deportment were best acquired in the great cities, so Paris and Brussels were the favourite centres for the fashionable schools.'6 Life in these English Catholic Convent Schools is reflected in some of the correspondence in the Jerningham Collection about the Blue Nuns School in Paris7 and

3

P- 5-4

E. Rapley, The Devotes: Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France (Montreal, 1990),

C. Langlois, Le catholicisme au feminin: les congregations frangaises a superieure generate au XIXe siecle (Paris, 1984), p. 307. 5 See P. Guilday, The English Catholic Refugees on the Continent, 1558-1795 (London, 1914), especially pp. 1-40. He lists (p. 40) over thirty English foundations of women on the Continent. B. Whelan, Historic English Convents of Today (London, 1936) provides a useful introduction. 6 M.D.R. Leys, Catholics in England (London, 1961), p. 168. This book has as its frontispiece a reproduction (from the Petre Archives) of a picture of the reception of a scholar by the Blue Nuns painted by Charlotte Jerningham, the scholar herself. 7 The 'Blue Nuns' were an offshoot of the English Franciscan community established in 1621 and transferred to Nieuport in 1637. The Paris convent, of the Immaculate Conception, was founded in 1658. It was from the colour of the Conceptionists' mantles of their habits that the community became known as the 'Blue Nuns'. See J. Gillow and R. Trappes-Lomax, The Diary of the 'Blue Nuns', published by the Catholic Record Society as its eighth volume in 1910. E. Castle, The Jerningham Letters, 2 vols (London, 1896), gives a list of pensioners at the school run by the nuns (ii, pp. 399-408) as well as an account of attempts to transfer the establishment to England (i, pp. 157-58).

The English Female Religious

5

in the less likely source of George Sand's autobiography.8 George Sand, vere Aurore Dupont (1804-1876) was a pupil at the Augustinian convent des Anglaises in the Rue Saint-Victor for two years after 1817. Here she thought she had discovered a religious vocation in herself and here, too, she learnt much English. 'The teaching provided for the young ladies appears to have been of the customary superficial order - of everything a little, a little music, a little drawing, a little Italian.'9 Most of the English religious communities who ran such schools were representatives of the medieval religious orders, contemplative in their inspiration and enclosed in their character. Such was to remain the pattern of the religious life for English women in their continental convents until the French Revolution despite the development of the active life among women religious in the French church and despite, too, the singular contribution of the Englishwoman Mary Ward (1585—1645), a great original in the history of the religious life. Her school, founded at Saint-Omer, near to the great English Jesuit college, in 1609, had conventional enough targets for its pupils who she wished 'to read, write and sew for the honour of God',10 but for her incipient community, the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, she had a quite different vision. She wanted her companions to be, like the Jesuits she so much admired and imitated, active evangelists in the reconversion of England to Catholicism. This was too revolutionary a step for women religious in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, and in 1631 her institute was suppressed. Like many other such 'suppressed' organisations it continued, especially in central and eastern Europe. Two houses, at Hammersmith in the outskirts of London and at York, were founded by Mary Ward in England. In France, where the majority of the English communities were domiciled, Mary Ward's influence was less, at least in the short term, because in a profound sense — with her intuition that women could play a crucial role in active, missionary work - she was a latter-day St Boniface in her European impact. All the English religious communities of women in France and the Netherlands, with the exception of the Blue Nuns in Paris who became extinct,11 survived the French Revolution by repatriation. The only community which was to return permanently to its continental base and to remain there were the Augustinian canonesses in Bruges.12 The others 8

See F.M.T. Cedoz, Un convent de religieuses anglaises a Paris de 1634 a 1884 (Paris and London, 1891), pp. 550-53. 9 B. Thomas, George Sand (London, 1883), pp. 22-23. 10 Rapley, Devotes, p. 28. 11 See n. 7 for 'Blue Nuns'. The Laity's Directory, the Catholic directory of the time, for 1800 lists the communities then resident in England. This has been reprinted by M. Gandy, 'An Index of Nuns, 1598-1914', Catholic Ancestor, 4 (1992), pp. 15-16. 12 See O. Daumont, Le clditre de Nazareth 'convent anglais de Bruges' (Bruges, 1935); and C.S. Durrant, A Link between Flemish Mystics and English Martyrs (London, 1925).

6

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

began life anew in England where, after a struggle at first, they gradually picked up numbers. It is probably true to say that the French Revolution saved the English religious communities, increasingly isolated by growing xenophobia in France and England, by transplanting them to England at a moment when, with the reduction of the anti-Catholic legislation which had made their voluntary exile compulsory, growth rather than mere survival had become a possibility. Along with the returning English religious communities came a number of French communities and individual religious. The two most notable were the Benedictine nuns of Montargis in Northern France and the Trappistine nuns who were part of Abbot Augustin de la Strange's reform.13 To the English public, still unaccustomed to nuns of any kind, the returning religious often appeared foreign and exotic. The canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre, established in 1642 in the Netherlands as an English community, and eventually settled at New Hall near Chelmsford in Essex, stayed soon after their disembarkment in England at Holme Hall in Yorkshire, where the locals were 'greatly alarmed to see so many persons all dressed in a peculiar manner. They thought we were Frenchmen dressed in Women's clothes.'14 By the end of the eighteenth century, there were a number of religious houses of women in England - over twenty in total - made up of three principal components: convents at Hammersmith and York established by Mary Ward's Institute; the repatriated English continental communities; and a small number of French communities as well as a scatter of individual nuns.15 France and the French-speaking parts of the Netherlands had ensured the survival and development of English conventual life. In the new century France was to continue its influence with a new injection of more 'active' religious into the country. The French Revolution, while destroying the fabric of the old Gallican church, was to usher in a new age with an increased emphasis on Catholic evangelicalism, an awareness of social needs created by the new urban problems, the need for popular education and a new role for women in the public life of the Church. The nuns were to share in all these initiatives. In 1830, with renewed fears of revolution in France, the Faithful Companions of Jesus, not yet formally recognised as a religious congregation in Rome (that was to happen in 1837), established a house in Somers Town in north London.16 Madame Bonnault d'Houet (1781-1858), the

13 See D.A. Bellenger, The French Exiled Clergy in the British Isles after 1789 (Bath, 1986), pp. 83-98. 14 History of the New Hall Community of Canonesses Regular of the Holy Sepulchre (privately printed, 1899), p. 116. 15 See F.X. Plasse, Le clerge franqais refugue en Angleterre, 2 vols (Paris, 1886), ii, pp. 441-43. 16 Fr Stanislaus, Life of the Viscountess de Bonnault D'Houet (English edn, London, 1913), pp. 163-74.

The English Female Religious

7

founder of the Faithful Companions of Jesus, was invited by the abbe Jean Nerinckx, a Belgian priest in charge of the Catholic congregation at Somers Town, to take over the running of the various schools and other church enterprises established in that place by Nerinckx's predecessor, abbe Guy Carron, a refugee from France.17 The schoolteachers in Somers Town, including Nerinckx's sister, took the veil and in the years that followed the number of English foundations and sisters multiplied. There had been ten English FCJ foundations by 1858 when Bonnault d'Houet died; before 1912 a further eight had been established. Education was at the top of their working agenda. Their developing growth and influence was typical.18 The nineteenth century, and especially its second part, was perhaps the great age of the apostolic sister in Europe and in England. While the older orders continued to receive a steady flow of new members, especially from upper-class and middle-class families, large numbers of new active congregations were founded which included among their members an increasing number of working-class recruits, perhaps as many as half in total.19 Cardinal Henry Edward Manning (1808-92) archbishop of Westminster from 1865, realised the great contribution the nuns could make to the life of his diocese. Between 1860 and 1870 the number of convents in the Westminster diocese increased from eighteen to forty-one. 'The influx of Religious Congregations of nuns,' V.A. McClelland reminds us, 'posed difficulties at first and many English Catholics objected to the rapidity of their expansion. Another source of complaint was that so many of the nuns were foreign, and especially French. The arrival of French nuns developed into a steady stream after the enactment of the anticlerical laws of the French Republican, Jules Ferry (Prime Minister of France from 1880 to 1885), and the closing down of convents and monasteries. But it is certain that without Manning's encouragement of these women it would have been financially impossible to carry out his educational policy. It was a far-sighted policy and one which yielded rich fruits.'20 Although some of the dioceses were slower than others in taking up Manning's lead — in Liverpool, for example, a see with more priests and parishes than Westminster, there were only twenty-six convents by 1870 — the national trend was one of rapid expansion. By 1900 there were about ninety congregations working in England with about 600 individual

17

See Bellenger, French Exiled Clergy, pp. 104-9. Stanislaus, Bonnault D'Houet, pp. 359-61. 19 S. O'Brien, 'Lay-Sisters and Good Mothers: Working-Class Women in English Convents, 1840-1910', Studies in Church History, 27 (1990), p. 453. Many such recruits were of Irish origin. See, on Irish religious, C. Clear, Nuns in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin, 1988). 20 V.A. McClelland, Cardinal Manning: His Public Life and Influence, 1865-1892 (London, 1962), p. 41. 18

8

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

houses.21 In 1990 the Catholic Directory listed 175 orders of women working in England. Some of the congregations were of English or Irish origin, but the majority were French. I will take the western dioceses of Plymouth and Clifton as examples of both the growth and the character of the expansion. The Roman Catholic hierarchy was restored in 1850 and the bishop of Plymouth was responsible for the western counties of Cornwall, Devon and Dorset as well as the Isles of Scilly. It was a sparsely populated area as far as Roman Catholics were concerned but convents grew up in every part of it. In the period from 1845-1914 over fifty 'apostolic' convents were established (as well as nine further 'contemplative' communities), nearly all of them dedicated to education. It is an eloquent confirmation of J.N. Murphy's contention (in 1873) that 'almost every community of nuns in these kingdoms is engaged in the work of education - especially that of the poorer classes.'22 The convents were established gradually in the second half of the nineteenth century, with a big burst of foundations following the anti-association laws in France which opened the twentieth century. Nearly all the convents in the diocese of Plymouth were of French origin. Not all of them became well-established.23 The diocese of Clifton, with the counties of Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire as its components, was more heavily populated than its more westerly neighbour and had the city of Bristol as its centre. In 1850, the first year of the diocese, the Good Shepherd nuns purchased Arnos Court at Brislington near Bristol and established what became a girl's reformatory school. The Good Shepherd nuns, founded by St Rose Virginie Pelletier (1766-1868) with a mother-house at Angers, were recognised by Rome in 1835. Their task was to minister not only among 'fallen women' but also with those who were about to fall. Such good works were to appeal to one side of the Victorian character but fierce 'anti-conventism' was to remain an integral part of the experience of being a nun in nineteenth-century England.24 21

I am indebted to Sr Catherine Appleby for the material on the Clifton nuns. It comes from her Bristol MA thesis of 1978 entitled 'The English Catholic Community, 1850-1890. Catholics in the West of England'. 22 J.N. Murphy, Terra Incognita or the Convents of the. United Kingdom (London, 1873), p. viii. 2: ^ In the Diocesan Year Book 1991 for the diocese of Plymouth, ed C.J. Smith, there is an analysis on pp. 9-13 of 'The Convents of the Plymouth Diocese'. It is divided into four chronological periods: first, the recusant convents of contemplative nuns; secondly, the new religious orders in the developing church (nineteenth century); thirdly, a flood of new convents, mainly from France (early twentieth century); and fourthly, consolidation of the diocese (the inter-war years). It further distinguishes their work as contemplative, educational or social. Of the fifty or so 'active' convents founded up to the First World War all but the three convents of Mercy (Irish in foundation) and the three Ursuline foundations (an Italian congregation) were either French or Belgian in origin. 24 See, for example, E.R. Norman, Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England (London, 1968).

The English Female Religious

9

In 1862 the Little Sisters of the Poor, just twenty years after their foundation in Brittany and ten years after its episcopal approval, came to Bristol to open a refuge for the aged poor. For the Little Sisters old age began at sixty. According to their constitution, the homes ran by the Little Sisters had to be funded entirely on charity and principally from the alms collected by the sisters themselves. Such collections by Catholic nuns in Victorian Bristol were controversial. A call made on the chairman of the Protestant Alliance became an example of 'Papal Aggression' in the pages of the Bristol Mirror, although their writer was relieved to discover 'that the Sisters were not Englishwomen and that Rome had to go abroad for such agents; he hoped few English daughters undertook such work.'25 When the La Retraite nuns came to Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset they were met with much opposition. An anti-Catholic coalition was formed, literature distributed (including selected highlights from Maria Monk, the all-time anti-convent best-seller which had been circulating since the 1840s) and the Guy Fawkes procession enlivened with some suitable effigies. The local Catholics organised themselves to oppose such manifestations, but the nuns themselves seem not to have been perturbed. England was, they knew, only a mission territory.26 In assessing the impact of the women's congregations on the dioceses of Clifton and Plymouth, and on the wider English Catholic community their Frenchness, at least in the initial stages of foundation, was important. At a purely negative level the presumably low opinion felt by the French for their English opponents was equally felt by the English. Some of the fierce 'anti-conventism' was deflected when it came to French nuns. Not much could be expected of foreigners and especially of the French. Anticatholicism reared its head most sternly where English women were concerned. In time the convents developed and then still the French connection was an important one. French Catholicism in its nineteenthcentury phase may have sometimes been somewhat lacking in 'good' taste (the impact of the nuns on the creation of a visual sub-culture in church furnishing and the domestic style of churches has been identified by Dr Susan O'Brien as one of their more important contributions),27 but it had a rich vein of social Catholicism which translated well to a Victorian England where Cardinal Manning led the Catholic community. Sentimentality and bondieuserie went hand-in-hand with the provision of educational and social services which the native community could neither finance nor administer. The French convents of the nineteenth century were much more centralised than their predecessors, with a 'mother house' (under a general) 25

Bristol Mirror, 28 November 1863. Appleby, Catholics in the West, p. 47. 27 S. O'Brien, 'Making Catholic Spaces: Women, Decor and Devotion in the English Catholic Church, 1840-1900', Studies in Church History, 28 (1992), p. 463. 26

10

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

and branch-houses often in different countries. They were freer of episcopal control than their predecessors. Among the Clifton nuns for example, the Sisters of Mercy (whose superior was the bishop) had to apply to him for permission in almost every detail, while others including the Good Shepherd, La Retraite and Little Sisters of the Poor referred to already, once they had become established, had only to look to the bishop for matters liturgical. This seemed to suit the bishops, with whom good terms were maintained. Bishop William Clifford (1823-93) of Clifton actively assisted the Good Shepherd nuns in having their constitutions accepted by the Sacred Congregation for Religions in Rome.28 Diocese and convent worked to each other's mutual advantage. Without the nuns there would have been few schools and Catholic social services. Relations between bishop and the religious orders of women were far less sensitive than those with the regular clergy, especially (in England) than those with the Benedictine and Jesuit fathers. The nuns were not an ecclesiastical challenge and contributed practically only to the well-being of the local church. It would be wrong, however, to see the relationship in a purely utilitarian way even if, it is probably fair to say, the greatest contribution made by the French nuns to the English Catholic Community was in the provision of popular education. Throughout the period from the Reformation to the First World War (and beyond, as 1914 is only a convenient ending-place), France remained an inspiration to English Catholics and to English Catholic women in particular. As time went on most of the congregations were increasingly English (or Irish) in their recruitment, although superiors and novice mistresses were often French, reference to the mother-house constant, and centralised formation not unusual. Yet France set the tone whether in church statuary or in more fundamental aspects of life. The nuns of Stanbrook Abbey in Worcestershire (for the first 150 years and more of their existence as a Benedictine community resident at Cambrai in France) looked, in the second half of the nineteenth century, to the French Benedictine reform movement of Abbot Prosper Gueranger of Solesmes (1805-75) for leadership in things monastic and liturgical.29 The manners of France, and a range of French usages, permeated the convent schools which, arranged on a social-class pattern, had a monopoly of middle- and upperclass Catholic female education, as well as a strong hold on the working class through parochial schools. These influences were being constantly renewed notably after the French anti-association Laws of 1901 brought a great influx of sisters to England including 300 Sacred Heart nuns. The English nuns in exile had been victims of persecution and things seem 28

Appleby, Catholics in the West, p. 62. See Benedictines of Stanbrook, In a Great Tradition (London, 1956), p. 103. For Gueranger see C. Johnson, Prosper Gueranger (1805-1875): A Liturgical Theologian (Rome, 1984). 29

The English Female Religious

11

to have turned full-circle by the early years of the present century with French nuns fleeing to Protestant England for protection. The convent at Tyburn in the heart of London, transferred from Montmartre, perhaps symbolised this change in its work of promoting the cause of the English martyrs. Yet both English and French remained suitable territories for evangelisation.30 It has become apparent during the course of this essay that the questions it asks about, among other subjects, the place of women in the church and the continuing partnership in the religious life between France and England are far beyond its scope. What I hope to have shown is that the contribution of France has been crucial in the life of the English Catholic religious orders of women throughout the period under review. In the first place, by harbouring its exiled communities, France (and its neighbours) allowed the survival of an English conventual life for women. In the second place, the French Revolution was the instrument which brought back a significant number of women's religious houses to England. In the third place, throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the inspiration of the French communities not only ensured a much greater role for women in the apostolic life of the church but also that the whole church had an infra-structure of schools and social services second to none. The partnership between the women of the English and French churches was both fruitful and long-lasting.

30

Nuns of Tyburn Convent, Tyburn: Hill of Glory (London, 1953).

This page intentionally left blank

2 Devotional Stereotypes in English Catholicism, 1850—1914 Mary Heimann

No work exists which systematically describes, let alone interprets, the actual practice of the Catholic faith in England from the restoration of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in 1850 until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Since it is generally recognised by historians in the field that devotion lies at the 'heart' of Catholicism, such an omission may seem a strange oversight on the part of Catholic historians.1 In the next few pages I would like to examine the reasons for this neglect of devotion as a subject in its own right, and also to sketch an outline of the social and intellectual significance of changes in devotional practice during the period. The most obvious reason for neglecting to examine devotion, while at the same time admitting its importance, is also the most serious one. Any subject as intimate and intrinsically private as that of spirituality is necessarily elusive to the historian; the nature of man's belief in the supernatural and the range of his religious feelings can never be identified with certainty, let alone categorised or quantified with any pretence at precision. But apart from the methodological difficulties in approaching so private a matter as devotion, there are other reasons, idiosyncratic to th field of Catholic history in England, which help to explain why the subject of spirituality has not received the explicit and direct attention which it deserves. Two interpretations have so overshadowed English Catholic historiography that devotion, when it has been remarked upon at all, has

1 John Bossy, whose work on the English Catholic community in the Recusant period does manage to incorporate the spiritual, takes it for granted that an understanding of devotion lies at 'the heart of the matter'. J. Bossy, The English Catholic Community, 1570-1850 (London, 1975), pp. 364-90. Sheridan Gilley and Bernard Aspinwall, historians of English Catholicism in the period following the restoration of the hierarchy, have both drawn attention to the lack of scholarly work on the explicitly spiritual and devotional dimension of nineteenth-century English Catholicism. See S. Gilley, 'Papists, Protestants and the Irish in London, 1835-70', G.J. Cuming and D. Baker (eds), Popular Belief and Practice, Studies in Church History, 8 (London, 1972), p. 266; and B. Aspinwall, review article, Heythrop Journal, 31 (1990), p. 363. Edward Norman acknowledges the central importance of the subject but deliberately restricts his own sphere of enquiry to the official religious leadership and institutions of the church. E. Norman, The English Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1984), p. 1.

14

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

not been examined on its own terms but rather used as supplementary evidence in support of one or other of these interpretations. The first such account might, for simplicity's sake, be called the 'Second Spring' tradition. The phrase itself was taken from a sermon preached by Newman at the first provincial synod of Westminster in 1852 in which he outlined what was to become a powerful myth of Catholic historiography. Speaking with a poignancy which caused several of the bishops in his audience to weep,2 Newman painted an evocative picture of a struggling minority who remained steadfast in the faith throughout the penal years, to be rewarded at last by the 'Second Spring' or rebirth of Catholicism in England, an eleventh-hour revival of the true faith which had so nearly been lost, and which was imported by way of the Irish immigrants and invigorated by the fresh blood of the Oxford converts. This view had on its side the impressive statistics of the recent growth in Catholic numbers and churches, mainly through Irish immigration, the restoration of a formally recognised ecclesiastical government, and the excitement due to the conversions from Protestantism which led the more sanguine to dream of the imminent conversion of England to the Catholic faith. It is easy to see how certain assumptions about devotion follow from this understanding. The Second Spring school argues that Catholicism had been unable to express itself before the time of revival, and sees the landmarks of the Emancipation Act of 1829, the restoration of the hierarchy in 1850, and the first provincial synod of 1852 as significant dates in paving the way for a free and full expression of the faith which had barely survived the hardship of the penal years. Thus the saying of the rosary, attention to Sacred Heart or May devotions, the following of the stations of the cross, participation in processions, pilgrimages or benediction of the blessed sacrament and the use of devotional aids such as scapulars, medals and rosaries, are taken to signify qualitatively better rather than merely alternative expressions of Catholicism and so support the notion of a revival in England of the true faith. The first difficulty with this account arises from the much-vaunted resistance of the native or 'old Catholics' to such new or newly emphasised devotional forms. Unable to account for their reluctance to embrace the new devotions as expressions of a new-found freedom, and not quite daring to suggest that these old Catholics suffered from Stockholm Syndrome, whereby the victims of kidnapping come to love their oppressors, the Second Spring apologists are left to argue for an anachronistic, and

2 As reported by Canon Crookall in G. Ramsay [K. O'Meara], Thomas Grant, First Bishop of Southwark (2nd edn, London, 1886), p. 78, and reproduced in C. Butler, The Life and Times of Bishop Ullathorne, 2 vols (London, 1926), i, p. 197. For the text of the speech, see 'The Second Spring', in J.H. Newman, Sermons Preached on Various Occasions (London, 1857).

Devotional Stereotypes in English Catholicism

15

hence slightly ridiculous, habit of'timidity' born of the years of oppression; or else for an inherent coldness in temperament which can be excused neatly as being 'English'.3 There is a further problem with this Second Spring account. The Irish immigrants who fled to England before and during the Great Famine were not in any position to bring with them the sorts of devotional practices alluded to earlier - recent scholarship seems to have shown conclusively that it was not until Paul Cullen had reformed worship in Ireland, in other words not until after the Great Famine, that Irish piety underwent the 'devotional revolution' which Emmett Larkin and others have described.4 While such Irish certainly considered themselves to be Catholic, this was largely a question of definition. Self-styled Catholics, as Booth found with the London Irish, were perfectly capable of manifesting an ignorance of doctrine and an indifference towards formal practice which would label them as lapsed Catholics in the eyes of the church. Informal practices such as the wake, the pattern and other idiosyncratic manifestations of Irish Catholic piety may well have helped to cement a sense of Catholic identity for many Irish, but these were hardly orthodox, let alone Roman, forms of Catholicism, and certainly not the forms taken by Second Spring enthusiasts as representing truly Catholic practice. An alternative explanation to that proposed by the Second Spring school

3 Frederick Cwiekowski, for example, has argued that the old Catholics 'resigned themselves to an attitude of inferiority that weakened their energy and sapped their ambition', while Edward Norman has characterised the Recusants as 'conscious of their quiet English spirituality'. While acknowledging some polemical exaggeration on the part of mid nineteenth-century Catholic enthusiasts, Norman explains that the mood of the Second Spring may be understood in part as the relief of ancient families whose recusancy was at last no longer the whispered tradition of the rural English catacombs'. Geoffrey Rowell has similarly contrasted the 'quiet devotion of the older English Catholicism' with the 'more exuberant worship and intense piety advocated by foreign missionaries, like Father Gentili, and supported by the Irish poor'. F.J. Cwiekowski, The English Bishops and the First Vatican Council (Louvain, 1971), p. 7; Norman, The English Catholic Church, pp., 3-4, 201; G. Rowell, Hell and the Victorians (Oxford, 1974), p. 153. 4 See in particular E. Larkin, 'The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850-75', American Historical Review, 57 (1972), pp. 625-52; M. Maher, Irish Spirituality (Dublin, 1981); and D.W. Miller, 'Irish Catholicism and the Great Famine', Journal of Social History, 9 (1975), pp. 81-98. Lynn Lees argues that before 1850 'the Catholic church in Ireland had succeeded only partially in imposing upon the Irish population acceptance of the religious practices decreed by the Council of Trent'. L. Lees, Exiles of Erin: Irish Migrants in Victorian London (Ithaca, NY, 1979), p. 165. This point is also brought out in various articles in R. Swift and S. Gilley (eds), The Irish in the Victorian City (Beckenham, 1985), especially G. Connolly, 'Irish and Catholic: Myth or Reality? Another Sort of Irish and the Renewal of the Clerical Profession among Catholics in England, 1791-1918', pp. 225-53. Pauline Adams has estimated that only approximately half of the Irish who emigrated to England were practising Catholics. P.A. Adams, 'Converts to the Roman Catholic Church in England, c. 1830-1870' (unpublished B.Litt thesis, University of Oxford, 1977), p. 22.

16

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

has gained wide currency in recent years.5 This version argues that the native English tradition of a quiet and unobtrusive piety was undermined and superseded by what is termed an 'ultramontane' spirituality. Such devotional forms as have been mentioned were allegedly imposed by an increasingly authoritarian Rome whose loss of temporal power led it to encroach on the spiritual lives of its faithful with an ever-increasing determination. Thus the ultramontanes who favoured the Syllabus of Errors in 1864 or the definition of papal infallibility in 1870 are taken to have been the same sort of people who were drawn to pilgrimages, rosaries and extravagant devotions, while the liberal Catholics and 'inopportunists' were quiet, rational folk who, like the old Catholics, read the recusant bishop Richard Challoner's The Garden of the Soul for spiritual profit and shied away from continental exuberance. The most cursory examination of the devotional lives of even the most eminent and influential of Catholics shows how misleading such stereotypes can be. Bishop Ullathorne, considered by Newman to have been sympathetic to the inopportunists at the First Vatican Council and long regarded as a bluff old English Catholic par excellence, has been credited with reintroducing the rosary into England, so notorious was his attachment to that devotion.6 He was also one of the first English promoters of the alleged apparitions of Our Lady at La Salette.7 Newman, for all his misgivings about papal infallibility and his private difficulties 5

See, for example, J.L. Altholz, The Liberal Catholic Movement in England: The 'Rambler' and its Contributors, 1848-1864 (London, 1962); Cwiekowski, The English Bishops, passim; D.J. Holmes, More Roman than Rome: English Catholicism in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1978); and B. McSweeney, Roman Catholicism: The Search for Relevance (Oxford, 1980), passim. 6 See, for example, Butler, The Life of Bishop Ullathorne, i, p. 153 or Cwiekowski, The English Bishops, p. 30. He certainly did not need to 'bring back' the rosary to postReformation English Catholics, as has sometimes been alleged. Not only did the use of the rosary persist in England throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but Jan Rhodes has argued persuasively that during this period, when devotional literature was scarce and masses difficult to attend, the practice took on new doctrinal as well as devotional, importance. See J. Rhodes, 'The Rosary in Sixteenth-Century England', Mount Carmel, 31 (1983), pp. 180-191; 32 (1984), pp. 4-17. The rosary was in regular use among the English Catholics at Douai in 1712, when Challoner complained of the inquisitiveness of spies at the English College who, 'If any one should chance to tell something favouring us ... [for example the] two pair of beads to be said every week by one of [th]e Philosophers . . . theyd [sic] be very inquisitive into [th]e affair till they understood it and [th]en penned it all down'. As cited in M. Trappes-Lomax, Bishop Challoner: A Biographical Study Derived from Dr Edwin Burton's 'The Life and Times of Bishop Challoner' (London, 1947), p. 9. The devotion was included in the original 1740 edition of Challoner's The Garden of the Soul and kept in all eighteenth- and nineteenth-century reissues of this spiritual classic. Along with benediction, the rosary also held an honoured place in the traditional English Abridgment of Christian Doctrine or 'penny catechism' from at least as early as 1820. 7 See W.B. Ullathorne, The Holy Mountain of La Salette: A Pilgrimage of the Year 1854 (London, 1854).

Devotional Stereotypes in English Catholicism

17

with Rome, chose forms and objects of devotion for his fellow Oratorians in Birmingham which were anything but cold, English or restrained.8 Manning, that quintessential ultramontane, was not particularly noted for a Roman flavour to his devotional life or for the warmth of his religious expression;9 at the other extreme, von Hugel mystified some by the apparent anomaly of his being capable of attacking the church through his modernist treatises on the one hand, while showing fervent devotion on the other.10 The apparent paradoxes do not disappear if we turn away from the eminent to look at the religious behaviour of Catholics in England as a whole. Information gathered from the Catholic Directory of extra-liturgical activities offered in the churches of England and Wales (such as the recitation of the rosary, the Quarant' ore or Forty Hours' devotion, the stations of the cross and benediction of the blessed sacrament), do not support the contention of at least one historian that England became

8

St Philip's Day and Corpus Christi were evidently considered to be the two most important feast days at the Birmingham Oratory, and the former was celebrated with 'a Procession with the relics and St Valentine - like C.[orpus] c.fhristi]'. Newman to J.S. Flanagan, 13 May 1858, in C.S. Dessain, et al. eds, The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman (31 vols, Oxford, 1964- ), xviii, pp. 345-46. Newman tried to have an Office for St Philip's heart, to include a special litany and rosary of St Philip, approved by Rome but his request was refused. See Newman's diary 29 January 1856, ibid., xvii, p. 138. He also included an altar dedicated to the Sacred Heart in his plans for a new Oratory church in 1858 (Newman to J.S. Flanagan, 19 May 1858, ibid., xix, p. 186) and was in the habit of distributing rosaries and medals (e.g. Newman to J.J. Gordon, 13 January 1853, ibid., xv, pp. 262-63 and Newman to F.W. Faber, 16 September 1852, ibid., xv, p. 166). 9 Although Manning wrote some doctrinally-minded treatises on the blessed sacrament, the Holy Spirit and the Sacred Heart, his friend John Bodley remembered that the only object of piety in his own room was 'a fine malachite crucifix' which had been given to him in Rome shortly after his conversion. J.E.C. Bodley, Cardinal Manning; The Decay of Idealism in France; The Institute of France. Three Essays, etc. (London, 1912), p. 11. See also H.E. Manning's own The Blessed Sacrament the Centre of Immutable Truth: A Sermon (London, 1864); idem, The Glories of the Sacred Heart (London, 1876); and idem, The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation (London, 1892). 10 As Tyrrell wrote in 1908 to A.L. Lilley of their mutual friend von Hugel: 'The Baron has just gone. Wonderful man! Nothing is true, but the sum total of nothing is sublime! Christ was not merely ignorant but a tete brule [sic]; Mary was not merely not a virgin, but an unbeliever and a rather unnatural mother; the Eucharist was a Pauline invention - yet he makes his daily visit to the Blessed Sacrament and for all I know tells his beads devoutly. Bremond's French logic finds it all very perplexing.' As cited in A.R. Vidler, A Variety of Catholic Modernists (Cambridge, 1970), p. 117. Cuthbert Butler also remembered how it was von Hiigel's daily practice to visit the Blessed Sacrament where he could be seen 'sitting, the great deep eyes on the Tabernacle, the whole being wrapt in an absorption of prayer, devotion, contemplation. Those who have not seen him so know only half the man'. J.P. Whelan, The Spirituality of Friedrich von Hugel (London, 1971), p. 16, extracted from B. Holland, ed., Baron von Hugel: Selected Letters, 1896-1924 (London, 1927), p. 49.

18

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

'more Roman than Rome' in the latter half of the nineteenth century. 11 Although Catholic churches did offer an increasingly wide range of devotional choice to their parishioners, such allegedly arch-ultramontane practices as the Quarant' ore and exposition of the blessed sacrament were scarcely available: the Quarant' ore was to be found only in a handful of churches in the dioceses of Southwark and Westminster and seems to have lost what little popularity it had held after 1880, while exposition of the blessed sacrament was scarcely known outside London.12 On the contrary, in every diocese and throughout the period, the most popular devotion by a large margin was the rite of benediction, whose roots and associations were English, not Roman.13 And there are other indications of a reluctance on the part of Catholics in England slavishly to adopt continental or Roman practices. Lourdes received only a lukewarm reception in England: the first English pilgrimage did not take place until 1883 and consisted of a mere handful of pilgrims none of whom, incidentally, was cured or witnessed miracles.14 On the other hand, a far older pilgrimage site which was closer to home, that of Holywell in North Wales, continued to attract pilgrims, particularly from Lancashire and Liverpool, who were tempted by the well itself rather than the rival attractions of a replica of the Lourdes grotto and a Mount Calvary,

11

Holmes, More Roman than Rome, passim. Even at the high point of its popularity, between 1865 and 1880, only six churches out of about 150 in the diocese of Southwark and one out of about 100 in the diocese of Westminster routinely advertised the devotion in the Catholic Directory. Exposition of the blessed sacrament did better, being offered, in 1865, by fourteen churches in Southwark diocese and eight in Westminster, but was unavailable in the rest of the country apart from in a single church in the diocese of Liverpool and one in the diocese of Hexham and Newcastle. Yet in the same period the proportion of churches throughout the country which catered for benediction of the blessed sacrament increased steadily from about 40 per cent in 1865 to around 60 per cent by 1880. For a detailed breakdown of the statistics of extra-liturgical devotions offered by the Catholic churches of England and Wales from the restoration of the hierarchy until the First World War, see M. Heimann, 'English Catholic Devotion, 1850—1914' (unpublished D.Phil thesis, University of Oxford, 1992), pp. 83-104. 13 Although benediction of the blessed sacrament was common to all Catholic countries in the nineteenth century, there were minor variations in the rite as practised in England which distinguished it from continental forms. That Catholics in England continued to rely on that idiosyncratic form which had originally been set down by their own recusant bishop Richard Challoner in The Garden of the Soul of 1740 may be surmised from its perpetuation in all the best-selling English prayer books throughout the nineteenth century, as well as from anecdotal evidence and occasional newspaper reports of the service. For the origins of the rite, see H. Thurston, 'Our English Benediction Service', The Month, 106 (1905), pp. 394-404. For a full discussion of the popularity and significance of benediction in Victorian England, see Heimann, 'English Catholic Devotion', pp. 112-35. 14 Anon., The English Pilgrimage to Lourdes May 1883, by One of the Pilgrims (London, 1883), p. 16. 12

Devotional Stereotypes in English Catholicism

19

complete with stations of the cross, which enthusiasts had built nearby.15 A mystic and stigmatic, Teresa Higginson of Bootle, although she claimed to have levitated, bilocated and to have been visited by Jesus in the 1880s, when he instructed her to promote a new devotion to the Sacred Head of Jesus, was far from being elevated to the status of a Bernadette. Rather, she was treated by her Catholic neighbours and all but one of her spiritual directors with an ambivalence which bordered on mistrust.16 Neither the Second Spring interpretation nor that of an ultramontane victory over liberal Catholicism is able accurately to describe or satisfactorily to account for devotional change in the period. Each has a stake in the excessively rigid classifications which have long been used to divide the Irish from the English Catholic, the liberal from the ultramontane and the native Catholic from the convert. This inadequacy of the historiographical traditions to account for devotional mores should not entirely surprise us in view of the fact that the Second Spring interpretation was promoted by ex-Anglicans in the wake of the 'Papal Aggression' controversy, and the Liberal-Ultramontane polarity formulated during the heated debate engendered by the Syllabus of Errors and the First Vatican Council. Such views were broadcast not only at times of especially fierce controversy, but also in journals notorious for their polemical exaggerations, such as the Rambler on the liberal side and the Month on the ultramontane. These journals, so often cited by historians as if their opposing views divided the mass of Catholics, were hardly impartial, and were criticised not only by outsiders but at times even from within their own ranks. There also existed other and less polemical views, and other Catholic journals to represent them: the Chronicle, Weekly Register and Purcell's Westminster

15 For the evident continuity of the tradition see J. Milner, Authentic Documents Relative to the Miraculous Cure of Winefrid White (London, 1805), p. 25, as cited in J.F. Champ, 'Bishop Milner, Holywell, and the Cure Tradition', S. Mews (ed.), Religion and National Identity, Studies in Church History, 18 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 153-64; H. Thurston, 'Holywell in Recent Years', The Month, 128 (1916), pp. 38-51; M. Maher, 'Holywell in 1894', The Month, 83 (1895), pp. 153-82. 16 When Teresa first developed the stigmata on Good Friday 1874, her horrified housemate Susan Ryland went to fetch the priest Thomas Wells, whose own reaction was to send for a doctor. C. Kerr, Teresa Helena Higginson Servant of God: 'The Spouse of the Crucified', 1844-1905 (London and Edinburgh), p. 78. When it was reported to him that she was suffering agonies because she was unable to go out for communion, he said 'She has no business to go on that way. Tell her from me that she is not to do it.' Ibid., pp. 78-79. Although the priest who replaced Fr Wells at Bootle, Alfred Snow, was interested enough in Teresa's claims to begin compiling information by and about her, it does not seem to have been until the inter-war period that the cause of her beatification (which was ultimately unsuccessful) began to be promoted with any seriousness. See anon., Letters of Teresa Higginson . . . by a Monk of Ramsgate (London and Glasgow, 1937); anon., Life of Teresa Higginson the Schoolteacher Mystic, 1845-1905 (Rochdale, 1937); anon., Message of Our Lord to Teresa Higginson (London, 1984); and A.M. O'Sullivan, Teresa Higginson the Servant of God: School Teacher, 1845-1905 (London and Edinburgh, 1924).

20

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

Review all managed to maintain more balanced views, even at times when party feelings ran high, and Bishop Chadwick pointed out that the last rose in estimation precisely because of the 'moderate' stance which it took at the time of the Vatican Council.17 The so-called ultramontane or Roman victory over the native English tradition has been exaggerated, at least in devotional matters. It is perfectly true, of course, that by the end of the century a greater proportion of Catholics in England practised devotions, or had at any rate been exposed to devotional practices, which would have seemed peculiar or foreign to them at the beginning. This fact has been deemed significant by Second Spring advocates because they have taken increased participation in public devotions to mark the growth of a self-confident and fully expressed Catholicism; while those who see nineteenth-century Catholicism in terms of a struggle between ultramontanes and liberals have seen the spread of 'Roman' devotions as evidence of an ultramontane victory. But these are not the only ways of interpreting the changes in devotion in the period and the reliance of both schools upon stock characters such as the timid old Catholic, triumphalist ultramontane or pious Irish proletarian are positively misleading. There seem to be two possible grounds for thinking of nineteenthcentury Catholic extra-liturgical practices or devotions as intrinsically 'Roman'. The first is that the devotions themselves expressed a spirituality which was quintessentially Italian; the second is that devotions, which were centrally controlled through the use of papal indulgences, were practised in obedience to Rome, or at the very least out of a sense of loyalty to the Holy See. While there is something to be said for these arguments, they probably obscure or mislead more than they illuminate. Devotions which came to be endorsed with papal approval in the form of indulgences did not, of course, necessarily originate in Italian spiritual manifestations; the French contribution in the nineteenth century was particularly rich, but all countries with a Catholic population, including England, successfully petitioned for certain favoured devotions to be granted this papal seal of approval. So there was nothing intrinsically Roman - in a spiritual sense - about the devotions which came to be approved by Rome. By choosing which devotions to indulgence, Rome did of course exert some leverage, but it is worth remembering that this could cut both ways. In practice, a devotion firmly established in the popular tradition, so long as it did not contradict doctrine, would be granted approval retrospectively, as in the case of Lourdes, and not usually be promoted from Rome. Since strong popular feeling towards a particular object or form of devotion always held the potential of emerging as a rival cult to those approved and brought into strict conformity with Catholic doctrine, this made good sense. Thus the

17

Cwiekowski, The English Bishops, p. 163.

Devotional Stereotypes in English Catholicism

21

mushrooming of indulgenced devotions during the pontificates of Pius IX and Leo XIII argues less for the substitution of spiritual for temporal power than for the need of the papacy to attempt to contain devotional developments while at the same time retaining the loyalty of a majority of the Catholic world. That this should have happened at a period when the church's future seemed most uncertain, first through the loss of the temporal power and then through the widespread problem of 'leakage' from the faith, only reinforces the point. Furthermore, the Roman promotion of a particular devotion was no guarantee of its acceptance in England: though some devotions favoured by particular popes were appealing to English Catholics, others were not. And it is worth remembering that the so-called Papal Aggression of 1850 by which the pope agreed to re-establish the ecclesiastical hierarchy in England was solicited by Cardinal Wiseman, not the other way around. Similarly, it was Wiseman who pleaded with the pope that the Passionist order, famous for its missions and its Italian zeal, should be set up in England, not Rome which forced this on an unwilling English people. Benediction of the blessed sacrament, which was by far the most widely and frequently practised of devotions in England throughout the nineteenth century, was hardly imposed from without. Rather, as the Jesuit Herbert Thurston pointed out in 1905, official church ceremonial 'almost ignored' the rite;18 it was not until 1958 that the Sacred Congregation of Rites explicitly affirmed that benediction served a 'true liturgical function'.19 If we are to assess the importance of the change in the devotional ethos which took place in England in the latter half of the nineteenth century accurately, we shall get furthest if we refrain from seeing devotional developments as a mere footnote to political history and attempt imaginatively to enter the social and religious world of the Catholics themselves. But before we do so, it is perhaps worth stating explicitly what has already been hinted at, namely that the characterisation of the 'old' or Garden of the Soul Catholicism as cold or timid was, as John Bossy and others have pointed out, no more than a piece of propaganda on the part of the Second Spring advocates. Challoner's piety tended to be expressed inoffensively, in speaking of prayers rather than the mass and of the faithful as Christians rather than Catholics, but it was hardly lacking in earnestness or warmth. Nor was eighteenth-century English Catholicism bereft of exclusively Catholic practices which too often have

18

Thurston, 'Our English Benediction Service', p. 394. J.G. Davies, A New Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship (London, 1986), p. 89. Until then it seems that official views went only so far as to admit that the 'general law of the Church permits Benediction, both morning and evening, on the feast of Corpus Christi and during its octave. For a good reason the bishop may grant permission for this devotion on other occasions.' C. Fallen and J. Wynne (eds), The New Catholic Dictionary (London, 1929), p. 109. 19

22

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

been characterised as 'ultramontane': John Milner, bishop of the Western District, had a great devotion to the Sacred Heart, and benediction was a popular devotion even in recusant times.20 In contrasting the new piety of the latter half of the nineteenth century with the old, one is dealing with a change in degree and of emphasis rather than of kind. Given this proviso, the new devotional ethos which has been misguidedly called Roman or ultramontane can be said to have contrasted with the old Catholic tradition in several important respects. First, and in keeping with Victorian mores, it appealed more directly to the sentimental. This strand can be seen in the new emphasis on the holy family, the infant Jesus, and in the emergence of pious stories which featured saints or saint-like children whose beauty, purity and goodness took forms which may seem saccharine to our tastes. Related to this sentimentality was the emphasis placed on the hurt caused to God by man's disobedience through sin: instead of threats of hell-fire, or practical appeals to the futility of a life based on selfishness, the concentration was rather on the sorrows of Jesus, the outrages committed against his sacred heart and the immaculate heart of his mother, and the need for reparations to be made for these wrongs. The new devotions also encouraged a directness and warmth of expression towards God and his saints as well as a sense of the accessibility, even in this life, of the supernatural world. In addition to the morning and evening prayers which Challoner had recommended as part of a Christian's daily exercise, new prayer-books added the thrice-daily Angelus, as well as indulgenced invocations and spontaneous-sounding exclamations such as 'My Jesus, mercy!' or 'Sweet Heart of Jesus, make me love thee more and more!' Passing missions given by orders such as the Passionists and the Redemptorists encouraged the 'conversion', as it was styled, of the lapsed or nominally Catholic through attendance at sermons which vividly preached the need for redemption and offered the way back to the true fold through confession and the Eucharist. Such missions were also the occasion for spreading pious practices, such as the recitation of the rosary or the following of the stations of the cross, often through the establishment of confraternities or sodalities which might perpetuate the heightened religious mood once the missioners had moved on.

20

Although devotion to the Sacred Heart is often taken to be a quintessentially nineteenth-century and 'ultramontane' devotion, it was known in contemplative circles from the middle ages. The popular seventeenth-century cult of the Sacred Heart, which was launched by Marguerite-Marie Alacoque's visions at Paray-le-Monial, took root in France and spread to Spain and Poland before being accepted with reluctance by Rome. For a short account of the history of the devotion see O. Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution (Oxford, 1981), pp. 64-66. The English rite of benediction appears to have evolved from the lof, laudi or salut of the Low Countries. See Thurston, 'Our English Benediction Service', passim.

Devotional Stereotypes in English Catholicism

23

The resemblance, in vocabulary and fervour and even in method, between this new piety and what we might think of as the evangelical enthusiasm of some Protestants is striking. To think of the changes in the style of English Catholicism in the latter half of the nineteenth century as representing a revivalist religion is undoubtedly more revealing than to think of them in terms of a political triumph of Roman organisation and centralisation. To see that what has been called an ultramontane piety was eagerly seized upon by men such as Frederick William Faber and John Brande Morris takes us further than to think of it as having been imposed or forced upon them. As Faber mused in 1846: 'One of the most striking things is that the more Roman I get, the more I seem to recover, only in a safe way and with make-weights, of old boyish evangelical feelings instead of the cold gentilising ethics of [Isaac] Williams and others which never came natural to me.'21 Like most revivalist movements, this new Catholic enthusiasm appealed mainly to those who were already nominally within the fold: hence its attraction for many lapsed Irish. It was the conversion of large numbers of nominally Catholic Irish to an enthusiastic practice which gave the sense of a Second Spring; but converts from Protestantism, old Catholics and even liberal Catholics were equally susceptible to its appeal. As Sheridan Gilley has found, the 'vulgar piety' of the Brompton Oratory cut across class as well as ethnic and political divisions.22 That such vital religion could appeal to members within all the sub-groups traditionally carved out of the Catholic body in England, may be seen in the almost universal appeal of the rosary. It became a pious cliche of the nineteenth century to say that the rosary, which was initially resisted by some as childish, was a good devotional exercise for those it appealed to and also for those it did not, since it was better than nothing for those who were incapable of a more sophisticated piety and was humbling for those who might otherwise suffer from spiritual pride. The new tone in English Catholicism had more to do with a romantic taste for emotive piety than it ever had to do with Roman dictates. But the premium which was placed on a warm, direct and even childlike relationship with God, the blessed virgin and the saints naturally led to the promotion of devotions calculated to inspire such feelings. Such devotional forms, which had usually been devised with Catholic countries in mind, tended to be both highly demonstrative and uncompromisingly Catholic. While a French peasant who bowed in the noon-day sun to pray to the Virgin Mary, like the subjects in Millet's painting The Angelus, might conceivably shame his less devout workmate into joining him, the effect in

21 F.W. Faber to J.B. Morris, 5 August 1846, as cited in R. Chapman, Father Faber (London, 1961), pp. 148-49. 22 S. Gilley, 'Vulgar Piety and the Brompton Oratory, 1850-60', Durham University Journal, 43 (1981), pp. 15-21.

24

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

England of an effusive outburst of Catholic feeling would be more likely to evoke ridicule or even to provoke a riot. Whereas Challoner had stressed the compatibility of 'aspiring to devotion' with 'living in the world', those who thought the new style of piety intrinsically more religious than the old, and more likely to transform individual souls, were also likely to favour the creation of a Catholic world within England as a second best to the mass conversion of the English to Catholicism. It was in order to keep out the impious influences of 'the world' that English bishops increasingly encouraged segregation for the Catholic community in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The desire for separate Catholic schools, social clubs and devotional societies, and the discouragement of 'mixed' marriages, all crept into revisions to the English catechism from about 1880.23 These were complemented by subtle shifts in emphasis which tightened what had been devotional options into virtual requirements. Thus the question from the 1859 version of the 'penny catechism' which had asked 'May we ask the saints and angels to pray for us? We may . . ,'24 became, in 1880, 'Should we ask the saints and angels to pray for us? We should . . .';25 'Is it allowable to give [the saints and angels] any kind of honour?'26 shifted to 'What kind of honour or worship

23 A new question in the revised 'penny' catechism of 1880 asked 'how do we expose ourselves to the danger of losing our Faith?' to which the correct answer was: 'by neglecting our spiritual duties, reading bad books, going to non-Catholic schools, and taking part in services or prayers of a false religion'. 190th Thousand: The Explanatory Catechism of Christian Doctrine, Chiefly Intended for the Use of Children in Catholic Schools (London, 1880; 1884), p. 30. Similarly, where the duty of 'parents and other superiors' in 1859 had been 'to take proper care of all under their charge, and to bring up their children in the fear of God', the revised version of 1880 explained that they were 'to provide for them, to instruct and correct them, and to give them a good Catholic education'. Large Type Edition: Catechism of Christian Doctrine, Approved for the Use of the Faithful in all the Dioceses of England and Wales (London and Derby, 1876), p. 31; 190th Thousand, p. 35. Again, where the 1859 catechism was content to define matrimony as 'a sacrament by which the contract of marriage is blessed and sanctified' the later version emphasised its denominational exclusiveness with the additional questions 'What is a "mixed marriage"? . . . Has the Church always forbidden mixed marriages? . . . Does the Church sometimes permit mixed marriages?' Large Type Edition, p. 47; 190th Thousand, p. 57. N.B.: Identical texts of what was familiarly known as the 'penny' catechism were published under a variety of titles, A Catechism of Christian Doctrine and An Abridgment of Christian Doctrine among others. In the excerpts from the catechism cited here, as in those which follow, page references have been given to the Large Type Edition and 190th Thousand because their distinctive titles help to avoid confusion as to which version of the catechism is meant. Significant revisions to the content of the catechism occurred only in 1859 and 1880, so the Large Type text of 1876 is identical with that of 1859 and the 190th Thousand of 1884 is identical, apart from the addition of two questions on character, with that of 1880. 24 Large Type Edition, p. 23. 25 190th Thousand, p. 26. 26 Large Type Edition, p. 28.

Devotional Stereotypes in English Catholicism

25

should we pay to the saints and angels?'27 and 'Is it allowable to honour relics, crucifixes, and holy pictures?'28 became 'What honour should we give to relics, crucifixes and holy pictures?'29 An important effect of the new piety was, then, to divide the Catholic from the non-Catholic far more sharply than had been the case during the penal years. It was this social consequence of the new piety, which did so much to cement and give the characteristics of the Catholic ghetto mentality, which divided the English Catholicism of Challoner most sharply from that of the late nineteenth century. This was not an Irish ghetto, filled with swarms of working-class ultramontanes, all eager to say their rosaries and pay devotion to the Sacred Heart in blind obedience to Rome, but rather a voluntary and self-imposed spiritual sanctuary which contained converts, Irish and native Catholics alike.

27

190th Thousand, p. 31. Large Type Edition, p. 28. 29 190th Thousand, p. 32. 28

This page intentionally left blank

3

Discrediting the 'Catholic State': British Catholics and the Fall of France Joan Keating

To be Catholic and British in the 1930s was to be an object of some suspicion. What worried non-Catholics was the question of divided loyalties. Anti-Catholic organisations such as CIVIC - the Council for Investigation of Vatican Influence and Censorship - encouraged the prejudice that Catholics followed the dictates of Rome rather than of the civil authorities.1 There was some real suspicion as to how 'papists', 'paddies' or 'left-footers' wished British society to be organised (the long legacy of Guy Fawkes helped to ensure this).2 At best Catholics were 'outsiders', not full British citizens; at worst they formed a prospective fifth column. At no time was this more important than during the Second World War, which affected British Catholics on different levels. For the great mass of them its significance for them, as Catholics, lay in that it provided an opportunity to display their loyalty to the British state. They did not have to think too deeply about further implications - for them the issues at stake were clear, just as they had been in the First World War. There did, however, exist a much smaller group of British Catholics who gave great thought to the social and political implications of their faith, to what it said about how society should be organised. In doing this they looked, understandably, to Europe. Adrian Hastings has written of how the typical post-war European Christian would be a democrat whereas his pre-war equivalent would not be.3 The failure to endorse democracy had been seen to end in ruin. The part played by British Catholic activists in this process of rethinking is the subject of this essay. Mainstream intellectual British Catholicism of the 1930s was enamoured of fascism. A perusal of the pages of the Tablet of this period reveals characters such as Douglas Jerrold and John Strachey Barnes: men

1 Papers of CIVIC can be found in Plater College Archives, Oxford, and in the Socialist Vanguard Group (SVG) papers at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick. The founders of CIVIC were members of the SVG. 2 For a first-hand experience see Bill Naughton's two volumes of memoirs, On The Pig's Back (Oxford, 1988) and Saintly Billy (Oxford, 1989). 3 Adrian Hastings, A History of English Christianity, 1920-85 (London, 1985), p. 372

28

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

devoted to Franco or Mussolini, or both.4 They welcomed the setting up of states which claimed to have explicitly Catholic legitimation: the corporative states of Austria and Portugal as well as Spain. There were, however, voices of dissent, questioning what was meant by a Catholic state - taking as their starting point the papal encyclical Quadragesimo anno and asking whether leaders such as Dolfuss and Salazar could claim to be leading them. The most notable group in this category was the People and Freedom Group, founded on the initiative of Don Luigi Sturzo, the Italian Christian Democrat who had been exiled to London in 1924. His reading of Quadragesimo anno was that it could not be interpreted as lending support to fascist/corporatist forms of organisation.5 These were dictatorships and had to be denounced as such. But people such as Sturzo had to shout very loudly to be heard. The dominant picture which emerged of Catholic intellectualism in this period was that it was supportive of fascism. In this context it is not surprising that at the outbreak of war there was some suspicion as to whether the patriotism of British Catholics could be relied upon. Cardinal Hinsley was desperate to ensure that no ammunition was given to those who might suggest that Catholics were not to be trusted. He flew into a rage when the newspaper the Catholic Worker suggested that 'it is possible for a Catholic to refuse to take part in this war on grounds of conscience'.6 Hinsley threatened to ban the Catholic Worker from his diocese if it continued to express such sentiments and did in fact ban the pacifist publication, Pax (edited by Eric Gill). Hinsley fumed at the Jesuit Fr Leo O'Hea: 'Pacifists are more responsible for the war than the so-called war mongers. They encouraged the Nazis and the Bolsheviks to arm to the teeth and to conclude that Britain would not resist'.7 Hinsley recognised that giving any credence to pacifist ideas was dangerous not only to the allies but also to the church. The church had to throw in its hand with the British government and, moreover, to be seen to be doing so. Hinsley was to bring about the end of an era when Catholics were, to quote Peter Hebblethwaite, 'somewhat askew to British society generally'.8

4 For more detail on this period see Richard Griffiths, Fellow Travellers of the Right (Oxford, 1981); Adrian Hastings, 'Some Reflexions on the English Catholicism of the late 1930s', in A. Hastings, (ed.), Bishops and Writers (Wheathampstead, 1977); Joan E. Keating, 'Roman Catholics, Christian Democracy and the British Labour Movement, 1910-1960', Ch. 3, Ph.D thesis, University of Manchester, 1992. 5 Luigi Sturzo, Politics and Morality, trans. Barbara Barclay Carter (London, 1938), p. 170. 6 Catholic Worker, April 1940. The Catholic Worker was a monthly newspaper set up by a group of young people keen to disseminate Catholic social teaching in a lively, readable way. 7 Hinsley to O'Hea, 10 April 1940, Plater College Archives. 8 Peter Hebblethwaite, 'Into the Mainstream with Cardinal Hinsley', New Blackfriars, 68 (1987), p. 352.

British Catholics and the Fall of France

29

In a pastoral letter supporting the war effort Catholics were told to 'have confidence in our King and his counsellors, our lawful rulers'.9 Hinsley's desire to emphasise Catholic loyalty to British war aims was a welcome gift to the British state. Stewart Mews has been able to show how the BBC and the Ministry of Information were casting about trying to find a religious leader who could impress the public with the need to 'harness the nation's spiritual resources' in the fight against fascism.10 Mews used Cardinal Hinsley's papers as his source and Ministry of Information files further bear out his analysis.11 Hinsley became a media star, attracting glowing obituaries on his death in 1943.12 When the worst came, with the Fall of France, Hinsley was ready to embark on a crusade on behalf of the allied cause. This he did by launching the 'Sword of the Spirit'. The seeds of the Sword of the Spirit (known colloquially as the Sword or SOS) had been sown in the early days of the war. The idea for it appears to have come from various leading lay people, in particular Christopher Dawson and A.C.F. Beales. In November 1939 Beales had established a 'Committee for War Aims'. Dawson quickly became involved in this and set out his ideas for the role that Catholics were to have in the war. He envisaged a standard-bearing role for them. They were, he wrote, in an 'exceptionally favourable' position to contribute to discussions of how international society should be ordered; in fact it was part of their historical mission.13 In December 1939 Cardinal Hinsley was to make what was to become a famous radio broadcast: 'The Sword of the Spirit'. It was heard by a wealthy Catholic convert Manya Harari who felt that it needed to be acted upon. She was put in touch with Barbara Ward, another leading lay Catholic thinker and an assistant editor of the Economist. Then came events in France. Christopher Dawson wrote to Hinsley on 17 July 1940 stressing that the situation had now become urgent: 'I think there must be many Catholics at the present time who are rather bewildered by the recent trends of events in France and who feel very much in the dark and in need of leadership'.14 By the next month the Sword executive was in place. The Sword of the Spirit enjoyed considerable success. It has attracted the attention of historians but mainly for its religious role, particularly its early attempts at ecumenism.15 Less interest has been taken in the 9

Thomas Moloney, Westminster, Whitehall and the Vatican (Tunbridge Wells, 1985), p. 134. Stuart Mews, 'The Sword of the Spirit: A Catholic Cultural Crusade of 1940', Studies in Church History, 20 (1983), pp. 412-13. 11 PRO, INF 1/405, Ministry of Information Religions Group memo dated 19 June 1939. 12 John Carmel Heenan, Cardinal Hinsley (London, 1944), pp. 8-13. 13 Christopher Dawson to A.C.F. Beales, January 1940, Plater College Archives. 14 C. Dawson to A. Hinsley 17 July 1940. Quoted in Mews, 'The Sword of the Spirit', p. 419. 15 Moloney, Westminster, Whitehall; Michael Walsh, From Sword To Ploughshare (London, 1980); idem, 'Ecumenism in War-Time Britain: The Sword of the Spirit and Religion and Life, 1940-45', in two parts, Heythrop Journal 23, July 1982 and 3, October 1982. 10

30

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

message that it sought to propagate, a message that was congenial to the authorities. This said that Catholicism and fascism were not synonymous, despite the fact that on the Continent the latter often masqueraded as a Catholic solution to the problem of social order. Other Catholic social organisations such as People and Freedom and the Catholic Social Guild (CSG) had been saying this for some time. In fact, from the outset the Sword of the Spirit was heavily reliant for its leaders on those trained by the CSG and more particularly by its upmarket offshoot, the Plater Club. The CSG had been operating since 1909 and had done much of the groundwork of Catholic social activism in the UK, especially with the opening of the Catholic Workers' College in Oxford in 1921. SOS success made some old-time CSG members quite angry, feeling as they did that the Sword was riding on their organisation's back. There was also some class antagonism, as the SOS seems to have been seen as something of a 'toffs club', is In fact what set the Sword apart was its high profile. In a situation of great urgency the government was glad to abet this. In peacetime it was acceptable, or at least not dangerous, for Catholics to be confused as to the social and political implications of their allegiance to the Roman faith; in wartime it was not. Hence Sword publications were financed by the Ministry of Information. (So also was a 1942 propaganda film 'The Sword of the Spirit', aimed at Latin American countries.)17 Sword pamphlets were written by Christopher Dawson, styled as the intellectual force behind the organisation.18 He had spent years grappling with ideas about the relationship between Christianity and culture and Christianity and the state. He first came to public attention in 1929 with the publication of his second book Progress and Religion.19 His basic message, developed over the following years, was that without the presence of a living faith in society there was the danger of a vacuum which totalitarianism could then fill. Totalitarianism, Dawson said, was an example of 'the deification of heroic evil'.20 It extended the state into areas of life previously untouched by it, leaving no room for the church.21 Dawson preached the necessity of injecting the nation with a religious spirit which would ensure that 16 R.H.B. Butterworth, 'The Structure and Organisation of Some Catholic Lay Organisations in Australia and Great Britain' (unpublished D.Phil Thesis, University of Oxford, 1959), p. 569. 17 The text of this is contained in PRO, INF 6/462. The Ministry of Information hoped that Graham Greene would write the script but he was unavailable, so the job fell to Robert Speaight. 18 One example of Dawson's Sword pamphlets is In the Power of the Spirit (London, 1943). 19 Published by Sheed and Ward. For a full account of Dawson's life see Christina Scott, An Historian and his World: A Life of Christopher Dawson, 1889-1970 (London, 1984). 20 Dawson, In the Power of the Spirit, p. 7. 21 Idem, Beyond Politics (London, 1939), p. 106.

British Catholics and the Fall of France

31

no such vacuum could develop. Sword of the Spirit was an expression of such a belief - it would frustrate the advance of totalitarian creeds by spiritual means. Dawson was also important in trying to formulate a positive programme for the Sword, a way of defining it which went beyond anti-fascism. This will be considered later, after an examination of the very real impact of the Fall of France on British Catholics. Thinking Catholics, including those at the Ministry of Information, were quick to recognise the negative propaganda possibilities arising out of the Fall of France.22 The laws which Petain had introduced in favour of the Catholic church meant there was a danger that it would attract some British Catholic support. (The Osseruatore Romano had called the establishment of Vichy 'the dawn of a new radiant day, not only for France but for Europe and the world'.)23 But Cardinal Hinsley had no trouble in recognising what was at stake. On 13 July 1940 he wrote to the editor of the Tablet asking him not to publish comments or statements, even if they purported to come from the Vatican, which tended to give support to the then government of France.24 Hinsley recognised the church's vulnerability: the Church Times had, for example, blamed the Fall of France on the inclination of Roman Catholics towards fascism.25 What soon arose were damaging accusations in the secular press that British Catholics might support the Catholic Latin bloc; the worrying implication being that in the face of an invasion they might form a fifth column. In October 1940 the New Statesman and Nation published an article by W. Horsfall Carter entitled 'The Catholic Latin Myth'.26 In this he explained that the Catholic Latin bloc, consisting of France, Italy and Spain, was envisaged as a bulwark against Bolshevism. Those supporting it, he said, had welcomed the invasion of Abyssinia - feeling that it was justified since it involved converting heathen savages. Supporters of the Catholic Latin bloc saw Bolshevism as the enemy and Hitler as containable, believing that by working with him they could render him innocuous. Ideas of a counter-reformation, of Christianising Europe, were to the fore. The Catholic Latin bloc would, they believed, 'continue to spiritualise the German cult of power so that a "civilisation of the West" is reborn'. Horsfall Carter hinted that Catholics in Britain might have some sympathy 22

For the extent of this see Moloney, Westminster, Whitehall, p. 175. Osseruatore Romano, 8 July 1940. Quoted in W. Horsfall Carter, 'The Catholic Latin Myth', New Statesman and Nation (NS & N), 5 October 1940. For an examination of the diplomatic implications for the Vatican of the Fall of France, see Owen Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican During the Second World War (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 134-36. 24 Mews, 'The Sword of the Spirit', p. 419. 25 Church Times, 5 July 1940. Quoted in Gavin White, 'The Fall of France', Studies in Church History, 20 (1983), p. 435. White stresses the reluctance among many Christians to accept that the defeat of France was due to military factors - they favoured a theory of moral disintegration. 2 6 NS fcf N, 5 October 1940. 23

32

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

with this idea; quoting the reservations expressed by the Catholic rightwing writer Christopher Hollis at the prospect of Britain working with Russia to defeat fascism. The New Statesman article and the correspondence which came out of it showed the impact of the Fall of France on British Catholics. It illustrated their vulnerability to accusations that the church was aligned with fascism; accusations made easier not just by the legacy of the 1930s but also by the complexity of the arguments which some parts of the Catholic press were putting forward. The correspondence also showed the high awareness of some Catholic activists as to the damage that could be done if articles such as Horsfall Carter's were not challenged. The British Catholic Christian Democratic press quickly embarked on a damage-limitation exercise, so great was its fear that British Catholics would become identified with the Catholic Latin bloc. As early as July 1940 People and Freedom contained the following statement: The People and Freedom Group as a group of Catholic Democrats convinced that this country is fighting for liberty and law, in fighting the battle of all Christian men of goodwill, wishes to dissociate itself from certain Catholic writers who appear to view with favour the foundation of a clerico Fascist Latin bloc in the Mediterranean.27 Similarly one month later the Christian Democrat, the journal of the Catholic Social Guild, condemned the concept. Cardinal Hinsley did too, in October 1940, describing it in a letter to South America as, 'the identification of Christian law and justice with a small group of Latin states peripheral to and dependent upon Germany'.28 There was also a direct response on the part of Catholic Christian Democrats to Horsfall Carter's article. The New Statesman correspondence columns in the weeks following its publication provided a rare opportunity to see the church engaging with its secular critics. Among the correspondents was Barbara Ward, honorary secretary of the Sword of the Spirit.29 Ward was anxious in her letter to stress that the idea of a Catholic Latin bloc was not the creation and official policy of the church. Rather it was that of a group of politicians. She feared that a failure to recognise this would 'drive a wedge . . . between Catholics and non-Catholics in the free states of the West, in Britain and the US'. She worried that English Catholics might feel that they were being treated with suspicion by non-Catholics and, as a result, start to feel disgust towards the society which, in actual fact, they were loyally serving. The vulnerability of the Catholic community to criticisms of disloyalty or worse was emphasised 27

People and Freedom, 15 July 1940. 28 Moloney, Westminster, Whitehall, p. 180. 29 NS y N, 26 October 1940.

British Catholics and the Fall of France

33

by Ward: 'How many of your readers, for example, will not have reacted to Mr Carter's article with a shrug and the comment, "I always thought Catholics were all Fascists"?' She asked whether a Catholic could: 'win VCs and George Medals and lead Britain into battle on the River Plate and still remain an alien and suspect in his own community'. The idea of the Catholic Latin bloc had, Ward said, to be seen for what it was - a part of Nazi propaganda. The taunt that Catholics had a contempt for democracy and sympathy for fascism was a recurring feature of the correspondence in the New Statesman.30 Horsfall Carter responded to his Catholic critics by striking at the roots of the alternative philosophy people like Dawson, Beales and Ward had been attempting to create.31 They wished to associate Catholicism with anti-fascism but Horsfall Carter wrote: Just because Catholic thinkers have for generations been sapping at the fountains of liberalism in one nation after another on the Continent the way has been paved for Fascism and Miss Ward must not be surprised, if, judging by effects, the ordinary progressive has a tendency to regard 'Catholic' and 'Fascist' as synonymous.

Responses to Horsfall Carter's comments showed the complex nature of the ideas thinking Catholics had about how society, and European society in particular, should be organised. What they showed clearly was Catholics united in their anti-fascism but divided in what was to replace it. Among those called upon by Horsfall Carter to justify his paper's attitude to Vichy France was the editor of the Catholic Herald, Michael de la Bedoyere. The Ministry of Information had already expressed concern at this popular paper's line.32 Horsfall Carter in a letter of 2 November 1940 quoted a Catholic Herald leader of 12 July as an example of British Catholic support for the Catholic Latin bloc: We shall not deny that we believe the true prosperity and welfare of our country to be linked up with the influences making for this Catholic bloc rather than with America, Russia and Prussia but we must recognise the fact that this is not the prevalent view here, especially in political and commercial circles.

The leader went on to rebuke those who dubbed the Petain administration treacherous, fascist and reactionary. Michael de la Bedoyere was quick to respond.33 Horsfall Carter, he said, had quoted the one leading article in three months that could possibly be used to substantiate his general

30

E.g. NS & N, 2 November 1940 and 9 November 1940. Horsfall Carter, letter to the NS fcf N, 2 November 1940. 32 Moloney, Westminster, Whitehall, p. 176. 33 Michael de la Bedoyere, letter to the NS &f N, 9 October 1940. 31

34

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

attack on the Catholic press and even then he had misinterpreted it. What was significant, said de la Bedoyere, was the presence of Prussia in the quotation. It was the view of the Catholic Herald that the ruling castes in Prussia, Russia, the USA and Britain had been bound together: in an essentially non European understanding for a commercial and secularist domination of the world, and to this understanding Conservatives, Socialists and Liberals in this country are fundamentally loyal. Our sympathies are with the European tradition to be found not only in the Latin countries but in Western Germany, the lands within the old Austrian Empire and Ireland. The British people really belonged to this tradition but it had been trampled on. What was needed was a defeat of the Prussian spirit of Nazism and a victory for what de la Bedoyere called 'the true European tradition, with Britain once again part of it'. The Tablet in saying something similar to this had been praised by Horsfall Carter.34 It had said that there could be no religious revival under the Vichy regime in France, since it was a footstool of the Nazis. This is not to say that the editor of the Tablet, Douglas Woodruff, was unsympathetic to Marshal Petain. (Interestingly Letitia Fairfield, a London Labour councillor, got into difficulties with Kinsley and her fellow executive members of the Sword of the Spirit for saying as much.)35 Nor was Michael de la Bedoyere. There was still some support for the idea of a Catholic state - corporatist or distributist - during wartime, but it was recognised that that was not what was being put into practice during the advance of Nazism in Europe. Nor could such reactionary ideas, as those held by these men, gain the same attention and respectability as they had in the 1930s. It was those Catholics who were prepared to think about what democracy offered to Catholicism and vice-versa who were gaining the attention in wartime Britain. In his original article condemning the Catholic Latin bloc Horsfall Carter had described the Sword of the Spirit as 'trying to save Catholicism here for democracy'. Barbara Ward had been quick to correct him: The idea of 'saving' for one particular political form an institution which has lived two thousand years through every variety of political regime is to a Catholic rather comic . . . . If in fighting for the triumph of freedom, truth and charity - which we Catholics of England believe to be - in the broadest sense, our country's cause - we also fight for the recondition of the free state, we need not think of the Church being saved for democracy or democracy for the Church but rather recognise the interdependence of Europe's Christian tradition with the freedom of the Western world.36 34

NS 6f N, 2 November 1940. Mews, 'The Sword of the Spirit', pp. 422—23. Hinsley was anxious to give a semblance of unity to the Sword. 3 6 B. Ward, letter to NS & N, 26 October 1940. 35

British Catholics and the Fall of France

35

This illustrates something of the confusion as to what the Sword of the Spirit was fighting for, rather than against. People, able to unite in their fight against fascism, were less sure about what they were fighting to replace it with. Kinsley stressed that SOS was not narrowly patriotic but rather that it was the special responsibility of Christians to maintain and strengthen the 'unity of Western culture which had its roots in Christendom'.37 But what was meant by this? Were not in fact British and allied Catholics fighting for a very particular political form, in supporting democracy? Did not their willingness to fight alongside the allies signify this? All this had to be discussed by those who cared to think about such things, those who believed Catholic social theory mattered. One such person, closely linked with the Sword of the Spirit, was Jacques Maritain. Maritain was widely read by British Catholics and had real links with them not only through SOS but earlier ones through the 'anti-Chesterbelloc' group 'Order'.38 The way in which his thinking developed during the war years, and the accusations which it attracted - in particular that he sacralised democracy - help to illustrate a much wider process which many British and European Catholics were experiencing in these years: a reconsideration of the role of the church in modern society. Jacques Maritain was not a cradle Catholic. He converted, along with his Russian Jewish wife, in 1906. Within a short time he was involved in the conservative, anti-semitic, monarchist movement Action Franchise. This organisation was condemned by the Vatican as early as 1914 but was not finally banned until 1927. (Pope Pius X did not want to cause a stir on the eve of a world war.)39 His involvement in Action Franchise has been put down as something of a flirtation but the evidence suggests a stronger commitment. In 1926, at the first inkling of an open papal condemnation, Maritain issued a statement defending Action Franchise's atheistic leader, Charles Maurras. It was only Maurras' reaction to the Vatican attack which convinced Maritain it was time to leave Action Frangaise. In sifting his thoughts on the Maurras affair Maritain began to rethink his ideas on the relationship between Christianity and politics. This was a path which was to lead to the criticism (by Maurras' biographer, among others) that Maritain in his subsequent career 'consecrated' or 'sacralised' democracy.40 Undoubtedly the significant moment which brought about the changes which gave credence to such accusations was the war.

37 This was a quote from Dawson, circulated by Hinsley with his invitations to the first Sword of the Spirit meeting. See Mews, 'The Sword of the Spirit', p. 420. It was a phrase Dawson used in his original letter to A.C.F. Beales in August 1940. 38 See Scott, A Historian and his World, p. 95. 39 Information for this section comes from Julie Kernan, Our Friend Jacques Maritain (New York, 1975). 40 Brooke Williams Smith, Jacques Maritain: Anti Modern or Ultra Modern? (New York, 1976), p. 38.

36

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

That Maritain changed some of his views in the light of the war was hardly surprising. So did many others, including his friend Emmanuel Mounier.41 From his stance as a critic of liberal democracy, Maritain came to see reasons to defend it, albeit in a version with a religious input which would in some sense transform it. In the war people like Maritain and Mounier had to choose to support France, Britain and the USA, and this involved them in defending societies which they had previously condemned. Sidney Hook, the American philosopher, has illustrated Maritain's change of view.42 In his attempt to prove that Maritain was offering a theological justification of capitalism, he compared the French thinker's position in his 1936 book True Humanism with an article he had published in an October 1939 edition of Commonweal. In True Humanism Maritain, as Dawson had, suggested that the Catholic church was the only alternative to totalitarianism. This then involved a criticism of the democracies for their 'bourgeois humanism . . . their degrading cults of profit and comfort and their anarchical conception of freedom'. The contrast with the Commonweal article is marked. In this he talked of the 'strength of the soul and the moral greatness' of England and France. The world saw that the democracies . . . were willing to remain faithful to the reason for their existence . . . that the men of France and England, of those two ancient Christian lands, risked in the perils of a hellish war both their lives and their dearest goods and the incomparable heritage of civilisation of which they are guardians. The war also marked another turning point for Maritain. One of his interpreters, Joseph Amato, has described how after 1940 it became clear to both Maritain and Mounier that the church would from now on react to events in the world rather than create them. This, along with his new understanding of the 'moral greatness' of the allies, forced Maritain to think through where he now stood. In 1945 Maritain considered the relationship between Christianity and Democracy, in a book of that name. He went to some lengths to deny any easy equation between Christianity and the left or the right. Christianity could not, he said, be seen as exclusively recommending any particular social or economic system. It was not necessary for a good Christian to be a democrat: the important thing for the political life of the world and for the solution of this crisis of civilisation is by no means to pretend that the Christian faith is

4 'Joseph Amato, Mounier and Maritain: A French Catholic Understanding of the World (Alabama, 1975), pp. 6-7, 144-45. 42 Sidney Hook, 'Integral Humanism', in his Reason, Social Myths and Democracy (New York, 1950).

British Catholics and the Fall of France

37

linked to democracy and that the Christian faith compels every believer to be a democrat.43

On the contrary, Christians have worked out their salvation while supporting all sorts of political regimes — including those based on slavery or absolute monarchy. But while Christianity was not related to democracy: 'democracy is linked to Christianity and . . . the democratic impulse has arisen in human history as a temporal manifestation of the inspiration of the gospel'. And there was a role for Christianity within democracy. In developing a theory of this he writes, he tells us, of Christianity not as a religious creed but rather as a 'leaven in the social and political life of nations and as a bearer of the temporal hope of mankind'. Maritain developed ideas in which democracy appeared to offer opportunities for the church. While, in a pluralist democracy, it would have to compete with other interest groups, what he called 'spiritual families', Christian ideals would always triumph. In fact Maritain was criticised for stating this. For Sidney Hook it showed Maritain's pluralism to be a sham — it always put salvation above tolerance.44 Such an interpretation is borne out by Maritain's special emphasis on 'Christian direction' or 'Christian inspiration' in which 'non Christians will have their place'.45 His personalist pluralist democracy by its very nature had a strong set of values at its core which were not subject to discussion and alteration. He was able to sustain a belief that Christian values would triumph in a democracy because of his view that democracy was linked to Christianity. Such an understanding allowed the church to look forward to a future which guaranteed it a role even if it was the lesser one of inspirer or former of consciences rather than that of direct legislator. It offered the opportunity for church members to envisage a situation whereby fascist Europe was not replaced by 'Catholic states', for example a Vichy without the Nazis, but rather by something different: democratic states with a large input from Christian-inspired parties and individuals. Maritain had an eager, though not uncritical, public in Britain which had followed the development of his ideas. Both the People and Freedom Group and the Catholic Social Guild had longstanding links with European anti-fascist Catholic thinkers. They had been happy to invite such people to give public lectures, address their summer schools and contribute to their publications. When the Fall of France signalled the end of Paris as a centre for such thought, People and Freedom, and its founder, Virginia Crawford, in particular, claimed a resulting new significance for London. In one article in the Christian Democrat Crawford claimed it to 43 All quotations in this paragraph are from Jacques Maritain, Christianity and Democracy (London, 1940), pp. 24-25. 44 Hook, 'Integral Humanism', p. 83. 45 Jacques Maritain, Scholasticism and Politics (London, 1940), p. 221.

38

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

be 'Britain's Opportunity'; in another, in People and Freedom (the group's news-sheet), she wrote of how Britain now stood alone.46 Her claims were slightly grandiose. Obviously Britain did play host to refugees from Catholic Europe. Recognition of this came from the Sword of the Spirit. It created a meeting-place for groups of foreign nationals who believed that Catholic social theory suggested something very different from fascism. It inaugurated French, Belgian and Polish sections. But Britain was not to be home for all fleeing Catholic anti-fascists. The less than generous policy of the British government towards refugees meant that many of them, including eventually Luigi Sturzo, ended up in the USA. Here they issued a manifesto which was adopted by the Sword of the Spirit at their 1942 annual general meeting. The US Catholics' Manifesto, 'In The Face Of The World's Crisis', was publicised by Christopher Dawson. He published it in full, along with a detailed commentary, in the Dublin Review.47 It had a number of signatories, among them Jacques Maritain, whose influence is writ large in it. His wife Raissa Maritain, Frank Sheed, Paul van Zeeland and Luigi Sturzo were among the other signatories. They pledged themselves to fight for democracy in the sense of 'the political and social life of free men', rather than as 'particular systems or forms of government'. (Dawson's commentary explained this - democracy was to be distinguished from, on the one hand, government by divine right of kings or a noble cast and, on the other, the new mass dictatorships.) What marked out a democracy for the 'US Catholics' was that 'certain principles . . . must never be questioned, such as those which assess the rights of the human person'. This can easily be recognised as Maritain's 'shared temporal values'. Democracy, they believed, had provided the political circumstances for achievement of these rights. Unsurprisingly they were scathing of the idea, held by advocates of the Catholic Latin bloc, that totalitarianism could be Christianised. The US Catholics' Manifesto voiced hopes for a new Christian order. For them, at that time, this was necessarily a democratic order. It was not purely that democracy needed Christianity but that Christianity had led to democracy. As in Maritain's teaching and Ward's letter to the New Statesman, democracy was being portrayed in such a way as to make it synonymous with Christianity. It was always emphasised that supporting Christianity alone was not the way to salvation: the religious inspiration behind it, the role it offered the church and its worthiness of Christian

46 Christian Democrat, November 1940; People and Freedom, 15 July 1940. Crawford was a fascinating woman who first came to public attention in the Dilke divorce scandal. Her papers are preserved at Churchill College, Cambridge. 47 US Catholics, 'In The Face of the World's Crisis', Dublin Review, October 1942, p. 106.

British Catholics and the Fall of France

39

support were equally stressed. Democracy was in fact being sacralised or consecrated. Yet it was not just the laity who were being led to see the positive benefits which democracy could offer the church. The Vatican also saw the need to encourage it positively and claim it as the church's own invention. In the course of the war the pope issued a series of Christmas allocutions which, though couched in ecclesiastical language, proved to be useful to the allies. Not only could they be shown to point an accusing finger at the fascists, they also recognised that people were calling for 'something newer, something better, something more developed, organically sounder, freer and stronger than in the past'.48 The culmination of these allocutions came with the 1944 offering, Lux in tenebris lucet.49 This document, like the statements of Maritain and Ward, was not so much about seeing democracy as the only way to govern but more about establishing that if democracy was to work then Christianity was essential. It recognised the public demand for democracy: that there was a feeling abroad that war could have been avoided had the people 'not lacked all possibility of criticising and amending the activity of the public powers'. The pope's main concern within the broadcast was to look at 'the problems of democracy', to examine how it should be regulated so that it could be described as a true and healthy democracy. He still stressed the inequalities of the natural order, a major plank of Catholic social teaching. The condition of true democracy was a recognition that all authority came from God. What was needed in a democracy was that the parliamentary deputies possessed 'a high moral standard, practical ability and intellectual capacity'. High demands would also be made by democracy on 'the moral maturity of the individual citizen'. Thus only Christianity could produce the necessary conditions for democracy: 'If the future is to belong to democracy, an essential part of its achievement will have to belong to the religion of Christ and to the Church, the messenger of our Redeemer's word, which is to continue His mission of saving men.' Few of the pope's words in Lux in tenebris lucet would have been out of place in a work by Christopher Dawson or Jacques Maritain. The acceptability of Maritain's views to the hierarchy was reflected in his appointment to the post of French ambassador to the Vatican in 1945 — a position he held for three years.50 To conclude, in a sense the war saw a scaling down of expectations on the part of the European church and its members. The Utopian visions of a perfect ordering of society with the church at its centre had been

48

Pius XII, Christmas Allocution 1940. English Translation in the Tablet, 4 January 1941. Pius XII, Lux in tenebris lucet. English translation in the Tablet, 30 December 1944. All quotations in this paragraph are taken from this document. 50 'Hazardous Awards', Tablet, 17 November 1990. 49

40

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

badly shaken. The reality of what those European societies which had seemed to offer hope of this had turned out to be - footstools of the Nazis - had made sure of this. The war caused a rethink on the part of Catholics coming from many different political perspectives, not just those who had flirted with right-wing dictatorships. During its course those who had long warned of the dangers of fascism, but had been critical of the liberal democracies, found themselves supporting countries governed by this latter method. They had to think about the nature of these societies and what they offered. They also had to think about what role the church - faced with evidence of its decline in power - could play in the world. Was in fact, they asked, the best policy for the church to develop a theory which made it indispensable within democracy? Supporting the idea that the church should be Tor Democracy' was not new.51 People like Luigi Sturzo and groups like the British People and Freedom and Catholic Social Guild had been exploring the issues around this for some time. What was new was the enthusiasm with which this idea was plugged, and in particular the level at which it was taken up. Even the Vatican lent support, though it did not go as far as Jacques Maritain. Maritain is the key figure in all of this. He was able to develop ideas of what the war and the experiences of Catholics under fascist rule said about the future role of the church. His philosophy meant the recognition of spiritual families other than the Catholic Christian one. The church's role in a reconstructing Europe was to work alongside these other families and to trust that in this way the core Christian values, bound up as they were with democracy, would triumph. It was predicted (and proved to be true) that this was a situation in which parties of Christian inspiration could flourish, but in so doing they were to keep loose their ties with the institutional church. The church's role as 'Queen of Society' was to be circumscribed.52 British Catholics, despite their comparatively small numbers, had not been immune to dreams of a more authentically Catholic form of organisation in their home country. In the 1930s support for 'Catholic corporatism' was strong and vociferous. While not all those who supported fascism felt it appropriate to the home arena, there was a strong dissatisfaction with the system operating in contemporary Britain. A strong influence had been exerted on intellectual Catholics which suggested that it was not appropriate to work within the existing system of parliamentary democracy. Those who felt differently, notably the driving force behind

51 For Democracy was the title of the People and Freedom Group's manifesto which was published in book form, in London, in 1939. 52 For a good discussion of the nature of Christian democracy and in particular its links with the church, see Gregory Baum and John Coleman (eds), The Church and Christian Democracy', Concilium, 193 (October, 1987).

British Catholics and the Fall of France

41

the Catholic Social Guild Fr Leo O'Hea, had long bemoaned the influence of this Chesterbelloc school — theorists who dreamed of the restoration of a kind of Catholic 'Merrie England'.53 Such a dream took a big knock from the war. This is not to say that all British Catholics came to terms with democracy. As late as August 1945 the Tablet could carry a book review by T.S. Gregory in which he described democracy as 'a series of forlorn attempts to find substitutes for the justice of God'.54 But those who thought like Gregory were less able to gain the respectability and attention which they had been able to command in the previous decade. Instead the attention-grabbers of the war and the immediate post-war era were men and women like Barbara Ward and Christopher Dawson. People and Freedom and the Catholic Social Guild, which had long been teaching ideas of what they called Christian Democracy, did not see dramatic rises in their membership or journal circulation but they saw their ideas being taken up, with a much higher profile, by the Sword of the Spirit. The Sword of the Spirit was undoubtedly an organisation with many flaws and these contributed to its internal disputes. However, this cannot take away from its significance. Hinsley's decision to launch the Sword signalled that the British church was to be totally involved in the war effort. This in turn gestured to the laity that its salvation was to be found in the democratic system. The Sword's inability to formulate ideas of what it stood for - what a new Christian order would look like (a highly ambitious aim anyway) - could not detract from what it was in fact endorsing. Democracy was the way ahead and Christians were to fight for it. Any lingering doubts as to whether Catholics were loyal to the British state (not surprising with the evidence of the 1930s and the potential of the idea of the Catholic Latin bloc) were laid to rest by Hinsley's creation of the Sword. Involvement in an organisation so closely linked with government ministries also stored up future benefits for the church by opening up channels of communication for senior clerical and lay officials. By their patriotism British Catholics had been seen to earn the right to be considered insiders, and they now had access to government. They were quick to develop the skills of an able pressure group, which were to prove very useful in ensuring a Catholic voice in the reconstruction of postwar Britain.55 But they were only able to do this because of their belief that this was the way for the church in Britain to go - that it was time, as Peter Hebblethwaite terms it, to 'enter the mainstream'. What had happened in Europe and what seemed set to 53 Fr Leo O'Hea to R.P. Louis Barde of L'Action Populaire, 27 April 1925, Plater College Archives. 54 Tablet, 18 August 1945. 55 For an analysis of this see Peter Coman, Catholics and the Welfare State (London, 1977); Michael Hornsby Smith, Roman Catholics in England: Studies in Social Structure since the Second World War (Cambridge, 1987); Keating, 'Roman Catholics, Christian Democracy and the British Labour Movement', ch. 5.

42

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

happen in the future had vindicated those who had long been arguing this. British Catholics were no longer encouraged to believe that there was a way of organising societies which was authentically Catholic. They had been forced to mature to the point where they accepted that Catholics in Britain were, as Catholics in Europe, to act as one spiritual family among many. A counter-reformation, should it come at all, would be achieved by stealth rather than triumphalism.

4

The Catholic Church and Education in Britain: From the 'Intransigence' of 'Closed' Catholicism to the Accommodation Strategy of 'Open Catholicism Michael P. Hornsby-Smith

In his review of the struggle for Catholic schools in the collection celebrating the centenary of the restoration of the hierarchy in England and Wales, A.C.F. Beales noted that by the time the exiled colleges had returned to England from the Low Countries 'under cover of the wave of British sympathy for those persecuted by the French Revolutionary leaders of 1789, a movement of popular Catholic education was already under way in this country'. 1 It is not the primary aim of this essay to give a blow-by-blow account of the changes in Catholic education over the past two centuries. Rather, an interpretation will be offered of the current crisis in Catholic education in terms of the shift from the religious strategy of intransigence, typical of the period of 'closed' Catholicism up to the early 1960s, to the strategy of accommodation to the wider society, characteristic of the 'open' Catholicism of the post-war years and especially since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).2 It is arguably no exaggeration to suggest that Catholic education in Britain is currently in a state of crisis. An authoritative report on Catholic schools in 1991 pointed to three particular issues: the growing difficulties of financing Catholic schools and the disproportionate allocation of the available church resources to their maintenance; in a situation of falling 1

A.C.F. Beales, 'The Struggle for the Schools' in G.A. Beck (ed.), The English Catholics: 1850—1950: Essays to Commemorate the Centenary of the Restoration of the Hierarchy of England and Wales (London, 1950), pp. 365-409. I would like to express my gratitude to Peter King, Stephen McConnell, Andrew McPherson and Tony Smith for help in the preparation of this essay. 2 The contrast between the two ideal-typical options for religious institutions in a pluralistic situation of intransigence or entrenchment 'behind whatever socio-religious structures they can maintain or construct', on the one hand; or accommodation to 'the pluralistic game of religious free enterprise', on the other hand, comes from P.L. Berger's The Social Reality of Religion (Harmondsworth, 1973), p. 156. The concepts of closed and open political Catholicism come from J.H. Whyte's Catholics in Western Democracies: A Study in Political Behaviour (Dublin, 1981). He notes that a closed or fortress form of Catholicism emerged as a reaction to the French Revolution and that 'a denominational education system could be seen as an important underpinning to a closed Catholicism' (p. 65).

44

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

school rolls, the declining proportions of both Catholic pupils and Catholic teachers which was problematic in terms of maintaining a distinctive Catholic 'ethos' in the schools; and the ramifications of recent legislative changes felt likely to damage the special character of the voluntary aided school.3 The main focus of this essay will be on Catholic education in England and Wales. The provision of financial support for education as an instrument of policy by the British state in Ireland is worthy of separate treatment and will not be considered here.4 In Northern Ireland segregated schools systems reflect a situation of 'cultural defence',5 though there has been the emergence of a significant number of integrated schools in recent years.6 For rather different reasons detailed consideration of the Scottish case will also be excluded. This deserves separate treatment for a number of reasons. In the first place, Scotland has its own hierarchy which was restored in 1878,7 a generation later than in England and Wales. As a result of high rates of Irish immigration, the Catholic density in Scotland is greater than south of the border8 and there are reasons to believe that the processes of normative convergence with the general population which are apparent in England and Wales, while probably still occurring in Scotland, are lagged some distance behind them.9 In sum, to a greater extent than 3 Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, Report of the Special Committee on Catholic School Provision in the Diocese (1991). 4 See, e.g., J. Murphy, Church, State and Schools in Britain, 1800-1970 (London, 1971): 'in Ireland since the Reformation the state had at times made use of educational provision as an instrument of policy, mainly as a means of "anglicizing", converting to Protestantism, and thereby pacifying, an unruly population . . . . The Westminster parliament's grant to Maynooth College (in 1795) . . . was clearly politically motivated' (p. 11). See also S. Dunn, 'Education, Religion and Cultural Change in the Republic of Ireland', ch. 5 in W. Tulasiewicz and C. Brock (eds), Christianity and Educational Provision in International Perspective (London and New York, 1988). 5 The term is taken from R. Wallis and S. Bruce, 'Secularization: The Orthodox Model', Religion and Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis (Oxford, 1992), pp. 8-30, who argue that 'Religion can provide resources for the defence of a national, local, ethnic, or status-group culture' and so inhibit processes of secularization

(p. 17).

6 See, e.g., J. Darby and S. Dunn, 'Segregated Schools: The Research Evidence', pp. 85—98; A.E.C.W. Spencer, 'Arguments for an Integrated School System', pp. 99-114; and G. Loughran, 'The Rationale of Catholic Education', in R.D. Osbourne, RJ. Cormack and R.L. Miller (eds), Education and Policy in Northern Ireland (Belfast, 1987), pp. 115-22; and D. Murray, Worlds Apart: Segregated Schools in Northern Ireland (Belfast, 1985). 7 D. McRoberts (ed.), Modern Scottish Catholicism, 1878-1978 (Glasgow, 1979). 8 Ibid., p. 240. The Catholic population in Scotland in 1977 was said to be 16 per cent; almost certainly this was an underestimate. Gallup data for England and Wales in 1978 suggested that 11 per cent of the adult population were Roman Catholics; see M.P. Hornsby-Smith and R.M. Lee, Roman Catholic Opinion: A Study of Roman Catholics in England and Wales in the 1970s (Guildford, Surrey), p. 170. 9 M.P. Hornsby-Smith, Roman Catholics in England: Studies in Social Structure Since the Second World War (Cambridge, 1987); idem, Roman Catholic Beliefs in England: Customary Catholicism and Transformations of Religious Authority (Cambridge, 1991).

The Catholic Church and Education in Britain

45

in England and Wales, Scotland still has a distinctive Catholic subculture and sense of a separate Catholic identity. A second reason for treating Scotland separately is the distinct religious settlement embodied in the Education (Scotland) Act of 1918 which made 'the country's Catholic schools the first in a predominantly non-Catholic nation to be incorporated within a state system'.10 According to Beales, the Scottish 'Concordat' (section 18 of the act) was the result of negotiation between the bishop of Pella, Mgr William Brown, the Apostolic Visitor to Scotland, and Sir Robert Munro, Secretary for Scotland, and Sir John Struthers, Secretary, Scottish Education Department.11 In the settlement the local authorities achieved administrative control and financial responsibility but the Catholic authorities retained the right of appointment of 'Catholic teachers for Catholic schools'. Beales observes that: 'At the time, the Scots Catholics were dubious: as also were their Bishops. In the end the Holy See, by its only intervention in the entire century, instructed them to accept. The settlement is now regarded as the best in the world.'12 For reasons which are not entirely clear, the English bishops did not consider such a solution for some time and by then the option was not on the negotiating table.13 10

C. Brown, The Social History of Religion in Scotland since 1730 (London and New York, 1987), p. 201. 11 For an account of Bishop Brown's negotiations, see J. Darragh, 'The Apostolic Visitations of Scotland, 1912 and 1917'. Innes Review, 41 (1990), pp. 29-46; Brother Kenneth, The Education (Scotland) Act, 1918, in the Making', ibid., 19 (1968), pp. 91-128. 12 Beales, 'The Struggle for the Schools', pp. 389-90. For a further discussion of the development of Catholic education in Scotland see, e.g., J.H. Treble, 'The Development of Roman Catholic Education in Scotland: 1878-1978', Innes Review, 29 (1978), pp. 111-39; also McRoberts (ed.), Modern Scottish Catholicism, pp. 111-39; J.H. Treble, 'The Working of the 1918 Education Act in Glasgow Archdiocese', Innes Review, 31 (1980), pp. 27-44; I. Findlay, 'Christianity and Educational Provision in Scotland', in W. Tulasiewicz and C. Brock (eds), Christianity and Educational Provision, pp. 17-34; M. Skinnider, 'Catholic Elementary Education in Glasgow, 1818-1918', in T.R. Bone (ed.), Studies in the History of Scottish Education., 1872-1939 (London, 1967), pp. 13-70; T. Gourlay, 'Catholic Schooling in Scotland Since 1918', Innes Review, 41 (1990), pp. 119-31; J. Murphy, pp. 102-4; 'The Scottish Solution', in Catholic Education Council, The Case for Catholic Schools (London, 1955), pp. 96-106. 1:i Although the case of Scotland has been excluded from the present analysis, there is a much more substantial empirical basis for the comparative analysis of the 'effectiveness' of Catholic schools there, largely as a result of the work of the Centre for Educational Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. The findings suggest that Catholic pupils generally had superior attainments when their lower socio-economic background was controlled for, but that disproportionately more Catholics were unemployed nine months after leaving school when attainment levels were controlled for; see J.D. Willms, 'Pride or Prejudice? Opportunity Structure and the Effects of Catholic Schools in Scotland', in A. Yogev (ed.), International Perspectives on Education and Society: A Research and Policy Annual, ii (Greenwich, Connecticut, and London, 1992); L. Paterson, Trends in Attainment in Scottish Secondary Schools', in S.W. Raudenbush and J.D. Willms (eds), Schools, Classrooms and Pupils: International Studies of Schooling From a Multilevel Perspective (New York, 1991), pp. 85-100.

46

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

This essay will, therefore, primarily be concerned to offer a sociological interpretation of the changes which have taken place in Catholic education in England and Wales. At the national level, the predominantly immigrant, and especially Irish, and working-class community of the early post-war years gained significantly from the expansion of educational opportunities which followed the implementation of the 1944 Education Act and the provision of 'secondary education for all'. Within a decade or so it was clear that Catholics were growing a 'new middle class', first-generation achievers who experienced considerable amounts of upward social mobility into professional and managerial occupations. With social mobility came geographical mobility, as Catholics moved out of the old inner-city parishes and into the expanding suburbs. Changes in the economic structures and the expansion of light engineering manufacture in place of the older heavy industries meant that there was a significant shift of heavy Catholic concentration in the north west, the point of entry for older flows of Irish immigration, to London, the south east and midlands. Survey evidence confirms the picture of a religious community, half of whom were either first- or second-generation immigrants, disproportionately working-class, but with higher than average participation in higher education in the late 1970s.14 At the global level, the Catholic church has changed significantly in its self-understanding, legitimation of authority and relationships with other religious groups, as well as orientations towards secular society since the Second Vatican Council in 1962-65.15 In religious terms key concepts that were stressed were the nature of the church as the 'People of God', the collegiality of the bishops, and lay participation in the mission of the church. At all levels in the church — national commissions, diocesan or parish councils - the effects were soon apparent in terms of lay participation in the liturgy and general advice and decision-making, and in a softening of clergy-lay relationships. Sociologically, the shift could be characterised as one from a 'mechanistic' to an 'organic' model of the church.16 The history of Catholic education in England and Wales over the past two centuries indicates a number of significant phases in this development. The emergence of secondary education for the boys of the upper middle classes can be traced back to 1794 when the Jesuits opened Stonyhurst and

14

Hornsby-Smith, Roman Catholics in England. See W.M. Abbott, (ed.), The Documents of Vatican II (London, 1966). 16 In The Management of Innovation (London, 1966), T. Burns and G.M. Stalker suggested that 'mechanistic' or bureaucratic forms of management structure were more appropriate under stable conditions, while 'organic', network and participative management structures were more appropriate under conditions of rapid change. Hornsby-Smith, Roman Catholics in England, pp. 31-32, applied this analysis to the church in England and Wales in the period after the Second Vatican Council. 15

The Catholic Church and Education in Britain

47

1802 when the Benedictines opened Ampleforth. 17 With the return from the Continent after their exile during penal times, the religious orders of women opened an imposing series of convents during the first half of the nineteenth century.18 Of the 600,000 Catholics in England and Wales in 1850, however, only 25,000 were estimated to be indigenous English and survivors of the penal times.19 The overwhelming majority were relatively impoverished Irish immigrants or their descendants mainly found in the great industrial connurbations in the north.20 McClelland observes that: The determination to weld together the diverse elements in the 'new' English Catholicism and the need to keep alive the sense of 'belonging', a social need for the Irish, gave added stimulus to the Church's stance on elementary education. The parish school, and the work undertaken to sustain and support it, proved to be an important community-welding agent among Catholics, bringing priests, people, benefactors, rich and poor, together as a tightly-knit social and religious entity.21

Even allowing for elements of hyperbole, the achievements of the Catholic community in struggling to provide schools for Catholic children were impressive. Michael Gaine notes, for example, that in 1852 the first Westminster Synod, representing all the diocesan bishops, declared: The first necessity, therefore, is a sufficient provision of education adequate to the wants of our poor. It must become universal. No congregation should be allowed to remain without its schools, one for each sex. Where the poverty of the people is extreme, we earnestly exhort you, beloved children, whom God has blessed with riches, especially you who, from position, are the natural patrons of those around you, to take upon yourselves lovingly this burden, of providing, if possible, permanently, for the education of your destitute neighbours.22

By 1870 there were 350 Catholic 'poor' schools with accommodation for 100,000 children.23 17

W.J. Battersby, 'Secondary Education for Boys', in Beck (ed.), The English Catholics, pp. 322-36. 18 Idem, 'Educational Work of the Religious Orders of Women, 1850-1950', ibid., pp. 337-64. 19 V.A. McClelland, 'Sensus Fidelium: The Developing Concept of Roman Catholic Voluntary Effort in Education in England and Wales', in Tulasiewicz and Brock (eds), Christianity and Educational Provision, pp. 61-88. 20 Ibid., p. 66; S. Fielding, Class and Ethnicity: Irish Catholics in England, 1880-1939 (Buckingham, 1993). 21 McClelland, 'Sensus Fidelium', pp. 66-67. 22 Quoted on p. 137 in M. Gaine, 'The Development of Official Roman Catholic Educational Policy in England and Wales', in P. Jebb (ed.), Religious Education: Drift or Decision? (London), pp. 137-64. 23 The Case for Catholic Schools, p. 15.

48

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

The inadequacies of the educational provision at the time led to the introduction of the 'dual system' in the Forster Act of 1870. Over the next three decades the number of Catholic schools increased threefold to 1,054 in 1900 and accommodation increased to 340,000.24 The financial burden of church schools was eased by the Balfour Act in 1902, which created local education authorities able to assist church schools from the rates in spite of nonconformist protests at 'Rome on the Rates'.25 By 1938 the number of Catholic schools had increased to 1,266, with accommodation for 430,000, and 'There were also several hundred Catholic secondary schools. Of the 532 secondary schools recognised as efficient, 130 were Catholic'.26 Peter Coman has described how suspicious the Roman Catholic bishops were at the proposals during the Second World War to introduce a welfare state. Catholic social teaching since the first papal encyclical of modern times, Leo XIII's Rerum novarum of 1891,27 and Pius XFs stress on the now-familiar concept of 'subsidiarity' in Quadragesima anno in 1931,28 resulted in considerable hostility on the part of the Roman Catholic bishops of England and Wales to the proposals to increase state power and involvement, particularly in the areas of health and education.29 Coman reports that the future Cardinal Heenan suggested in 1942 that 'This country is in danger of becoming National Socialist - too much is being handed over to the state'. Two years later the bishop of Leeds was reported to have told a rally of the Catholic Parents' and Electors' Association that 'Mr Butler must have slept with a copy of Mein Kampf under his pillow to have devised such a bill'. Writing in the Tablet in 1944 the future Archbishop Beck wrote: It is against the menace of the Total State that Catholics are at present waging their defensive war . . . . The Catholic view of life and education, with its defence of the supernatural and its emphasis on the independence of the spiritual, is a view which is antagonistic to totalitarians. And the Catholic fight for equality is in fact a fight for freedom not only for Catholic parents and Catholic children but for every parent and every child.30 Coman argues convincingly that fears for the integrity of the Roman Catholic subculture formed the basis of the widespread suspicion of the 24 ibid., p. 16. 25 Ibid., pp. 16-17. 26 Ibid., p. 18. 27

Leo XIII, Pope, The Workers' Charter (Rerum novarum) (Oxford, 1949). Pius XI, Pope, The Social Order: Its Reconstruction and Perfection (London; S 105). 29 P. Coman, Catholics and the Welfare State (London, 1977). See especially ch. 5, 'The Roman Catholic Reaction to the British Welfare State, 1940-1950'. The related hostility towards socialism has been discussed in M.P. Hornsby-Smith and M. Foley, 'British Catholics in the Labour Movement: A Study of Religious and Political Marginalization?', Social Compass, 40 (1993), pp. 45-54. 30 Quoted in Coman, Catholics and the Welfare State, pp. 45-46. 28

The Catholic Church and Education in Britain

49

state during the period of negotiation leading up to the 1944 Education Act and the discussions surrounding the Beveridge proposals. It was felt that only Catholic schools could safeguard the distinctive Catholic moral and sexual codes and that this task could not be entrusted to local authority schools. Otherwise Catholic spokesmen affirmed support for educational reform designed to promote equality of opportunity, but insisted that parents had the right to send children to schools staffed by teachers of their own faith and that it was the duty of the state not to discriminate financially against minorities seeking such provision. The financial burden was not inconsiderable and was a source of considerable Catholic resentment.31 Around the 1951 and 1955 general elections Catholics were mobilised for large demonstrations in favour of what they regarded as equal treatment and for an increase in the grant for new school building. Gradually the rate of capital grant was increased in a series of increments from 50 to 85 per cent as a result of a developing consensus based on a substantial acceptance of the permanence of the 1944 settlement, a reduction of divisive religious rivalries and antagonisms, and an acceptance of the pleas of the leaders of the Catholic community that the financial burden of a separate Catholic school system, was becoming insupportable. Not surprisingly, Murphy has referred to 'the end of "passionate intensity'" in the post-war years after decades of sometimes bitter political battles over the place of Church schools in our society.32

The Catholic community in England and Wales up to the beginning of the Second Vatican Council in 1962 can be seen, then, as a distinctive subculture with its own normative system. For historical reasons of persecution and discrimination it took on the characteristics of a 'fortress' church and built up a complex and imposing battery of defences — of which the separate schools system and strong religious and community sanctions against marital exogamy were the most obvious - against what was regarded to be a largely hostile society.33 The whole period up to the Second Vatican Council can be seen as manifesting some aspects of 'closed Catholicism'.34 While there was no Catholic 'pillar' in Britain, no Catholic political party or trade union, lay action was still primarily directed by the hierarchy and, at the local level, by the parish priests. In the early 1950s,

31

By the mid 1960s it was estimated that the Roman Catholic community had paid £20,000,000 from diocesan resources and that the outstanding debt on Catholic schools was of the order of £50,000,000. Quoted in B. Tucker (ed.), Catholic Education in a Secular Society (London, 1968), p. 20. 32 M.P. Hornsby-Smith, Catholic Education: The Unobtrusive Partner. Sociological Studies of the Catholic School System in England and Wales (London, 1978), p. 3. 33 Some of the characteristics of the pre-Vatican church have been described in HornsbySmith, Roman Catholics in England. 34 Whyte, Catholics in Western Democracies, pp. 7-8.

50

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

Catholic electors could still be mobilised in huge numbers to demonstrate and lobby on behalf of the separate Catholic school system. The stance was one of intransigence in the face of a hostile world. A flavour of the Catholic view of education for life (and death) for the distinctive Catholic subculture, and the significance attributed to a separate Catholic schools system, was well captured by H.O. Evenett towards the end of the Second World War: The hierarchy of values taught by Catholicism is one which runs directly counter to much modern social and moral ideology . . . . Death and original sin are the constants in the light of which the Catholic Church surveys humanity. Life is a preparatory stage and its values are secondary . . . . If education is what remains after we have forgotten all we learnt at school, the quintessential left by a Catholic education is a lasting consciousness of the fact and meaning of death . . . death is seen as the focal point of life . . . . The child is ... progressively indoctrinated with the principle that worldly success and happiness are not the final values, that they are not necessarily the concomitants of virtue . . . . Genuinely to apply these principles to life involves the development of a sense of proportion and realism, of a certain permanent quality of discretion and self-control . . . every Catholic believes that they are found most explicitly and in their most authentic form in the teaching of the Catholic Church.35 In this passage Evenett articulates the views of a fortress church, defensive against the seductions of the wider society, assertively self-confident in the intrinsic validity of its own claims and values, and intransigent in its world-rejecting stance and focus on other-worldly priorities. It is my contention that the defensive walls which surrounded this distinctive Catholic subculture until the early post-war years were gradually dissolved away in the solvent of post-war social changes and the religious transformations which were legitimated by the Second Vatican Council.36 In the first case, the 1944 Education Act, 'secondary education for all', and the later major expansion of higher education provision, enabled Catholics to grow their own 'new' middle class, upwardly mobile as a result of educational achievements and occupational attainment. Other social changes in the wider society inevitably affected Catholics as they became more assimilated to the mainstream in British society. For example, the penetration of the mass media, and especially the critical television interview, into homes no longer impermeable to such outside influences, was no doubt a significant factor in the gradual easing of older forms of

:i5 36

H.O. Evenett, The Catholic Schools of England and Wales (London, 1944), pp. 124-26. I have argued this at length in Hornsby-Smith, Roman Catholics in England.

The Catholic Church and Education in Britain

51

clerical domination and the reduction of the authority of priests, bishops and popes. Secondly, the Second Vatican Council legitimated a major shift in the self-understanding of the church. There was a shift towards a more 'open Catholicism'37 and an emphasis on a 'People of God' model of the church where all members contributed their gifts and talents and participated in a collegial way to the mission of the church.38 A less self-righteous and separatist view of the 'separated' Christian churches and the other world religions led to a softening of ecumenical relations at a time when social hostility was declining in a climate of growing religious indifference. Almost inevitably there was a sharp rise in the proportion of religiously 'mixed' marriages and much evidence which indicated a process of 'normative convergence' with the attitudes and values of the wider society.39 Some regretted the change but the effect was unmistakable; as Mary Douglas wrote: 'Now the English Catholics are like everyone else.'40 In the light of these major social and religious transformations, it was perhaps inevitable that the traditional strategy of Catholic schools run by Catholic teachers who had been taught in Catholic colleges would come under scrutiny. By the early 1960s Joan Brothers41 was showing that the emergence of the extra-parochial grammar schools, and the increasing propensity of successful children to go on to university, were creating considerable strains for the traditional and expected patterns of priest-lay relationships and local loyalties in the Liverpool inner-city parishes. The eighth Downside symposium in 1966 was devoted to an appraisal of Roman Catholic educational policy at a time when comprehensivisation of secondary education and the future of independent schools was high on the political agenda. Dom Philip Jebb, Head of Religious Instruction (sic) at Downside, observed bluntly: At no stage does it give the impression of being farsighted or realistic, and there is now ample evidence that the present building programme for Roman Catholic schools will not possibly contain all the Roman Catholic children in the country and any extension of this programme will be beyond the financial means of the Catholic community.42

37

In Whyte's treatment in Catholics in Western Democracies, p. 8, there is a decline in the salience of the specifically Catholic organisations and clerical leadership. 38 See W.M. Abbott (ed.), The Documents of Vatican II (London and Dublin, 1966), and especially The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church' (Lumen gentium), pp. 14-96. 39 Hornsby-Smith, Roman Catholics in England. 40 M. Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (Harmondsworth, 1973), p. 67. 41 J. Brothers, Church and School: A Study of the Impact of Education on Religion (Liverpool, 1964). 42 P. Jebb (ed.), Religious Education: Drift or Decision? (London, 1968), p. 2.

52

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

In a paper given at this symposium, one of the earliest and most persistent critics of the single-minded Catholic school-building strategy and onetime Director of the Newman Demographic Survey, A.E.C.W. Spencer, concluded 'that the empirical basis of the strategy of providing a place in a Catholic school for all Catholic children is extremely doubtful'.43 In terms of the criterion of subsequent Mass attendance, he reported that his results were consistent with those of Greeley and Rossi in the United States and that 'in the absence of reinforcement from the family, there is no reason to expect that the school will modify values and value-oriented behaviour'.44 A number of Catholic educationalists around this time also began to question the effectiveness and wisdom of the school-building strategy. Tucker claimed that there was 'a growing minority in the Church which finds the common Catholic position on education questionable'. It perpetuated a ghetto mentality and argued that education in Christianity should better be undertaken in the home and parish liturgy; the financial burdens were questioned and alternative uses of the resources of the church suggested; the empirical basis for suggesting that Catholic schools were generating committed Catholics was not convincing; and there were a number of unsatisfactory features about Catholic education, such as parent-teacher relationships, promotion procedures, and so on, which were disturbing.45 Similar criticisms were also reported by the Catholic Renewal Movement.46 My own evaluation of the debate around this time was presented largely in terms of pluralistic interest-group theory.47 Later in the 1970s some educationalists were beginning to suggest that there had been a '"displacement of goals" whereby "an instrumental value becomes a terminal value'".48 In other words, there was a single-minded obsession with providing the means, i.e. Catholic schools, and a neglect of a consideration of the ends which they purported to serve. For example, some educationalists concerned with the pastoral care of children in the schools claimed that:

43 A.E.C.W. Spencer, 'An Evaluation of Roman Catholic Educational Policy in England and Wales, 1900-1960', ibid., p. 207. 44 'An Evaluation of Roman Catholic Educational Policy', p. 221. The quotation is from A.M. Greeley and P.H. Rossi, The Education of Catholic Americans (Chicago, 1966), p. 95. 45 B. Tucker (ed.), Catholic Education in a Secular Society (London, 1968), introduction, especially pp. 1-4. 46 A.E.C.W. Spencer, The Future of Catholic Education in England and Wales (London, 1971). 47 M.P. Hornsby-Smith, 'A Sociological Case for Catholic Schools', The Month, 5 (1972), pp. 298-304. A slightly amended version was subsequently given in Catholic Education: The Unobtrusive Partner, pp. 23-33. 48 The phrase comes from R.K. Merton's 'Bureaucratic Structure and Personality' in Social Theory and Social Structure (London), p. 199.

The Catholic Church and Education in Britain

53

Taken as a whole, Christian involvement in education lacks credibility at this time, not because Christians have failed to take one side or another in recent political debates, but because schools calling themselves Christian, far from questioning the criteria of success and failure in our society, wholeheartedly endorse them. The values which underlie these schools are the values of an industrial, materialistic meritocracy.49

During the 1970s I was a minor participant in some of these debates, both as a researcher and as a diocesan representative on the Catholic Education Council. As a researcher, I reported a number of small studies on the qualitative outcomes of Catholic schools and rather timidly attempted to put on the Catholic education agenda questions about the processes going on in the schools.50 From the first, and so far only, national survey of Roman Catholic Opinion, Ray Lee and I produced the nearest approximation so far attempted with the evaluations of the effectiveness of Catholic schools to the two studies by Greeley in the United States. Reference must be made to the full statistical analyses for a full understanding of the complexity of factors influencing a wide range of adult religious outcomes and taking account of other variables such as parental or spousal religiosity. Nevertheless, the broad drift of the results closely paralleled those of Greeley. In sum, the findings showed that: the net effect of Catholic schooling is small both in itself and in its relation to other variables, particularly those measuring levels of parental and spousal religiosity. Moreover, the effect of Catholic schooling is not, the path model suggests, mediated to a substantial degree through its effect on mate-selection. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the amount of Catholic schooling received does have an impact on measures of adult religious outcomes which is consistently positive.51

As a participant—observer I became increasingly frustrated at the narrow concerns - school-building programmes, negotiations with the government or civil servants in the DES, administrative and legal matters to do with school transport, and so on - of the CEC. In a consideration of educational advice, I argued that there was a need to extend the two existing goals of the CEC, the administration and servicing of the on-going Catholic education system and the monitoring of relevant or potential legislation, with two additional tasks: the representation of all relevant interests in 49 J. Callaghan and M. Cockett (eds), Are Our Schools Christian? A Call to Pastoral Care (Great Wakering), p. 10. 50 Catholic Education: The Unobtrusive Partner, pp. 37-85. 51 M.P. Hornsby-Smith and R.M. Lee, 'Outcomes of Catholic Schooling', in Roman Catholic Opinion: A Study of Roman Catholics in England and Wales in the 1970s (Guildford, 1979), pp. 92-3. The two American studies are: A.M. Greeley and P.H. Rossi, The Education of Catholic Americans (Chicago, 1966); and A.M. Greeley, W.C. McCready and K. McCourt Catholic Schools in a Declining Church (Kansas City, 1976).

54

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

Catholic education, including teachers, parents and the laity generally, and forward planning.52 A key participant in the post-war period was the secretary for thirty-one years to April 1991, Richard F. Cunningham. A former civil servant and one-time personal secretary to the then minister of education, Sir Edward Boyle, his role was undoubtedly crucial to the style and orientation of the Catholic Education Council throughout this period. His influence requires more serious investigation than can be offered here. But it seems possible that his civil service style and concern with legal and administrative matters swamped a wider concern for curricular matters and a serious consideration of the effectiveness of Catholic schools and colleges in achieving their goals. Such concerns gradually intruded with the employment of a number of senior advisers. Thus the National Adviser for Religious Education published the first of a series of guidelines with the authority of the Bishops' Conference in 1978.53 In 1981 a study group under the chairmanship of Bishop Konstant published a wide-ranging report Signposts and Homecomings.54 Among its many recommendations were the consideration of the religious education of Catholics as lifelong; hence a much greater priority should be given to the provision of adult religious education; 'nothing can excuse its omission or neglect'.55 This would require 'a re-allocation of local and national resources, both financial and personal' and 'a revitalized parochial life'.56 It was suggested that: the educational process has undergone a radical shift in emphasis over the past quarter of a century, and that this shift, as well as changes within the Church, has had a considerable effect on our understanding of education itself. The model of education as the transmission from one generation to the next of a received (and supposedly unalterable) culture has yielded ground to a model which sees education as a process . . . . We must be prepared, in line with the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, to communicate the message of the gospel in a language and in a mode that is not foreign to today's culture, that is, in a way that can be understood by our contemporaries.57 The report also recommended a reorganisation of the national structures of advice.58 In 1985, the then National Advisor for Religious Education 52

The original article which was felt to be improper from a serving member of the CEC, was published as 'Educational Advice', The Tablet, 25 October 1975, pp. 1027-29. The argument was expanded in Catholic Education: The Unobtrusive Partner, pp. 124—32. 53 K. Nichols, Cornerstone (Slough). 54 D. Konstant, Bishop (Chairman) Signposts and Homecomings: The Educative Task of the Catholic Community: A Report to the Bishops of England and Wales (Slough, 1981). 55 Konstant, Signposts and Homecomings, p. 143. 56 Ibid., p. 145. s? Ibid., p. 146. 58 Ibid., pp. 150-52.

The Catholic Church and Education in Britain

55

published Our Faith Story,59 which marked a substantial shift from the traditional didactic and content-driven focus of Catholic religious education. However, it was not until 1 April 1991 that a new Catholic Education Service was set up with a much wider remit to sustain and develop the Catholic Faith of pupils, students, teachers and governors in our schools and colleges. It will do so by promoting an integrated vision of Catholic Education in which spiritual, moral, academic, legal, professional and administrative concerns are encompassed.60

The new co-ordinating council consisted of representatives from each of three forums: diocesan schools' commissioners; teachers and others from the schools and colleges; and diocesan and national religious educationalists. Such a structure was far removed from the long tradition, dating back to the Catholic Poor Schools' Committee of 1847, the Secondary Education Council and since 1905 the Catholic Education Council. These changes reflect the grudging awareness that more attention needed to be paid not only to the provision of Catholic schools but also to the processes going on in them. The setting up of the Catholic Education Service was accompanied by a significant change in leadership style from the discrete, civil service negotiating stance of Richard Cunningham's period at the Catholic Education Council, to the curricular concerns and public lobbying approach of Albert Price, the new director of the Catholic Education Service. Unlike the former secretary, the new director is a former headteacher of a comprehensive high school and community college and a HMI.61 The change of philosophy, style and expertise is apparent in his observation on the present uncertainty about the Catholic education system: 'It's a time of great blessing. It has forced the whole Catholic community to analyse just what is special about our schools and what we want them to be'.62 Price has been tireless in his articulation of what he sees as the distinctiveness of the Catholic school, its values and their expression in school policies and practice, and his criticisms of the effects of recent state policies. He sees the recent changes in education as 'an attempt at a complete overhaul of the system put in place since the 1944 Education Act'. He is profoundly suspicious, as were previous generations of Catholic educators in the period of the 'fortress' church, of the centralising powers of the state and of the rationale in terms of market forces of recent reforms:

59

A.P. Purnell, Our Faith Story: Its Telling and its Sharing (London). Catholic Education Service, Introducing the Catholic Education Service (London, nd). 61 Ibid. ^Quoted by T.H. McLaughlin, 'A Man for This Season', The Tablet, 247 (1958), 13 February 1993, p. 199. 60

56

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789 The philosophical basis of government policy is not easily discerned and that makes me uneasy. It is not the imperfection of any educational policy when confronted by Christian ideals which concerns me. This has long existed and been coped with. My unease lies not in the gap between government philosophy and practice and our philosophy and practice, but what seems to be a gap between what is stated to be government philosophy and its own practice . . . [and its] undertone of power and words used to describe learning - 'children will be stretched, driven, required, informed' - chill the circulation. The intentions in the White Paper tell me one thing - the language and the tone tell me another.63

In a thinly-veiled criticism of government policy he suggests that: We worry too much about the implementation of knowledge and the acquisition of skills, even to a separation of these from a proper dimension of values, personal and religious. In so doing we say something profoundly false about the meaning of human dignity and human life.64 He continues to insist that 'the management of beliefs and values, love, hope, justice must precede the management of finance and resources'65 and warns that many school procedures which separate out different groups of children are a 'denial of redemption - more keen to damn than to save'.66 Finally he boldly asserts that: It does no harm to remind the State that it is not the primary agent in education . . . . It is bound to all its citizens by principles of ethical justice in deciding its policies and principles of distributive justice in the allocation of resources. Ballots do not absolve politicians from these responsibilities.67 In the remainder of this essay reference will be made to a number of recent issues which have particularly concerned and challenged the leadership of the Catholic church in England and Wales. One observation may be made at the outset. Whereas in the negotiations leading up to the 1944 Education Act the churches were in the centre of the political stage, in the run up to the 1988 Education Reform Act they were relegated to the sidelines.68 This can be seen as reflecting the decline of 63 A. Price, 'Turbulent Times: A Challenge to Catholic Education in Britain Today', Briefing, 23 (5), 11 March 1993, pp. 6-12. 64 Price, 'Turbulent Times', p. 8. 65 Ibid., p. 10. 66 Ibid., p. 11. 67 ibid., p. 12. 68 For example, there is no reference to Catholics, the churches or religion in S.J. Ball's Politics and Policy Making in Education: Explorations in Policy Sociology (London and New York). Rather the current struggles concern the reformist old humanists, the cultural restorationists, the industrial trainers and the new progressives. Similarly, none of the

continued

The Catholic Church and Education in Britain

57

'passionate intensity'69 over the dual system in recent years and possibly of secularisation in Bryan Wilson's sense of the declining social significance of religion.70 There have been a number of instances in recent years where there have been conflicts of interest within the Catholic community about decisionmaking. Challenges to the decisions of bishops or diocesan trustees have alarmed the bishops who hitherto had de facto control, at least indirectly, through their appointment of foundation governors of schools. In a number of instances, lay governors have proved to be remarkably independent and have taken decisions which have resulted in public clashes with their bishop. In one such dispute, the trustees of the Southwark archdiocese sacked four school governors when they refused to reconsider the appointment of a divorced and remarried man as head teacher.71 In a celebrated test case, former governors and parents of the Cardinal Vaughan School in London took legal action to resist the consequences of a proposed diocesan reorganisation of secondary school provision in the Westminster archdiocese.72 This case illustrated the potential for conflict between a bishop and diocesan educators concerned to ensure a coherent system of school provision, on the one hand, and parents and governors with an interest in one specific school, on the other hand. This is likely to become a major problem for diocesan authorities, especially if significant numbers opt for grant-maintained status. Paradoxically, given the strong historical stress on parental primacy as educators of their children,73 continued

fifteen chapters in M. Flude and M. Hammer (eds), The Education Reform Act 1988: Its Origins and Implications (London, New York and Philadelphia, 1990) deals with church schools; there are only four brief references to voluntary-aided schools. In D. Lawton (ed.), The Education Reform Act: Choice and Control (London, Sydney, Auckland and Toronto, 1989) there is a brief section in the chapter by Stuart Maclure, 'Parents and Schools: Opting In and Opting Out', on 'Voluntary Schools', pp. 19-21. 69 Murphy, Church, State and Schools. 70 B. Wilson, Religion in Secular Society: A Sociological Comment (London, 1966), p. xiv. 71 'Divorced Man "Cannot Be" School Head', The Tablet, 5 January 1991, pp. 27-28; 'Sacked Governors Reinstated', Ibid., 12 October 1991, pp. 1263-64. 72 Details of the Cardinal Vaughan judgement were given in a Guardian law report on 7 January 1988, reprinted in Briefing, 18, 22 January 1988, pp. 25-26. Cardinal Hume issued a lengthy press briefing and considered the implications of the judgement on 20 July 1989; see ibid., 19, 4 August 1989, pp. 332-33. The Department for Catholic Education and Formation of the Bishops' Conference gave strong support to the cardinal's stand; see Briefing, 4 August 1989, p. 335. Following legal advice the cardinal reluctantly appointed replacement governors while drawing attention to the difficulties of diocesan trustees whose ability 'to provide and reorganise Catholic schooling in a manner which best serves the interests of the Catholic community is at present seriously curtailed'; ibid., 19, 7 September 1989, p. 359. 73 Pius XI, Pope, The Christian Education of Youth (Divini illius magistri) (London, S 99). 'Therefore the responsibility and consequently also the right of educating children comes to the family direct from the Creator' (para. 36). The church 'so scrupulously respects continued

58

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

the Catholic bishops expressed considerable concern about the 'opt-out' proposals which require school governors to ballot parents on the matter of opting for grant-maintained status.74 Such concerns first arose in the case of Cardinal Hume's dispute with the governors of the Cardinal Vaughan School. Recent educational reforms have clearly worried the bishops and probably most teachers, though Catholic parents have raised hardly a whimper of protest. Gone are the days when the Catholic laity could be mobilised in huge numbers to lobby on behalf of what they regarded as educational justice. In an article in The Times'15 Cardinal Hume first expressed three concerns about the Baker Bill: the place of religious education as part of the core curriculum; the 'opting-out' proposals which offer 'a serious threat to the balance and very provision of Catholic voluntary provision'; and admissions policy if Catholic schools are to retain a distinctive religious ethos. After the passing of the Education Reform Act the cardinal continued to press his concerns. In his address to the National Conference of Priests on 5 September 1989, he referred to 'two legal developments . . . which strike at the heart of the ability of any educational trustee to discharge [his/her] duties'. In particular the opting-out provision 'has created the potential for havoc in the voluntary sector' for 'it is possible for groups of continued

the sacred natural right of the family to educate its offspring, that she refuses . . . to baptise the children of unbelievers or to make any arrangements for their education, until such children are able to make up their minds for themselves . . .' (para. 45). The Vatican Council's Declaration on Christian Education (Gravissimum educationis) also taught that 'parents must be acknowledged as the first and foremost educators of their children' and that they 'have the first and the inalienable duty and right to educate their children [and] should enjoy true freedom in their choice of schools' (paras 2 and 6), pp. 641 and 644 in Abbott (ed.), The Documents of Vatican II. Interestingly, Cardinal Hume was so concerned about the interpretation of paragraph 6 of Vatican II's Declaration that on 6 July 1989 he wrote to Cardinal Baum, president of the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education, seeking clarification on the relationship between parents and bishop in the provision of Catholic education. In his response Cardinal Baum observed that: 'Parental choice of a Catholic school is exercised by those who are themselves members of a community of faith and who choose a Catholic school on that account. Choice has to be made, then, with adequate regard to the common good of the community which provides those schools. It would be unjust if some parents made decisions which in effect deprived other Catholics of their free choice or seriously weakened the balanced provision of Catholic schools for the whole Catholic community in an area.' Full text in Briefing, 19, 4 August 1989, pp. 336-37. 74 Though legitimation of their position could also be claimed to derive from Divini illius magistri: 'Education is first and supereminently the function of the church . . . . The first ground of the Church's right is that supreme teaching authority and office which the divine Founder of the Church delivered to her . . ., "Going therefore teach all nations . . .'" (paras 16-17). 75 13 January 1988, reprinted as 'Threat to Catholic Schools' in Briefing, 18, 22 January 1988, pp. 23-24.

The Catholic Church and Education in Britain

59

parents to use the opting-out provisions for another purpose altogether namely to escape from a school reorganisation plan devised in the interests of the wider community. The Education Reform Act, then, is a threat to the legal position of the trustee, for it undermines the trustee's ability to use the trust assets to serve the interests of the wider community, while leaving his responsibility as trustee undiminished'.76 Later in the same address he referred to the House of Lords judgement in the case of the Haberdashers' Aske's School as a result of which 'an educational trustee is unable in law to dismiss a foundation governor for refusing to follow the trustee's policy for the school'.77 The bishops were so concerned about educational issues that they held a special meeting on 14 June 1991 and in a statement said: we cannot prudently at this time recommend a grant maintained option for Catholic schools until we have clarified its implications both for the Catholic school in question and for the educational system as a whole on the financial, practical and moral levels.78

For the Professor of Educational Studies at Oxford University the prospects for the voluntary-aided schools were dire and the bishops were right to be perturbed: They have not been consulted on a matter which affects profoundly their schools (1,900 primary and 400 secondary). They are in effect losing control of their schools, thereby being prevented from ensuring a Catholic education for all Catholic children. No longer will they be able to ensure the appropriate admissions policy - indeed, that these schools will remain Catholic.79

The Labour MP for Birkenhead, a prominent Anglican layman, urged that 'the church should cease to be an anguished bystander and become an active player' by developing a federated status for opted-out schools and 'managing opting out so as to extend the influence of the church in education while maintaining church schools as part of a service and safeguarding the values fostered by them'.80 During their Low Week meeting in 1992 the bishops sent a list of nine questions to the Secretary of State for Education, in which they sought clarification about the government's intentions regarding the future of Catholic schools in a voluntary-aided sector and, in the interim, the

76

Cardinal Basil Hume's address to the National Conference of Priests in 'Catholic Schools Today: The Crucial National Issues', Briefing, 19, 7 September 1989, pp. 351-58. 77 Ibid., p. 355. 78 'Education in the Catholic Church', Briefing, 21, 4 July 1991, p. 5. 79 R. Pring, The Writing on the Wall', The Tablet, 23 May 1992, pp. 642-43. 80 F. Field, 'If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them', ibid., 23 May 1992, pp. 644-55.

60

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

guidance given to Catholic dioceses and schools. They expressed three major concerns about the grant-maintained option: We are deeply opposed to the considerable imbalances in funding being brought about by the administration of the GM system and we shall press for the removal of preferential funding for such schools; we are concerned that total financial dependence on Central Government will have serious implications for the ability of our schools to retain their distinctive Catholic characteristics both in curriculum and in ethos; we are most anxious about the use of GM status to bring about a random return to selection in secondary education which leads to a neglect of the less able or disadvantaged children.81 At the first national Catholic education conference held at Bradford University on 12-14 July 1992, the Secretary of State for Education, himself a Catholic, attempted to allay the fears of the bishops to the government's intentions about Catholic schools. 'Our commitment to the "dual system" remains as strong as ever', he claimed, noting that some £150m of grant was being made available to support capital projects and external repairs in voluntary-aided schools in the current year. It was the government's intention to promote choice and diversity in education and the grant-maintained schools lay at the heart of the reforms. There would be no attempt to force schools to move to grant-maintained status, but parents with children in Catholic schools would have the same rights as other parents to vote on the issue. A huge carrot was that grantmaintained status would bring relief from the need to find 15 per cent of capital and external repair costs. Mr Patten concluded that 'the role and influence of the church and the distinctive philosophy which pervades its schools are not threatened in any way by grant-maintained status'.82 The issue refuses to go away, however. In its response to the government White Paper 'Choice and Diversity: A New Framework for Schools', the Catholic Education Service summarised the continuing concerns. In particular it did 'not believe that competition is a panacea for failings in education. Nor do we accept market forces as a fundamental principle in the provision of educational opportunity'.83 It rejected the severe criticism of the LE As and saw the partnership with them as one 'not to be lightly set aside'. It regretted 'the lack of attention to the crucial role of the school teacher', noted the silence on the matter of school transport, which is of particular concern to Catholics because of the generally greater distances they have to travel, and observed that 'the White Paper implicitly confirms

81

'Present Options in Public Education', Briefing, 22, 28 May 1992, pp. 17-18. J. Patten, 'Church Schools in the 1990s', ibid., 22, 6 August 1992, pp. 15-17. 83 'Education: A Response to the White Paper', ibid., 22, 22 October 1992, pp. 2-5. Quote is from para. 5.1. 82

The Catholic Church and Education in Britain

61

change in the conditions of the dual agreement, without discussion or negotiation with the voluntary bodies.' Finally it concluded: We are deeply concerned about the absence within the White Paper of a sense of the good of society as a whole, as one of the purposes of an education system and one of the criteria by which education policy should be developed. The only clear vision seems to be the centrality of individual autonomy exercised through competition and controlled by the market. We remain unconvinced that much of what is proposed is in the best interests of all pupils.84

It is clear that the government's education policy continues to cause considerable concern to many in the Catholic community.85 The topic of grant-maintained status was chosen for the first national conference of the new Association of Catholic Schools and Colleges. It was reported that 'of the 337 grant-maintained schools in England and Wales, fourteen are Roman Catholic; 287 other schools have voted in favour of GMS and have received or await approval - of those 44 are Roman Catholic'.86 Some ethnographic data relating to the decision of a Catholic primary school in March 1993 to opt for grant-maintained status throws further light on the current turmoil and lack of consensus on the matter within the Catholic community. Such an analysis would point to a proactive coalition between the headmaster and several key lay governors who gave primacy to the financial advantages, at this present time, of applying for grant-maintained status. In spite of strong opposition from a local parish priest and several teachers, the governors called a meeting which was attended by a minority of current parents (many of whose children would not in fact be attending the school in the following year because of a change in the age of transfer). Short addresses were given by an official from the local authority, the diocesan Director of Schools, and the headteacher of a Catholic school which had achieved grant-maintained status eighteen months ago.87 84

Ibid., paras 7.3 and 7.4. See, e.g., K. O'Gorman, 'Memo to John Patten', The Tablet, 24 October 1992, pp. 1350-51; the 'Statement on Catholic Education' issued by the Bishops' Conference after their November meeting in which they observed that they considered 'this emphasis on market forces in education . . . to be inappropriate', Briefing, 22, 3 December 1992, p. 4; the addresses to the newly formed Association of Catholic Schools and Colleges on 5 February 1993 of Bishop Vincent Nichols in 'Grant Maintained Status of Schools: Some Perspectives of the Bishops' Conference', Briefing, 23, 25 February 1993, pp. 6-9, and of A. Price in 'The Grant Maintained Option', ibid., pp. 10-12. See also R. Pring's reply to Andrew Turner, Director, Choice in Education, in letter to The Tablet, 15 August 1992 and a contrary view from G. Gould, ibid., 5 September 1992. 86 M. Walsh, 'Schools at the Crossroads', ibid., 13 February 1993, p. 226. See also correspondence from M. Howie, Secretary, Association of Catholic Grant-Maintained Headteachers, ibid., 6 March 1993, p. 308. 87 This teacher had disagreed with the reservations expressed by Bishop Konstant over opting-out in a letter to the Times Education Supplement, 11 January 1991. 85

62

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

Following the meeting, seven pages of minutes were circulated to parents along with a brief letter from the local bishop. This failed to give strong support to those who opposed the proposal on grounds of inequity between schools, or concern about the plight of children with special needs, or the problem of ensuring a coherent system of Catholic schools. The accommodation stance of the bishop was explicit. After he had referred to the general reservations of the bishops, he added: However it seems to me it has always been the policy of the Catholic Church in this country to co-operate with the education policies of the Government, partly because we must co-operate and partly because of our commitment to being an active partner with Local Authorities and Central Government in the provision of schools. It now seems to be the policy of the Government to encourage schools to go Grant Maintained and there are some schools in the Diocese that have either opted for this status or are actively considering it at this present time. One of my deepest concerns is for the sense of partnership between all the Catholic Schools of our Diocese and for good relationships with the Authorities, whether they be LEA or Central Government. I would not want the issue of Grant Maintained Status to cause division within a school or in the local community.88 Detailed ethnographic data would support the view that the proactive governors managed the issue in such a way that a positive vote in favour was encouraged. Three examples illustrate this claim. First, a letter from the chairman of governors asserted that under the existing LMS arrangements 'staffing and!or other significant cost reductions will have to be made' (emphasis in original). Secondly, twelve days were allowed to elapse before a letter from the local authorities was circulated to parents; this was four days after voting papers had been sent out to parents. Thirdly, a final letter from the chairman of governors claimed that for the financial year 1993/94 there would be a surplus of formula funding over expenditure of £4,335 compared with a deficit of £27,598 in the case of continued LMS funding. It is not surprising, therefore, that of the 71 per cent ballot papers returned, 69 per cent voted for grant-maintained status. Another example of the conflicts over education which are to be found within the Catholic community was 'the Battle of St Philip's'.89 The question of 'what makes a school specifically Catholic?' raises the issue of the proportion of Catholic children or teachers necessary to maintain a distinctive Catholic ethos. The provost and chairman of the governors

88

Letter from Bishop Cormac Murphy-O'Connor to the governors and headteachers of Catholic schools in the diocese of Arundel and Brighton, n.d. (The letter was distributed to parents by the headteacher three days after the public meeting.) 89 M. Walsh, The Battle of St Philip's', The Tablet, 10 October 1992. This refers to St Philip's Roman Catholic Sixth Form College: A Statement From the Provost of the Birmingham Oratory and from the Chairman of Governors, 3 October 1992.

The Catholic Church and Education in Britain

63

of the Birmingham Oratory argued that, with only a 30 per cent Catholic student body, they would 'no longer be able to guarantee their specifically religious identity'. The proposal to close St Philip's as as sixth-form college generated uproar among both staff and parents but also a fierce attack from a Jesuit priest that the Oratory Fathers' educational and Christian vision was 'astonishingly shallow, narrow and sterile'. For its supporters, the college 'witnesses to the city which is multi-faith and multi-cultural, that the Catholic Church is a body committed to the rights and value of all peoples'.90 These deep disagreements surfaced at a symposium on Catholic education convened in Freiberg in 1991. On the one hand McClelland took it as self-evident that 'the admission of such [non-Catholic] pupils in very large numbers would undermine the Catholic nature of a given school, as indeed would the appointment of non-Catholic teachers in significant numbers'.91 A similar position appeared to be taken by Hulmes who sought 'a recovery of identity . . . a recovery of memory' in Catholic education, and a clarity in its objectives to compare to that found in Islamic education.92 By contrast O'Keeffe argued passionately in favour of 'inter-faith' schools as a solution to the problems faced by many inner-city schools.93 Similar tensions have emerged in connection with the new catechetical schemes Weaving the Web for secondary schools and Here I Am for primary schools. One priest has suggested that while the authors of Weaving the We have attempted to keep up with current fashions in religious sociology, and have 'paid great attention to the medium of teaching', they have 'neglected the message itself . . . . From a theological point of view, Weaving the Web is grossly deficient in Catholic doctrine'.94 Indeed schools in the Birmingham archdiocese are not encouraged to use the scheme but a separate diocesan scheme. Stung by the criticisms of the scheme which was published with their authority, the Department for Catholic Education and Formation of the Bishops' Conference published a statement in November 1991 saying that Weaving the Web was never intended to be a syllabus [of Religious Education] and should not be used as such. It is a resource for teachers and pupils in the religious education

90 G.W. Hughes, 'Shades of the Ghetto', The Tablet, 7 November 1992, pp. 1396-97. See also ibid., 24 October and 14 November 1992. 91 V.A. McClelland, 'The Concept of Catholic Education', Aspects of Education, 46, 1992, pp. 3-15 (V.A. McClelland, ed, The Catholic School and the European Context); quote is on p. 12. 92 E. Hulmes, 'Rediscovering the Roots of European Unity? New Opportunities For Catholic Education'. Aspects of Education, 46, 1992, pp. 52—61. 93 B. O'Keeffe, 'Catholic Schools in an Open Society: The English Challenge', ibid., pp. 34-51. 94 F. Marsden, Weaving a Web of Confusion (Faversham, 1991), p. 44.

64

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789 process . . . . There is continual discussion about the proper balance between the 'deductive' the 'inductive' approaches in Religious Education . . ,95

Parallel debates have accompanied the primary school catechetical programme Here I Am96 and the national project for adult religious education.97 This essay has reviewed Catholic education in England and Wales as it has developed over the past 200 years. The Catholic church has always placed a particular priority on its control of the education of the young, seeing this as essential if it is adequately to fulfil its task of transmitting its faith, beliefs and moral values to the next generation. Catholics in Britain during this period were slowly emerging from the persecution of penal times. The bulk of their membership traced their Catholicism from an Irish ancestry. As a poor and disproportionately working-class immigrant community, they were concentrated in inner-city areas and their survival strategy involved the construction of a 'fortress' church in which the parish church and school and strong emphasis on endogamy protected their religion in a hostile society. It was the period of a closed Catholicism. Catholics were against the world and the world was antagonistic towards them. Their religious posture was one of a defiant intransigence and this was reflected in the long and bitter struggles to obtain financial support for their own schools while retaining the right to control the religious education of their children. In the last half century the situation has gradually changed, as a result of the decline of 'passionate intensity' over state support for church schools. The Catholic community itself began to experience a significant amount of embourgeoisement following the extension of secondary education after the 1944 Education Act. The Second Vatican Council did much to improve ecumenical relationships and understanding and there was a general process of assimilation into and convergence of Catholics with mainstream British society. But it was some time before the effects were seen in Catholic education policy, which pursued a massive school building strategy that consumed a very large proportion of the available resources of the Catholic community. The shift of emphasis from provision to process was slow in coming. It could be seen in the publication of the report Signposts and Homecomings in 1981 and the growing concern with catechetics in the 1980s. It was perhaps most obvious in the shift from the Catholic Education Council to the Catholic Education Services in 1991 and in the contrasting styles and concerns of the chief officials in the two regimes. 95 'Weaving the Web', Briefing, 2 1 , 5 December 1991, p. 10. Address by Bishop D. Mullins, 'New Primary School Programme', ibid., 22, 9 July 1992; R. Strange, 'Here I am in the Classroom', The Tablet, 13 February 1993, pp. 202-3. 97 See Special Issue on 'Education in the Faith', Priests and People, 5 (8 and 9), August-September 1991. 96

The Catholic Church and Education in Britain

65

Finally the essay has attempted a review of Catholic responses to recent educational reforms. It is feared that the traditional 'dual system' may be under subtle attack and this has led to more explicit attempts to identify the distinctiveness of the Catholic school. The bishops have been outspoken in their criticisms of the market-driven philosophy of recent reforms, which they regard as quite inappropriate for education, and they have been alarmed by the extent to which their traditional decision-making role has been undermined by recent legislation and judgements in the courts. The opting-out proposals and government encouragement to seek grant-maintained status has potentially damaging consequences for the coherence of the Catholic schools system. But the reforms did not arouse the mass mobilisation of Catholic laity behind their bishops and, indeed, there are clear indications of a fragmentation of Catholic views on both Catholic schools and their place in a multi-cultural, multi-faith society, the divisiveness or expediency of the option of grant-maintained status, and appropriate styles of catechetics and religious education. While there are some indications of a continuing streak of intransigence on the part of the bishops, for the most part it seems that there are strong pressures towards a strategy of accommodation to the dominant educational trends in a pluralist society. It remains to be seen to what extent a more open Catholicism can continue to make a coherent and distinctive contribution to education in Britain as we approach the turn of the century.

This page intentionally left blank

5 Change and Continuity in British Anti-Catholicism, 1829-1982^ John Wolffe

On a January evening in 1968 a group of fashionably dressed young people were photographed demonstrating outside Westminster Cathedral, but their slogans differed markedly from the more familiar ones of that year of youthful radicalism: 'Through Christ to Glory; Through Rome to Purgatory', 'Bible Truth or Roman Error: Britain Must Choose'; 'Another Betrayal of the Reformation'. They were protesting against the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, who was to preach in the cathedral, which, as one of their banners put it, they saw as 'Rotten Ramsey running to Rome'. Ramsey was by then no stranger to anti-Catholic protest. In 1966 he had travelled to Rome to meet Pope Paul VI and had found Dr Ian Paisley and four associates to be unwelcome and obstreperous fellow passengers on the same plane. It was only the somewhat heavy-handed action of the Italian authorities that saved Ramsey's visit from more extensive disruption.2 A decade and a half later his successor but one, Robert Runcie, was exposed to similar protests and vilification when he prepared to welcome Pope John Paul II on his visit to Britain in 1982.3 The pope himself encountered conspicuous, if small, demonstrations, notably on his arrival at Victoria Station in London and outside New College, Edinburgh, where he met the Moderator of the Church of Scotland.4 Such incidents have been readily dismissed as representative only of a tiny minority. Nevertheless even in the post-Second World War era there were indications that hostility to Rome commanded significant public 1 A note on terminology seems desirable. For reasons that are partly stylistic and partly conceptual 'Protestantism' is used in this chapter as a virtual synonym for 'anticatholicism'. 'Catholic' and hence 'anti-Catholic' are sometimes used in relation to groups and tendencies within the Anglican and other churches, and 'Roman Catholic' is accordingly used when necessary to avoid confusion (although 'anti-Roman Catholicism' is eschewed as impossibly cumbersome). 'Evangelical' is used of that broad movement in the non-Catholic churches which had its origin in the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century. 2 Owen Chadwick, Michael Ramsey: A Life (Oxford, 1990), p. 318. 3 Jonathan Mantle, Archbishop: A Portrait of Robert Runcie (London, 1991), pp. 148-50. 4 Steve Bruce, No Pope of Rome: Militant Protestantism in Modern Scotland (Edinburgh, 1985), pp. 236-38.

68

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

support. In a Gallup poll in 1957 17 per cent of the sample professed to have a dislike for Roman Catholicism, about twice the proportion for all other denominations put together, and significantly more than the proportion of Catholics themselves in the population.5 Even in the 1980s, Rangers Football Club, traditional focus of Clydeside Protestantism, was still very tentative in its recruitment of Roman Catholic players.6 Meanwhile across the Irish Sea, the striking political and electoral success in the 1970s and 1980s of Ian Paisley, with his explicitly religious and anti-Catholic brand of Unionism, served as a reminder of the demagogic potential of militant Protestantism within the bounds of the United Kingdom. It is true that in terms of British - as opposed to Northern Irish - politics, Paisley has been a marginal and exotic figure, but for the student of nineteenth-century anti-Catholicism, familiar with the oratory of such giants of the Protestant pulpit and platform as Hugh McNeile, Mortimer O'Sullivan and James Begg, he serves as evidence that the tradition they represented was still very much alive more than a century later.7 The continuing presence of militant Protestantism is an intriguing counterpoint to the growth and consolidation of British Catholicism in the century and a half after 1829. This latter process was one well symbolised by the two anagrammatic dates which define the chronological limits of this essay. The political rights conceded in 1829 may not have made much practical difference to the lives of the great majority of Roman Catholics in Britain, but Emancipation was still a symbolic event of profound and emotive importance. This is illustrated for example by Bernard Ward's choice of 1829 as a central dividing line in his multi-volume history of early nineteenth-century Roman Catholicism.8 At the other end of the period, although the 1960s were crucial years in the internal history of the Roman Catholic church, it was the sight of pope and primate side by side at Canterbury in 1982 that crystallised the manner in which Roman Catholicism was now finding itself a full partner in an informal ecumenical Christian establishment. Hostile eyes, on the other hand, perceived the spiritual and political advance of their worst enemy towards supremacy over hitherto Protestant Britain. This had begun in 1829 and had taken a leap forward in 1850 when Pius IX had set up the episcopal

5 George H. Gallup, The Gallup International Public Opinion Polls: Great Britain, 1937-1975, 2 vols (New York, 1976), i, p. 405. 6 Tom Gallagher, Glasgow: the Uneasy Peace. Religious Tension in Modern Scotland (Manchester, 1987), pp. 300-4; The Times, 11 July 1989. 7 The religious basis of Paisley's support is well documented in Steve Bruce, God Save Ulster: The Religion and Politics of Paisleyism (Oxford, 1986). 8 B. Ward, The Eve of Catholic Emancipation, 3 vols (London, 1912); The Sequel to Catholic Emancipation, 2 vols (London, 1915); John Wolffe, The Protestant Crusade in Great Britain, 1829-1860 (Oxford, 1991), p. 1.

Change and Continuity in British Anti-Catholicism

69

hierarchy and Nicholas Wiseman had proclaimed himself the governor and administrator of the counties of Middlesex, Hertford, Essex, Surrey, Sussex, Kent, Berkshire and Hampshire. Now with John Paul IPs progress from Canterbury Cathedral to Bellahouston Park, papal pretensions were felt to be entering a new and still more aggressive phase.9 There has been an understandable tendency among Catholics to perceive antagonism towards them in a monochrome fashion, as being rooted in ignorant prejudices, regrettable but inevitable. However an increasing number of scholars have explored the complex and multi-faceted nature of anti-Catholicism and pointed up the inadequacy of dismissing it in simplistic terms. Thus Denis Paz writes of the mid nineteenth century: anti-Catholicism is a complicated issue that cannot be reduced simply to the residue of historical memory, or to the subconscious thirst for pornography, or to the imposition of hegemonic bourgeois social control. Rather, there were varieties of anti-Catholicisms [sic] that served several purposes, social, political, and theological, according to the needs and histories of specific groups and locales.10

Such detailed analysis of the internal dynamics of anti-Catholicism has been concentrated on three periods, in each case with a different geographical focus. England during the four or five decades following Emancipation has been the subject of several monographs and numerous theses and articles.11 In none of this work, with the partial exception of my own, has much attention been paid to Scotland. It is accordingly the more striking that students of the second period to receive significant academic attention - the 1920s and 1930s - have concentrated their attention north of the Border.12 Finally the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland since

9 J.E. North, The Papal Visit Weighed and Found Wanting (Lewes, 1982); Free Church of Scotland, Pastor or Potentate? (Edinburgh, 1982); Bruce, No Pope of Rome, pp. 224-30. 10 D.G. Paz, Popular Anti-Catholicism in Mid Victorian England (Stanford, 1992), p. 19; cf. Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, pp. 4—6. 11 In addition to the works by Paz and Wolffe already cited, items worth highlighting are G.F.A. Best, 'Popular Protestantism in Victorian Britain', in R. Robson (ed.), Ideas and Institutions of Victorian Britain (London, 1967), pp. 115-42; E.R. Norman, Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England (London, 1968), and W.L. Arnstein, Protestant versus Catholic in Mid Victorian England (Columbia, MO, 1982). Comprehensive bibliographies are given in Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, pp. 330-41, and Paz, Popular Anti-Catholicism, pp. 310-24. The most recent addition to the literature is now Frank H. Wallis, Popular Anti-Catholicism in Mid Victorian Britain (Lewiston, 1993). 12 Bruce, No Pope of Rome; Gallagher, Glasgow, pp. 134-81; Tom Gallagher, Edinburgh Divided: John Cormack and No Popery in the 1930s (Edinburgh, 1987); Stewart J. Brown, '"Outside the Covenant": The Scottish Presbyterian Churches and Irish Immigration, 1922-1938', Innes Review, 42 (1991), pp. 19-45. For discussion of nineteenth-century Scottish anti-Catholicism see Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, pp. 160-62, 176-79, 255-56 and passim; Bruce, No Pope of Rome, pp. 7-41.

70

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

1969 have given rise to a growing body of literature in which the relationship of dogmatic anti-Catholicism to the wider pattern of sectarian polarisation has been explored.13 Outside these clusters of investigation, a wide field remains to be surveyed. Its potential significance is indicated by evidence of the electoral and political influence of Protestantism in late nineteenth-century England;14 by signs of considerable hostility to Roman Catholicism in the Edwardian years;15 by hints of enduring anti-Catholic attitudes in twentieth-century intellectual and social life;16 and by the long-run sectarian continuities apparent in some English localities, of which Liverpool is the most notable example.17 It will be necessary to find many more pieces of the jigsaw before any soundly-based overall synthesis can be achieved. In the meantime the intention in the present essay is to add some additional dimensions to our knowledge of the institutional and ideological core of anti-Catholicism, and tentatively to suggest some general patterns. The current coverage of the secondary analysis available to us renders it tempting to characterise the history of anti-Catholicism in the United Kingdom as one of gradual movement from the centre to the margins, in geographical terms from London to Belfast and Stornoway through Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool. The danger of such an interpretation is that it may well tell us more about the assumptions and preoccupations of scholars than the historical reality. Moreover it implies a patronisingly anglocentric perspective. A more satisfactory version of this hypothesis has been advanced by Steve Bruce in a sociological rather than geographical framework. He suggests that organised anti-Catholicism has obtained a disproportionate amount of its leadership and support from people of relatively low social class in religious groups outside the mainstream denominations; that is from those who felt themselves marginalised by existing ecclesiastical and political structures. Groups of this kind lacked clear institutional sanction for their ministry and derived legitimacy from the full-blooded assertion

13 Bruce, God Save Ulster! is the most accessible introduction. See also F. Wright, 'Protestant Ideology and Politics in Ulster', European Journal of Sociology, 14 (1973), pp. 213-80, and M.A. Maclver, 'Ian Paisley and the Reformed Tradition', Political Studies, 35 (1987), pp. 359-78. 14 D.W. Bebbington, 'Nonconformity and Electoral Sociology, 1867-1918', Historical Journal, 27 (1984), pp. 633-56. Mr Ian Foster's forthcoming Cambridge Ph.D. thesis is likely to provide further important information of this kind. 15 G.I.T. Machin, 'The Liberal Government and the Eucharistic Procession of 1908', Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 34 (1983), pp. 559-83. 16 Adrian Hastings, A History of English Chrstianity, 1920-1985 (London, 1986), p. 226; Peter Biller, 'La storiografia intorna all'eresia medievale negli Stati Uniti e in Gran Bretagna (1945-1992)', in G.G. Merlo (ed.), Eretici ed eresie medievali nella storiografia contemporanea (Turin, 1993). 17 P.J. Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism: A Political and Social History of Liverpool, 1868-1939 (Liverpool, 1981).

Change and Continuity in British Anti-Catholicism

71

of Protestant faithfulness to Scripture, associating this with attacks on the hierarchical principle represented by Catholicism. Also inherent in such movements was a tendency to schism and subdivision, a result of the right of everyone to make their individual appeal to Scripture.18 Bruce's analysis has much to commend it. It highlights the need to see anti-Catholicism in the context of the development of evangelical Protestantism. It is noteworthy that the resurgence of Protestant activity that occurred around the time of Catholic Emancipation in 1829 coincided with a significant new phase in the development of British evangelicalism. There was a growth in premillenialist eschatological ideas, which had strongly anticatholic implications, because if Christ were shortly to return to establish his rule over an unregenerate world, it was vital that his people gave faithful testimony against false religion.19 Such convictions led an increasing number of evangelicals to stress the Protestant strand in their religion, and to emphasise continuity with the Reformation to a greater extent than their eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century forbears. For example, in the writings of Edward Bickersteth during the 1830s positive affirmations of evangelical belief, such as the necessity of conversion and complete turning to Christ for salvation, were explicitly set against their perceived Roman antithesis.20 This approach could still be seen a century and a half later when David Samuel, general secretary of the Protestant Reformation Society, posed himself the question, 'What is Protestantism?' and answered it with a stress on the positive teaching of the Reformation on the doctrines of grace and the Gospel. A sharper eschatological focus was apparent in the views of Ian Paisley and the Free Presbyterians in Northern Ireland.21 Of course not all active anti-Catholics were practising evangelicals: some, such as John Cormack, leader of Protestant Action in Edinburgh in the 1930s, sat loosely to any religious affiliation. Nevertheless chains of connection and influence can often be traced: Cormack was the son of a Baptist lay preacher and had a formidable knowledge of the Bible; outstanding Protestant preachers, from McNeile in early Victorian

18 Steve Bruce, 'Militants and the Margins: British Political Protestantism', Sociological Review, 34 (1986), pp. 797-811. 19 Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, pp. 29-32; D.W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London, 1989), pp. 75-104. 20 E. Bickersteth, Remarks on the Progress of Popery (London, 1836), pp. 3-4, 26; T.R. Birks, Memoir of the Rev. Edward Bickersteth (2 vols, London, 1852), ii, p. 89. This line of argument is more fully developed and substantiated in my 'Anti-Catholicism and Evangelical Identity: Some Transatlantic Comparisons and Connections, 1830-1860', in D.W. Bebbington, M. Noll and G. Rawlyk (eds), Transatlantic Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies in the Popular Protestantism of North America, the British Isles and Beyond, 1700—1990 (New York, 1993). 21 David Samuel, Pope or Gospel"? The Crisis of Faith in the Protestant Churches (London, 1982), pp. 19-34; Bruce, God Save Ulster!, pp. 226-31.

72

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

Liverpool to Paisley in late twentieth-century Belfast, had an appeal that extended well beyond their immediate churchgoing constituency.22 Bruce is also very helpful in drawing attention to the fragmented nature of organised anti-Catholicism. A list of the more important societies and pressure groups with their dates of formation serves graphically to substantiate his point. The Orange Order emerged in 1795 and the British (later Protestant) Reformation Society was founded in 1827. This was followed by the Protestant Association (1835); the National Club (1845); the Evangelical Alliance (1846); the Irish Church Missions to Roman Catholics (1849); the Scottish Reformation Society (1850); the Protestant Alliance (1851); the Protestant Evangelical Mission (1863); the Church Association (1865); the Protestant Truth Society (1889); the National Church League (1906); the Scottish Protestant League (1920); the Protestant Action Society (1933); and the Church Society (1950). Granted that some of these bodies, notably the National Church League and the Church Society, were amalgamations, the length of this list, which is by no means comprehensive, still indicates considerable institutional instability.23 In 1908 the Protestant Reformation Society noted that the proliferation of Protestant organisations was a common and justified source of complaint.24 Nevertheless, despite growing concern about the problem, in 1932 there were still no less than seventeen bodies affiliated to the United Protestant Council, which had been formed in 1897 (as the London Council of United Protestant Societies) as a federation to promote co-operation on matters of common concern.25 It is, however, unsatisfactory to see internal Protestant divisions as deriving only, or even primarily, from the sectarian intensity of those outside mainstream structures. Bruce recognises himself that the scale of Ian Paisley's political and religious constituency in Ulster presents a problem for his argument.26 This difficulty is reinforced when one considers a longer historical perspective, which reveals that a substantial proportion of Protestant societies drew their support from the established churches, and otherwise 'moderate' nonconformity. Thus the Protestant Reformation Society, the Protestant Association and the National Church League were more or less exclusively Anglican; the Evangelical and Protestant Alliances primarily represented English nonconformity, and

22 Gallagher, Edinburgh Divided, pp. 19-20, 29-39, 63; Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, p. 196; Bruce, God Save Ulster!, p. 263. 23 For more detail on the mid nineteenth-century period see Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, pp. 318-19. 24 Protestant Reformation Society [hereafter PRS], Eighty-Second Annual Report (London, 1908), pp. 13-14. 25 C.S. Carter and G.E. Alison Weeks (eds), The Protestant Dictionary (new edn, London, 1933), p. 552. 26 Bruce, 'Militants and the Margins', p. 803.

Change and Continuity in British Anti-Catholicism

73

the Scottish Reformation Society had its powerbase in the Free Church, which in the nineteenth century (unlike the twentieth) was anything but marginal to Scottish religious life. Moreover, although divisions undoubtedly acquired particular sharpness and intractability from the individualism of militant Protestantism, in their origins they arose precisely because anti-Catholicism could be found in all parts of the Victorian non-Catholic religious world and hence inevitably reflected its existing theological and institutional divergences. Thus societies were separated from each other by differences over religions establishments, varying approaches to Anglican and Presbyterian church order, and questions over the legitimacy of political activity and the measure of priority to be accorded to it. For example, in 1870 an opponent of proposed amalgamations told the annual meeting of the Protestant Association: Some of the Protestant Societies, and our own emphatically, have been founded and worked on the conviction that a close union of the English Church with the English State presents the best and most inviolable bulwark against Romish aggression. But there are Associations to whom this question is indifferent, and there are not a few earnest Protestants associated with others in our common work of anti-Popish warfare who regard the union of Church and State as highly injurious to Protestant interests. How can all these work together or advance in the same trenches to this attack on Rome?27

It is also noteworthy that the older Protestant societies increasingly made a great virtue out of long existence and tradition. Jubilees and centenaries were seriously celebrated. In 1927, its centenary year, the Protestant Reformation Society's annual report noted that the two principal salaried officers had served thirty and twenty-five years respectively. It continued: 'Our other workers in their respective fields of duty are all men of long service and ripe experience. This is a matter of much importance and is an assurance of efficiency to the public.'28 In March 1939 Walter Mayo, who had been a member of the Protestant Reformation Society's staff for fifty-four years, recalled the Oxford spring night in 1884 when, 'half an hour after midnight, he left his lodgings and went into Broad Street, opposite Balliol College, and on the very spot where Cranmer was martyred, and also Latimer and Ridley, he dedicated himself to the work of Protestantism, and he had never looked back'.29 The next day he went to visit Richard Blakeney, who had been one of Society's key organisers from the 1840s onwards and the author of two standard anti-Catholic polemical works, A Manual of Romish Controversy (Edinburgh, 1851) and Popery in its Social Aspect (Edinburgh, 1852). Thus as late as the eve of

27

Protestant Association, Occasional Papers, 12 (August 1870), p. 6. 28 PRS, 101st Annual Report (1927), p. 12. 29 PRS, 112th Annual Report (1939), pp. 17-18.

74

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

the Second World War there was a direct personal link back to the era of the 'Papal Aggression' of 1850. The survival of such anticatholic old retainers should be set alongside the role of younger men such as Cormack, and indicates that Victorian perspectives and attitudes, in a very literal sense, took a long time to die. It is a revealing irony that a movement which attacked the Roman Catholic church for its exaltation of the authority of Christian tradition could set so much store by its own sense of continuity. Men like Walter Mayo saw themselves not as advocates of a purified sectarian Christianity, but as guardians of the integrity of the historic Protestant denominations. The perception that anti-Catholicism in the twentieth century drew its support primarily from small and sectarian groups also reflects an undue concentration on the Scottish case at the expense of the English one.30 Of the seventeen organisations affiliated to the United Protestant Council in 1932, fourteen had addresses in England, two in Scotland and one in Ireland; so it should not be assumed too readily that the centre of gravity of anti-Catholicism had moved north of the Border. Lack of attention to English movements in general, and to Anglican ones in particular, arises from the extent to which their efforts were directed against Anglo-Catholicism rather than Roman Catholicism. The Church Association was formed in 1865 'to uphold the Principles and order of the United Church of England and Ireland, and to counteract the efforts now being made to assimilate her services to those of the Church of Rome' - in other words to combat Anglican ritualism.31 Similarly the Protestant Truth Society aimed to combat 'illegal practices in the Church of England' and the National Church League saw itself as being 'For the Defence and Promotion of the Reformed Faith of the Church of England'.32 Although the late Victorian ritualist controversies had largely run their course by 1914, the Prayer Book Controversy in 1927 and 1928 was hailed by the Protestant Reformation Society as 'God's own way of compelling our Nation to look afresh at the Reformation and what it stands for'. It perceived an 'awakening of Protestant England' and the extent of public concern and the manner in which parliament twice rejected the revised Prayer Book gave some credence to this view.33 In a speech in 1942 Lord Caldecote expounded his view that 'the people of England'

30 The case of Wales might also seem to merit attention, but I am hitherto unaware of significant anti-Catholic activity there. This may reflect the relatively low numbers of Roman Catholics, and the preoccupation of the churches in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with the disestablishment struggle. It must be acknowledged, however, that an important part of the sources are inaccessible to a non-Welsh-speaker such as myself. 31 Carter and Weeks, Protestant Dictionary, p. 548. 32 Ibid., p. 551; National Church League, Annual Report (1935), pp. 5-6. 33 PRS, 101st Annual Report (1927), pp. 3, 11.

Change and Continuity in British Anti-Catholicism

75

had a general antipathy to 'ornate and strange ritual'.34 Since the Second World War the main concern of the Protestant Reformation Society and the Church Society (an amalgamation of the Church Association and the National Church League) has been to combat Anglo-Catholic influence within the Church of England. They thus viewed ecumenical contacts with the Holy See with grave suspicion, as much from fear of betrayal from 'within' as from suspicion of Rome's designs from without. It was concerns of this kind that led to the demonstrations against archbishops Ramsey and Runcie noted at the beginning of this chapter. The national framework in which anticatholics often set their concerns - as in the debate on the 1928 Prayer Book - was an important feature of their outlook, which merits fuller exploration. The welfare of Britain, England or Scotland was believed to be contingent on faithful adherence to Protestantism, and Roman Catholic countries held to suffer materially because of their perceived religious declension. In 1847 Hugh McNeile judged the Irish famine to be a 'rod of God' punishing the country for the 'sin' of encouraging 'the fables, deceits, false doctrines, and idolatrous worship of Romanism'.35 The 1848 revolutions were hailed as a further sign of divine judgement on crumbling papal authority, while in 1870 the coincidence between the Franco-Prussian war and the declaration of papal infallibility was not lost on the Scottish Reformation Society: '. . . in remarkable conjunction with the putting forth of this blasphemous claim, war was declared between two of the leading European powers, resulting in disaster and defeat to France, which for a long period has been the chief bulwark of the Papal throne, and the foremost promoter of the Romish system . . .' By contrast 'the light of the Gospel' had made Scotland what it was.36 Similarly, in May 1897 the bishop of Sodor and Man (Straton) saw the prosperity and liberty of England which were shortly to be celebrated in the Diamond Jubilee as a divine blessing brought through faithfulness to the Reformation.37 Such an outlook led to vigorous opposition to any seeming modifications of the Protestant basis of the constitution, as when the sovereign's accession declaration was revised in 1910.38 The outbreak of the First World War initially gave a significant check to straightforward thinking of this kind. Britain's most formidable foe was also a Protestant power and, accordingly, the initial reaction of the Scottish

34

Church Gazette, July-August 1942, p. 2. H. McNeile, The Famine: A Rod of God; Its Provoking Cause - Its Merciful Design. A Sermon Preached in Stjude's Church, Liverpool on Sunday February 28 1847 (1847), p. 23. 36 John Gumming Apocalyptic Sketches (1849), pp. 489-511; Protestant Truth: Its Defence and Advancement: Being the Report of the Scottish Reformation Society (for Scotland) for the Year 1870-1 (Edinburgh, 1871), pp. 6-7, 10. 37 PRS, Seventieth Annual Report (1896), pp. 23-24. 38 PRS, The Sovereign's Accession Declaration (1910, broadsheet in the British Library); G.K.A. Bell, Randall Davidson Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1935), pp. 612-17. 35

76

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

Reformation Society's journal The Bulwark to the coming of war was to view it as a purely human struggle between racial and dynastic forces, a sign that 'religion has ceased to be a great power over people'.39 However, as the war continued it became apparent that anticatholic interpretations could still find a place. The 'despicable conduct' of Germany was attributed to her casting off of Protestant faith and growing espousal of 'infidel rationalism' and 'Rome's . . . anti-Christian influence'.40 The Protestant Reformation Society suggested in 1917 that there was a natural affinity between German militarism and papal absolutism.41 During the inter-war period there was a continuing readiness to set national and international life in a Protestant perspective. An exhibition staged to coincide with a meeting of the United Protestant Congress in 1930 was designed to illustrate the history of Protestantism in Britain, provide 'ammunition' for 'fighting the enemy' and point up the 'superstitions, idolatries and intrigues' of Rome.42 In the mid 1930s the Protestant Truth Society believed there to be 'a pro-Roman party at work to create an anti-Protestant bias in the court, in parliament, in the Government departments, and in the Church of England'. A pamphlet dwelt particularly on the allegation that the press and the BBC were exposed to excessive Roman Catholic influence which was leading to the distortion of news in an 'antiprotestant' direction.43 Meanwhile, considerable concern was being manifested within the Church of Scotland about the 'unScottish' character of the Roman Catholic population at a time when Presbyterian reunion was strengthening the Kirk's sense of its own identity as a national institution.44 Protestant perspectives were also apparent in reactions to the situation in Ireland. In the thirty years before the First World War religious sympathy for the cause of Ulster Protestantism had been a powerful factor reinforcing opposition to Home Rule in England and Scotland. As the south of Ireland achieved virtual independence in 1922, Walter Mayo appeared resigned to the change, but still linked his negative views on the religion of the majority of the people to his vision for its political future: The remedy for the woes of Ireland lies in the emancipation of her people from Papal tyranny and Priestcraft; the free dissemination of the Word of God, and exercise of private judgement, illuminated and guided by the Spirit

39 The Bulwark, Sept. 1914, pp. 131-32. « The Bulwark, April 1915, p. 58. 41 PRS, Ninetieth Annual Report (1917), pp. 6-7. 42 United Protestant Congress and Exhibition, programme (London, 1930). 43 Protestant Truth Society, The Roman Catholic Church and News Propaganda (London, 1935); cf. Bruce, No Pope of Rome, pp. 234-36. 44 Brown, 'Outside the Covenant', 23ff.

Change and Continuity in British Anti-Catholicism

77

of God. Loveable by nature, and generous to a fault, the Irish people are capable of great things if only they would free themselves from an incubus which is weighing them down and take advantage of the privileges which co-partnership in the British Commonwealth of Nations in a free Empire confers equally upon all its subjects.45

The sense that Protestantism was a crucial cement of imperial ties emerged more strongly a decade later when a United Protestant Demonstration in London linked an attack on the Eucharistic Congress taking place in Dublin to condemnation of the 'determined efforts' of De Valera 'to repudiate the covenant between our country and the Irish Free State'.46 Such concerns extended beyond Ireland: in the mid 1930s one of the reasons the Protestant Truth Society gave for its worries about alleged 'Roman' bias in the Foreign Office was that this might undermine confidence in the British Government in the Dominions.47 The rise of fascism and the outbreak of the Second World War was also readily set in an anticatholic perspective. When Pius XI died in 1939 the Protestant Reformation denounced his acquiescence in 'Italy's crime in Abyssinia'; a speaker at the National Church League's annual meeting in 1942 suggested that the 'Totalitarian State and the Totalitarian Church' were alike in their oppression of the individual.48 In similar vein, the Scottish Reformation Society alleged that the Nazi seizure of power had arisen from Roman Catholic influence and that 'true democracy can live and flourish only where Protestantism is maintained'.49 During the war Cardinal Hinsley's 'Sword of the Spirit' movement was denounced as a cynical promotion of Roman Catholic interests with the connivance of gullible Protestants.50 Even in the later twentieth century the tendency to bring a Protestant perspective to bear on seemingly secular issues in international and national life continued. In 1966 The Bulwark feared that the Common Market would be a means by which Rome could extend her influence, although it was true that British membership might provide converse opportunities for Protestantism. Was this the real reason, the writer wondered, why General De Gaulle, 'a true son of "mother" Church', had

45

PRS, Ninety-Fifth Annual Report (London, 1922), p. 10. United Protestant Demonstration (London, 1932). 47 Roman Catholic Church and News Propaganda, p. 4. 48 PRS, 112th Annual Report: Mid Gathering Clouds (London, 1939), p. 6; Church Gazette, July-Aug. 1942, p. 5. 49 Scottish Reformation Society [hereafter SRS], Ninety-Fifth Annual Report (Edinburgh, 1946), p. 5. Evidence of this kind is an important check to any tendency to link anticatholicism with fascism during the 1930s (cf. Gallagher, Edinburgh Divided, pp. 107-12). 50 PRS, News Bulletin, August 1942; SRS, Ninety-First Annual Report (Edinburgh, 1942), pp. 5-6. 46

78

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

vetoed it?51 In 1980 there were still those who did not find it anomalous that the sovereign could in theory marry a Jew, Hindu, Muslim, atheist or devil - worshipper, but not a Roman Catholic.52 In 1981 David Samuel reaffirmed the spiritual and theological basis of national prosperity: 'God set his mark indelibly upon our nation four hundred years ago when he set up his kingdom again in our midst; . . . Romanism, secularism, godless materialism are not alternative ways for this nation, but the ways of declension and death'.53 A more explicitly political perspective was apparent in the charges of an anti-papal pamphleteer in 1982, who considered that the pope was giving tacit support to separatist nationalist movements within the United Kingdom.54 It is unsatisfactory to trivialise such viewpoints by dismissing them as mere paranoia. As Geoffrey Cubitt indicates elsewhere in this volume conspiracy theories are liable to reflect deep-seated and widely-held states of mind. In this case the reactions of Protestants to Roman Catholicism were inseparable from their own sense of religious and national identity.55 Accordingly anti-Catholicism had a dynamic and momentum of its own, independent of any objective religious challenge presented by the Roman Catholic church. Although the hard core of activists was always a small one, they had the potential to mobilise much larger constituencies, as in England in the successful resistance to the 1928 Prayer Book, and in Scotland in the campaign against Irish immigration in the 1920s. It also followed that when the Roman Catholic church did acquire a high public profile, whether at particular times - 1850, 1870, 1908 and 1982 - or in particular places - Glasgow, Liverpool and Northern Ireland - it set off a whole series of connections and associations. All this implies that anticatholicism needs to be taken seriously in its own right as an enduring and, on occasions, very significant feature of the religious and political landscape of modern Britain. Nevertheless there were significant changes in both ideology and practice. In 1907 Edmund Gosse noted how Edwardian anticatholicism seemed anodyne in comparison with that of his youth half a century before;

51

The Bulwark, June 1966, p. 63. Samuel, Pope or Gospel, pp. 79-80 (quoting the Spectator). 53 D.N. Samuel, 'A Call to Evangelical Protestantism', in David N. Samuel (ed.), A Time to Choose (Grimsby, 1981), p. 19. 54 North, Papal Visit, p. 3. 55 For fuller development of my interpretation of relationships between religion and national identity in the British Isles, see John Wolffe, God and Greater Britain: Religion and National Life in Britain and Ireland, 1843-1945 (London, 1994); John Wolffe, 'Evangelicalism in Mid Nineteenth-Century England', in Raphael Samuel (ed.), Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, i, History and Politics (London, 1989), pp. 188-200; idem, '"And There's Another Country": Religion, the State and British Identities', in Gerald Parsons (ed.), The Growth of Religious Diversity: Britain from 1945, ii, Issues (London, 1994). 52

Change and Continuity in British Anti-Catholicism

79

in 1921 even the stalwart Walter Mayo 'found it necessary to adapt his teaching to the changing features of the times'.56 In particular there was, at least in the major Protestant societies, a weakening of the sharp eschatological perspective that had been a prominent feature of Victorian anticatholicism. There was a trend away from a black and white cosmic perception of the conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism, in which Rome was portrayed in virtually satanic terms, as a root of evil subject to the judgement of God, and a social and political cancer destroying the nations that owned its sway. In its place developed a milder polemic, in which evidence of Catholic deficiency and Protestant virtue was still eagerly seized upon, but Rome no longer held explicitly responsible for all the woes of the world. A further discernible trend was for direct confrontation with Roman Catholics to become less frequent than it had been in the mid nineteenth century. The British Reformation Society had initially been founded with the ambitious objective of converting Ireland to Protestantism, but within a few years it had decided to redirect its efforts towards Roman Catholics in England and Scotland, engaging in set-piece debates with priests and sending agents to proselytise among the Irish poor. In the early Victorian decades it was operating in a context where the Catholic church itself was in a state of flux, lacking sufficient resources and structures to maintain pastoral oversight over all its professed adherents. Accordingly conflict with Protestants was sometimes welcomed as a means of cementing loyalties, while isolated nominal Catholics sometimes appreciated the ministrations of Protestant evangelists, and conversions were by no means unknown.57 Such a pattern of activity was still apparent in 1893, when an agent of the Protestant Reformation Society was distributing tracts to Roman Catholic dockers in Bristol. It was claimed that these were well received, and that the agent had had 'much blessing in his visitation of Romanists'. Meanwhile in Leicester the agent was encountering 'much opposition both from Ritualists and Romanists' but still claimed that people had left 'the Church of Rome' as a result of attending his public meetings.58 Directly confrontational and evangelistic activity did not disappear altogether: even in the late 1940s the Scottish Reformation Society was still drawing crowds to open-air debates with Roman Catholics on the Mound in Edinburgh.59 Nevertheless such face-to-face engagement with Catholics became increasingly the exception rather than the norm. To some extent

56 Edmund Gosse, Father and Son (Penguin edn, Harmondsworth, 1979), p. 66; PRS, Ninety-Fifth Annual Report (London, 1921), p. 12. 57 Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, pp. 29-64, 180-91. 58 PRS, Sixty-Seventh Annual Report (London, 1893), pp. 27-28, 31-32. 59 SRS, Ninety-Sixth Annual Report (Edinburgh, 1947), p. 5.

80

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

this was because it needed two to play ball: Roman Catholic parochial structures insulated their adherents from contact with Protestants, while priests came to the conclusion that attacks on them were best ignored. As early as 1877, in a mood of ex post facto rationalisation, the Protestan Reformation Society acknowledged that: Its results cannot be viewed in the light of conversions from Romanism to Protestantism, although it has done a good work in this respect. The Society is mainly defensive, being designed to prevent the perversion of Protestants to Romanism, but it is impossible to measure the extent of its success in this direction. Multitudes of Protestants have been influenced by the Society.60

The priority of attending to the stiffening of Protestant spiritual fibre had become more pronounced by the 1920s. In 1927 the society's missionary on the Isle of Wight - hardly one would think the most obvious place for an organisation intent on evangelising Catholics to deploy its limited manpower - reported that he had made 5,888 visits, of which only fortysix were to Roman Catholics. Even in Liverpool the comparable figure was only 502 visits out of 4,299. The motivation for this policy was made explicit in the report of the missionary in Bristol, who observed that going to the public in their own homes was a remedy for the current falling off in attendance at worship.61 John Cormack in the 1930s believed that 'once a Catholic always a Catholic': in other words that converts should be distrusted rather than welcomed.62 This contrasted significantly with the tendency of Victorian anticatholics to greet converts enthusiastically as the harbingers of general Protestant triumph.63 It was true that Cormack's views were regarded with unease by more spiritually inclined contemporaries, but their practice, if not their rhetoric, betrayed the fact that they too had come to accept that Catholicism was there to stay. The Protestant task accordingly became one of resisting further advance. There was also a growing recognition that in an increasingly secular society confrontation with Rome might well become a distraction from still more disturbing challenges. By 1982 the Free Church of Scotland, while uneasy about the papal visit, acknowledged that 'Protestants and Roman Catholics, however intent they may be on stressing their mutual incompatibility, must realise that both, even at their nominal strongest, are vastly outnumbered in de-Christianised societies by neighbours who have no great use for either of them'.64 60

The Protestant Churchman, new series, 49, Jan. 1877, p. 834. PRS, 101st Annual Report (London, 1927), pp. 43-50. 62 Gallagher, Edinburgh Divided, pp. 79-81. 63 Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, pp. 181-82, 186; B. Hall, 'Alessandro Gavazzi: A Barnebite Friar and the Risorgimento', in D. Baker (ed.), Church, Society and Politics, Studies in Church History, 12 (Oxford, 1975), pp. 303-56. 64 Pastor or Potentate?. 61

Change and Continuity in British Anti-Catholicism

81

The overall impression that (except in Northern Ireland) anticatholicism declined in strength during the period is hard to gainsay, but this trend should not be predated or overstated. For one thing, considerable institutional and ideological capital was inherited from the nineteenth century, and circumstances in the inter-war period proved conducive to its replenishment. Only after 1945 did decline begin to appear unmistakable. One telling indication was the case of the Scottish Reformation Society where in 1959 the annual report noted a deficit of £597 and 850 defaulting subscribers, only forty of whom responded to a reminder. Between the late 1940s and the 1960s the geographical distribution of the remaining membership shifted decisively away from the central belt towards the north, Skye and the Western Isles.65 In the short term the Second Vatican Council did little to diminish the remaining hard core of anticatholic activists, who regarded Roman Catholicism with grave suspicion. In 1960 an editorial in the Churchman, an Anglican evangelical journal, alleged 'That Church is still a monstrous authoritarian machine, relentless in its purpose, intolerant of change, insensitive to the claims of individual and minorities'.66 In the same year the Scottish Reformation Society considered that the answer to the pope's invitation of the Orthodox and Protestant churches to be represented at the council had to be a direct negative. Rome's doctrinal errors remained unchanged and the heritage of 'the Reformers and martyrs' should not be lightly regarded.67 In 1963 the visit of the Moderator of the Church of Scotland to the Vatican was viewed with 'profound regret'. Rome's new friendliness to the Protestant churches was only designed to 'encourage a drift in her direction' and there must be a turning away from a 'charity that is not Christian'.68 By 1966 the Churchman had become a little more positive, still finding much in Rome with which to take issue, but acknowledging that an atmosphere of goodwill was a great gain.69 However, the incidents noted at the beginning of this essay suggest that others were not prepared to concede even this much. The tendency for anti-Catholicism to resurface in an era more readily characterised by the advance of an ecumenical spirit was consistent with the longer term dynamics of the movement as outlined in this essay. Closer relations with a post-Vatican II Roman Catholic church fundamentally challenged Protestant identity whereas the historic confrontation with the pre-conciliar church had reinforced it. The most dramatic illustration of

65

SRS, Ninety-Sixth Annual Report (Edinburgh, 1947), pp. 8-13; 105th Annual Report (Edinburgh, 1959), p. 7; 116th Annual Report (Edinburgh, 1966), p. 4. 66 Churchman, new series, 74 (1960), p. 68. 67 SRS, 109th Annual Report (Edinburgh, 1960), pp. 8-9. 68 SRS, 112th Annual Report (Edinburgh, 1963), p. 6. 69 Churchman, new series, 80 (1966), pp. 179-84.

82

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

this came with the political and religious rise of Ian Paisley in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Paisley's Free Presbyterian Church and Democratic Unionist Party fed on the insecurities of those who felt the need for the theological reassertion of Protestant fundamentals, as well as political resistance to the O'Neillism of the 1960s.70 Such a trend might have been more widely echoed among English evangelicals had it not been for the eirenical trend catalysed by the Keele Congress of 1967 and also the softening of traditional theology among those influenced by the charismatic movement. For the minority of Protestant traditionalists, however, the prospect that even professed evangelicals would now re-examine their attitude to Rome was a spur to redoubled efforts. David Samuel, for example, bitterly denounced 'Keele policy' as 'disastrous for the Reformation teaching of the Church of England' and foresaw that if evangelicals continued to follow it 'they will cease to be Protestant and Evangelical and become merely pietistic'.71 In 1982 the Scottish Reformation Society rejoiced at having witnessed a renewed display of concern for the Reformed Faith, but, its newsletter added in capitals: 'WHERE WERE THE EVANGELICALS WHEN THE CALL TO STAND AND WITNESS CAME?'72 Protestants had complained before of betrayal by their own natural constituency but, in the context of the long-run history of anti-Catholicism in Britain, the small extent of the demonstrations against the papal visit showed that attitudes had indeed changed. The majority of evangelicals regarded the protesters with a mixture of embarrassment and incomprehension. The papacy itself had always been a central target of anti-Catholic attacks: had Pius IX or even Pius XI visited Britain, the indications are that opposition would have been very widespread, perhaps even explosive. It now seemed that the activists had no one but themselves to mobilise, even if their own resolve was stiffened by their predicament. Thus in relation to the last quarter of the twentieth century, the interpretation of anti-Catholicism as the preserve of a small militant minority at the margins of British religious life appears credible. This can be viewed as part of a wider process of sectarian reaction to secularisation, but sociological generalisation of this kind give insufficient weight to the medium-term legacy of Vatican II and the other changes of the 1960s in the Roman Catholic Church. As we have seen, the hard core of anticatholics saw no reason to modify their stance, but their less committed erstwhile sympathisers were liable to feel that Rome had indeed changed and no longer perceived it as alien, authoritarian and in deadly error.

70

Bruce, God Save Ulster, p. 91. David N. Samuel, The Reformation and the Church of England Today: The Need for Doctrinal Renewal in the Church (Grimsby, 1973), not paginated. 72 SRS, Newsletter, Summer 1982 (National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh). 71

Change and Continuity in British Anti-Catholicism

83

Just as the Second Vatican Council stirred searching questions about the nature of Roman Catholic belief, it also contributed to a reshaping of the religious identity of those for whom Catholicism had traditionally been an antithetical reference point. The internal dynamics of Protestantism were such that this process has been a slow and partial one, just as the acceptance of reform within the Roman Catholic church itself was patchy. Moreover neither set of changes were yet complete in 1982 and a longer perspective - together with the contemporary strength of Paisleyism in Northern Ireland - indicates that some potential for their reversal or diversion remained. Anticatholic activity since 1829 should not be dismissed as simple prejudice nor as marginal militancy: it reflected the very real tension between Roman Catholicism and a nation that historically identified itself in Protestant terms.

This page intentionally left blank

II FRANCE

This page intentionally left blank

6

Religion, Region and Counter-Revolution: The Example of the Petite Vendee Frank Tallett

Over the last four decades the research findings of what, for want of a better term, might be called the revisionist historians (though this phrase imputes to their writings a specious homogeneity) have undermined most of the orthodoxies that once informed our understanding of the French Revolution. The chief casualties have been the notion of an aristocratic reaction, and the broader thesis of which it formed a part, that the Revolution was essentially a knockout contest between different social classes, a thesis developed from Jean Jaures, through Albert Mathiez, Georges Lefebvre and stated in its classic form in the writings of Albert Soboul. Yet if the revisionists have destroyed many of the familiar landmarks that historians once used when navigating the stormy waters of late eighteenth-century France, they have conspicuously failed to produce very much by way of replacement. In some respects, they have raised as many problems as they have solved. One prime instance of this is their 'discovery' of the counter-revolution. This is not the long-acknowledged counter-revolution of the emigres and foreign powers, but that of the ordinary, predominantly rural, people of France, a movement that Donald Sutherland has described as 'massive, extensive, popular and durable'.1 The existence of widespread popular counter-revolution is now generally accepted, though it would have surprised scholars of an earlier generation, such as Georges Lefebvre, who scarcely referred to it at all in his writings.2 But although several suggestions have been advanced to account for the fact that men and women in some parts of France engaged in collective acts of defiance against the Revolution, whereas in other areas the Revolution was accepted peacefully and even welcomed, no one theory has commanded general acceptance. Most historical attention has focused upon the west of France and, in particular, upon the Vendee, the greatest of all the counter-revolutionary

1 D.N.G. Sutherland, France, 1789-1815: Revolution and Counterrevolution (London, 1985), p. 14. 2 P.M. Jones, 'Georges Lefebvre and the Peasant Revolution: Fifty Years On', French Historical Studies, 16 (1990), pp. 657-58.

88

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

uprisings.3 Charles Tilly and Paul Bois have both employed the concept of modernisation in their analyses of this revolt.4 Broadly speaking, they have argued that the Revolution forcibly integrated the traditional, subsistence economy of the countryside into an urban, market-orientated economy. As a result, traditional ways of thought and patterns of behaviour were disrupted and the dominant position of the elites was undermined, making these rural societies vulnerable to disorder and ripe for counter-revolution. However, where key elements in rural society had already been drawn into the orbit of the town and its commercial economy, they welcomed the Revolution as another step towards modernisation, and successfully carried their less enlightened fellows with them. Whatever the merits of the arguments of Bois and Tilly with respect to their respective areas of study, problems have arisen when attempts have been made to apply their explanatory models elsewhere. A more fruitful attempt to establish an overview of the causes of counter-revolution is the joint study by Le Goff and Sutherland.5 They have urged that the key variable was the pattern of land tenure. Revolutionary reforms, such as the abolition of the tithe and seigneurial dues and the sharing out of common lands, worked to the material benefit of peasant proprietors but penalised tenants and sharecroppers. Generally, therefore, peasant proprietors supported the Revolution, and in regions where they comprised the dominant group they carried the rest of rural society with them. Conversely, where tenants and sharecroppers predominated counter-revolution was likely to eventuate. Whatever their particular viewpoint, all historians of counter-revolution acknowledge the significance of religion in the movement. Yet at the same time, the trend in recent historiography has been to place the religious issue in the second rank of importance as a cause of counterrevolution. Religious grievances reinforced choices which had been made for other reasons. For Bois and Tilly, and for Le Goff and Sutherland, social and economic motives initially determined whether the peasantry would support the Revolution and religious opinion merely bolstered this decision. The issue of the oath to the Civil Constitution and how to respond to the potential replacement of the local priest in 1791 offered the laity

3 C. Petitfrere, 'The Origins of the Civil War in the Vendee', French History, 2 (1988), pp. 187-207, has a useful account of the historiography of the revolt. Cf. also the special edition of Annales de Bretagne et des pays de I'Ouest, 4 (1989). F. Lebrun and R. Dupuy, Les resistances a la Revolution (Paris, 1987) gives some indication of the current direction of research on counter-revolution more generally. 4 C. Tilly, The Vendee (Cambridge, MA, 1964); P. Bois, Paysans de I'Ouest (abridged edn, Paris, 1971). "' T.J.A. Le Goff" and D.M.G. Sutherland, 'Religion and Rural Revolt in the French Revolution: An Overview', in J.M. Bak and G. Benecke (eds), Religion and Rural Revolt (Manchester, 1984); idem 'The Social Origins of Counter-Revolution in Western France', Past and Present, 99 (1983), pp. 65-87. Cf. also Le Goff, Vannes and its Region (Oxford, 1981), pp. 151-75, 337-66; Sutherland, The Chouans (Oxford, 1982), pp. 142-43.

The Petite Vendee

89

what Le Goff and Sutherland have termed a 'plebiscite', an opportunity to express their opinion on the non-religious innovations of the Revolution as a whole.6 Among recent writers, only Timothy Tackett has sought to readdress the religious factor in the counter-revolutionary uprisings in the west by emphasising the area's distinctive religious structures and beliefs.7 It is not the purpose of this essay to proffer an alternative overview of the causes of counter-revolution to those outlined above. Rather, and more modestly, it is to contribute towards an ongoing debate by analysing one incident of counter-revolution that has not so far received any extended attention from historians, in particular by applying to it some lines of enquiry suggested by the studies of Le Goff and Sutherland and Tackett. The incident is the Petite Vendee which broke out in the eastern department of the Doubs in September 1793.8 Unlike the Vendee in Brittany from which it took its name, which was extensive, long-running and difficult to suppress, the Petite Vendee was of short duration, localised and quickly put down. Yet in these respects it was typical of many of those instances of resistance to the Revolution that collectively sapped the governments of France down to the period of the Directory and beyond, but which have received relatively little investigation compared to the Brittany uprising. The Petite Vendee occurred in three of the six districts in the department of the Doubs, in an upland area bordering Switzerland known as the HautDoubs.9 The main outlines of the uprising may be quickly summarised. The catalyst for the event, as was so often the case elsewhere, was the imposition of the levee en masse at the end of August 1793. In several villages, including Valdahon, Damprichard, Mouthier and Germefontaine, many young men refused to obey the call up, or demanded payment before they would march.10 At Sancey, however, things went beyond a simple refusal to participate in the recruiting process. At a meeting 6 Le Goff and Sutherland, 'Social Origins', p. 66; Bois, Paysans, pp. 292-94. Cf. the discussion of this point in T. Tackett, Religion, Revolution, and Regional Culture in EighteenthCentury France: The Ecclesiastical Oath of 1791 (Princeton, 1986), ch. 8. 7 T. Tackett, 'The West in France in 1789: The Religious Factor in the Origins of the Counter-revolution', Journal of Modern History, 54 (1982), pp. 715—45. 8 There are two short studies of the revolt: L. Besson, 'La Petite Vendee', Memoires de I'Academie de Besan^on, 56 (1861); G. Gensse, 'La Petite Vendee dans les Montagnes du Doubs', Memoires de Maitrise (Universite de Besanc.on, 1969). The account which follows depends chiefly on documents in the Archives Departementales du Doubs [hereafter ADD]. 9 The departments of the Doubs, Jura and Haute-Saone were created out of the province of Franche-Comte in 1790. The old regime archdiocese of Besangon had been more or less coterminous with the province. 10 ADD, LI 125, letter to district of Ornans, 2 September; LI 18, recruiting commissioner to dept., 4 September; LI 126, proces-verbal of municipality of Mouthier, 4 September; L842, report of commissioner Vaucheresse.

90

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

on the night of 31 August/1 September, at which representatives from neighbouring villages and from communes in the more distant districts of Baume and Besanc,on were present, plans were laid for a more general uprising.11 The following day, a number of insurgents seized back their arms and munitions which had been confiscated by the municipalities some two or three months earlier. They also began to disarm the local patriots. Links were established with neighbouring communities, and within the space of four days a rebel force of around 2,000 men had assembled, albeit divided into two or three separate groups, with some 4,000 more men expected to join the revolt.12 The insurgents now planned to march on the two most important towns of the area, Pierrefontaine and Baume. Their immediate aim was to boost their store of weapons and to release over one hundred Prussian soldiers held captive at Baume (their military experience, it was thought, would be helpful in any forthcoming engagement), before moving on to their ultimate objective, Besanc,on, the chief-lieu of the department. Additionally, the rebels planned to establish a line of communication with Switzerland, via the town of Morteau, to facilitate the entry into the department of a force comprising emigre nobles, refractory clerics and Prussian troops who were believed to be massing on the frontier. In the end, it all went dreadfully wrong. Unexpectedly strong resistance from the patriots at Pierrefontaine,13 and the arrival in the area of regular troops, led the rebels to call off their attacks on the towns of Baume and Besangon. Although united into a single group by the evening of 5 September, the rebel forces were much depleted in numbers as some insurgents, perceiving that things were not going as planned, slipped away. Those that remained decided to head for the Swiss border to join up with the emigres, clerics and Prussians supposed to be waiting there.14 On the morning of 6 September they were intercepted close to the village of Bonnetage by the patriot forces, comprised mainly of well-equipped regular troops and members of the national guard. Unwisely, the rebels

11 ADD, L215, L213, interrogations of Pierre Bassenne of Sancey and Michel Jeunot of Flangebouche. The testimony of Bassenne in particular is crucial for an understanding of what happened at this decisive meeting. 12 There are no wholly reliable figures of the numbers involved. Estimates of the force at Sancey ranged from 400 to 4,000: ADD, L1621, extract from register of district of Saint-Hippolyte, p. 10; LI626, municipality of Pierrefontaine to district of Saint-Hippolyte, 4 September. Estimates of the number of insurgents in the canton of Orchamps in ADD, LI 125, municipality of Grosbois to district, 5 September; commander Vuillier to municipality of Morteau, 5 September; and LI 127, municipality of Orchamps to district, 5 September. See also figures in the Vedette newspaper of 10 September: ADD, L2882. 13 In the fight there the rebel mayor of La Sommette was mortally wounded, fourteen prisoners were taken and the remaining rebels driven back to Domprel: ADD, LI 125, commissioner Regnaud to district of Ornans, 5 September. 14 ADD, L213, testimony of A. Grison, a captured rebel.

The Petite Vendee

91

confronted their pursuers in open battle. The result was a foregone conclusion. After the initial volleys, in which about twenty of the rebels were killed, the rest turned and fled in disorder, some to the woods, about 200 seeking safety across the Swiss border.15 The repression that followed the failure of the Petite Vendee was not as sanguinary as that experienced by other civil war areas of France. Nevertheless, almost 500 people appeared before the departmental court on charges connected with the revolt, and the Haut-Doubs suffered dreadfully from the depredations of the soldiers who remained to police the area.16 In the ten months following the revolt, eleven times as many individuals fled from this area as had emigrated in the first four years of the Revolution.17 How is the uprising to be explained? In particular, why did it occur in the Haut-Doubs and not elsewhere in the department? It was clearly sparked off by the recruiting laws of 1793. But these merely obliged the peasantry to fight for a Revolution for which they had ceased to have any sympathy, and underlying the Petite Vendee there were deeper resentments. In part these were economic. As a frontier department, and one, moreover, whose food resources were sufficient only in years of good harvests, the Doubs suffered more than most from requisitioning by the army.18 Wagons, horses and implements of all kinds were appropriated as well as food. The troops frequently took the lawful authority to requisition goods as a licence to steal. In July 1792 the departmental authorities wrote of 'the volunteers who pillage and conduct themselves as if in a conquered country'.19 Additionally, there was resentment at the efforts of the civil authorities to influence the market in foodstuffs. Legislation in 1792 regulating the manufacture and sale of bread and the crackdown early in 1793 on the lively cross-border traffic in grain, cheese and eggs were badly received.20 There was yet greater hostility to the imposition in the spring of the maximum, which obliged the peasants to sell grain at artificially low prices. The effect of the decree was to drive grain off the open markets.21 The situation became so severe at Besancpn that in July the municipality was obliged to release for public sale foodstuffs hitherto stored in the fortress for the military. A few days later the departmental ADD, LI 18, municipality of Orchamps to dept., 7 September. Even the leader of the Jacobin Club at Belvoir wrote of the national guard 'devastating whole villages': ADD, LI 127, letter to district of Ornans, 7 September 1793. 17 Calculation from ADD, Q595, Q596, list of emigres. 18 Detachments from the Army of the Rhine were most commonly involved since they were permanently stationed in the department: AM, Besancon, DM vol. 7, 2 September 1793. 19 ADD, L709, letter to district of Saint-Hippolyte. 20 A. Gardien, L'origine et I'application de la loi du Maximum en Franche-Comte (Besancon, 1929), pp. 43-65; Gensse, 'Petite Vendee', pp. 43-45. 21 ADD, L301, district of Ornans to dept., 5 June 1793 and Gardien op. cit. 15

16

92

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

authorities suspended the maximum altogether.22 Then, on 23 July, the great fortress of Mainz fell and the Prussian forces appeared poised for an invasion of eastern France. Panic swept through the department. The destocking of the fortress at Besanc,on now appeared as an act of folly. A requisition generate was ordered which provoked widespread resistance, and although the military warehouses were supplied the free circulation of grain in the department ceased.23 The reluctance of the peasants to supply the markets and to submit to requisitioning was due not just to the low prices they received but also to their distaste at the method of payment. In January 1792 the use of the Revolutionary currency, the assignat, had been made compulsory in all business transactions in the department. At this time the assignat had already lost 21 per cent of its value in the Doubs, and by March 1793 the 100 livres assignat was worth only 48 livres.%4 The reluctance of the peasantry to accept it as payment grew accordingly. 'The peasants' refusal to sell grain to the poor is merely a consequence of their abhorrence at taking the assignats in payment', the district of Saint-Hippolyte observed in August 1793.25 Was there nothing to set in the scales to balance these economic grievances? There was, but less than might be imagined. The department's rural inhabitants might have been expected to have benefited particularly from the destruction of the seigneurial regime which retained much of its vigour in this part of France. In 1788 the local parlement had refused to register the royal edict abolishing mainmorte, a right which, in its various forms, gave the seigneur a claim over the peasant's goods at death.26 The result was that in 1789 between one-third and one-half of the population remained subject to an imposition that had largely been ended elsewhere in the kingdom.27 No less than 204 out of 212 cahiers from the bailliage of Baume-les-Dames demanded its abolition in 1789. The cahiers suggested that in some instances seigneurial dues might take up to half the peasant's income from the land.28 In practice, however, the Revolution's promise of « ADD, L619, dept order, 1 July 1793; L218, dept. order, 2 July 1793. 23 ADD, L218, dept. order, 9 August 1793; LI631, register of district of Saint-Hippolyte, p. 5. 24 Gensse, 'Petite Vendee', p. 43; A. Mathiez, La vie there et le mouvement social sous la, Terreur (Paris, 1927), p. 55. Cf. also J. Girardot, Le department de la Haute-Saone pendant la Revolution, 3 vols (Vesoul, 1973), iii, p. 370, table of value of the assignat. 25 ADD, L1673, register of the district, p. 33, 29 August 1793. 26 J. Millot, Le regime feodal en Framhe-Comte au XVHIe Siecle (Besancon, 1937), p. 135 and passim. 27 M. Cresset, Gens de justice a Besancon, 2 vols (Paris, 1978), p. 376. The parlement claimed that only one-tenth of the population was affected. 28 R. Jouvenot with F. Lassus, Le bailljage de Baume-les-Dames en 1789: les cahiers de doUances (Besancon, 1985). The peasants evidently refused to be deterred by the fact that the primary assemblies were often chaired by seigneurial officials. Cf. also Girardot, Le dipartement de la Haute-Saone, i, pp. 100-2.

The Petite Vendee

93

the 'complete destruction' of the feudal regime, made on 4 August, was not fulfilled. The enabling legislation that followed only secured the immediate abolition of droits personnels; dues classed as droits reels — forms of property, in other words - had to be bought out. Peasants thus found that they were by no means free of all seigneurial obligations. Even the detested mainmorte continued to be paid where it was levied on the land and classed as a droit reel, until its final vestiges were abolished in August 1792.29 The situation was worsened by the refusal of many seigneurs, backed by the parlement while it remained in existence, to allow peasants to redeem dues.30 Not until July 1793 were the droits reels abolished, an event marked in the Doubs by the burning of huge quantities of seigneurial records. By then, the Assembly's crass handling of the issue of seigneurialism had helped to sour the peasants' attitude towards the Revolution. The peasant undoubtedly gained more immediate benefit from the abolition of the tithe, which could no longer be levied legally after 1 January 1791, than from the supposed abolition of seigneurial dues.31 Generalisations concerning the overall level of the tithe in this area of France have limited meaning, since it varied dramatically from one parish to another.32 While its abolition might have counted for much in one parish, it may have meant much less in a neighbouring parish. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that many peasants stood to benefit considerably from the removal of a tax that could take a substantial slice of their landed income.33 However, in December 1790 the Assembly allowed landlords to add the equivalent of the former tithe to their leases. Thus tenants might find themselves continuing to pay the tithe as rent. As with its handling of the seigneurial issue, the Assembly had been extraordinarily maladroit when dealing with the tithe. Legislation concerning land reform also did little to bind the rural inhabitants of the Doubs to the Revolution. In the west of France the failure of successive governments to assist the peasants who held their land under the precarious, albeit unusual, system of tenure known as 29 The relevant legislation is summarised in J. Godechot, Les institutions de la France sous la Revolution et I'Empire (Paris, 1968), pp. 192-97. Cf. also A. Soboul, Problemes paysans de la Revolution (Paris, 1976), pp. 135—46; P. Jones, The Peasantry in the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1988), esp. ch. 5. 30 J. Millot, L'abolition des droits seigneuriaux dans le departement du Doubs et la region comtoise (Besancon, 1941), pp. 149-53, 172-76, 197-210. He suggests that something akin to a seigneurial reaction took place in 1790 as seigneurs insisted upon payment of dues, ibid., pp. 15-43. 31 A recapitulation of the tithe legislation is given in P. Gagnol, La dime ecclesiastique en France (Geneva, 1974, reprint of 1911 ed.), ch. 15. 32 Observation based on the figures given in the declarations of clerical revenues for 1758, 1780 and 1790 in ADD, G138-60, L1475. 33 Girardot, Haute-Saone, pp. 98-99. Cf. Jones, Peasantry, p. 96 table 4; and H. Marion, La dime ecclesiastique, pp. 54-72 which indicate the relatively high level of the tithe in Franche-Comte.

94

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

domaine congeable may well have been important in turning them into a counter-revolutionary force.34 In the Doubs, the question was less one of tenancy than of the enjoyment of collective rights of land use, notably the practice of vaim pature (which allowed grazing on unenclosed fields) and of access to the extensive tracts of common land.35 After a period of uncertainty, the so-called Rural Code of September 1791 upheld the right of vaine pature, but legislation on the commons was complex, confusing and drawn out. By the autumn of 1792 it had been decided to allow communities to reclaim common land taken over by the seigneur and, potentially, to divide it up. But the basis upon which the commons would be shared out was only decreed in June 1793, and legislation was still being passed three years later.36 The large number of petitions sent from the Doubs to Paris, often expressing conflicting wishes, nevertheless attested to the widespread peasant interest in the disposal of common land.37 Ultimately, such division of the commons as did take place may well have operated in favour of the wealthier peasant and against the interests of the small-holders and tenants, whose economic livelihood was dependent upon on access to the commons. The real point to note, however, is that it was uncertain who, if anyone, was going to benefit from reforms that were not clearly formulated. As a result, no section of the peasantry could see that its interests would be served and consequently none felt wedded to the Revolution. The possibility of land reform merely aroused peasant apprehension. There were, then, strong grounds for the rural inhabitants of the Doubs to be dissatisfied with the Revolution by 1793. But did this revolutionary legislation have such particularly adverse material consequences for the Haut-Doubs that it explains that area's resort to counter-revolution? It is not immediately obvious that this was the case. Requisitioning, the use of the assignats and market controls were, after all, imposed upon the whole department, and there is no evidence that they were applied with any more vigour, nor that they caused greater hardship, in the Haut-Doubs than elsewhere. Complaints in the cahiers from the Haut-Doubs about seigneurial dues were numerous and bitter, but no more so than elsewhere in the department.38 Indeed, it may be significant that antiseigneurial rioting in 1789-90 was, if anything, less extensive

34

Le Goff and Sutherland, 'Social Origins'. Commons comprised over one-third of the department's land area in 1850: J.L. Mayaud, 'Les paysans du Doubs au temps de Courbet', Cahiers d'etudes Comtoises, 25 (1979), pp. 73, 176, annexe viii. 36 Jones, Peasantry, pp. 124-54; Godechot, Les institutions, pp. 200-2, 400-1. 37 F. Broutet, 'La question des biens communaux et de leur partage en Franche-Comte sous la Revolution', Nouvelle revue Franc-Comtois, 6 (1973), pp. 140-46 and passim. 38 Jouvenot, Cahiers. 35

The Petite Vendee

95

here than in other parts.39 Le Goff and Sutherland have argued that the disposition of the tithe was particularly important in determining how the peasant fared economically after 1789. Proprietors did much better than tenants: abolition of the tithe more than compensated them for the rise in revolutionary taxes, and they could add the equivalent of the former tithe to the leases of their tenants if they were landlords.40 A full understanding of the differential impact of the tithe legislation in the Doubs is impeded by the lack of a detailed study of land tenure. Nevertheless, the outlines of the pattern of land ownership are clear enough. The church, nobility and bourgeoisie possessed little land in the Haut-Doubs. Over two-thirds of it was owned by the peasants, of whom a substantial proportion were small-holders.41 As proprietors they should have benefited from the abolition of the tithe, and might therefore have been expected to have put up with the Revolution, even if they were not positively attached to it. Moreover, as proprietors they were also best placed to evade the remaining seigneurial dues.42 It may be that further research on the differential impact of revolutionary legislation, focusing particularly on ties of dependence between rich and poor, employers and employees for example, will give some fresh insight into the way in which the rural communities of the Doubs polarised between 1789 and 1793. But as the preceding discussion has suggested, an economic cost-benefit analysis of the impact of the Revolution may not take us much farther in a search for the origins of the Petite Vendee. Patriots and rebels were not divided along any clear socio-economic lines. This is the overall conclusion of the study by Maurice Carrez of the area around Sancey and Belvoir, villages in the very heartland of the revolt. To be sure, he found that there may have been some tendency for the lesser notables, poorer peasants and artisans to be found in the former group, while the more established and wealthier peasants were counted among the supporters of the latter. The average level of tax assessment of the forty members of the Jacobin Club at Belvoir was eight livres', the average for those arrested or denounced as suspects was twenty-seven livres. However, the composition of this latter group in particular was heterogeneous in the extreme. It included the very poor, with an assessment of under five livres (about one third), as well as individuals assessed at up to 150 livres.43 Rather than focusing upon the economic impact of the Revolution, it is more profitable to point to three other factors which were crucial in

39 G. Lefebvre, The Great Fear of 1789: Rural Panic in Revolutionary France (London, 1973), pp. 105-8, 176-68; M. Carrez, 'L'opinion publique aux environs de Sancey et Belvoir (Doubs) sous la Revolution', Annales historiques de la Revolution Franfaise, 64 (1992), p. 541. 40 Le Goff and Sutherland, 'Religion and Rural Revolt', p. 131. 41 Carrez, 'L'opinion publique', pp. 557-58. 42 Le Goff and Sutherland, 'Religion and Rural Revolt', p. 130. 43 Carrez, 'L'opinion publique', pp. 554—56.

96

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

bringing about counter-revolution in the Haut-Doubs: the frontier, the area's strong regional identity and its distinctive religious characteristics. Although related, for the sake of clarity these will be dealt with separately. Of most immediate significance for the outbreak of the revolt was the proximity of the Haut-Doubs to the frontier. Throughout the summer of 1793 the whole department had been alive with rumours of emigres and foreign troops massing over the border in preparation for an invasion. In May an inhabitant of Longueville had been jailed for fifteen days for spreading such rumours, but the authorities had not denied them and actually appeared to subscribe to them. News of the defeat of the French forces at Mainz merely added fuel to the fire. On 4 August the Jacobin Club at Belvoir reported that it had intelligence of the imminent arrival of the Prussians. The authorities in the frontier district of SaintHippolyte were convinced by August that invasion from Switzerland by a 10,000-strong force was imminent. Its fears were in no way calmed by the news of an uprising in the neighbouring department of the Mont-Terrible at the end of the month.44 'News' of the approach of emigres and foreign troops gave fresh heart to opponents of the Revolution. At Sancey the constitutional priest found that parishioners ceased attending his services. 'They flatter themselves that soon they will have the old cure back', he wrote.45 The expectation of outside assistance was crucial in getting the revolt off the ground and integral to its planning. At the meeting at Sancey on 31 August/1 September it was apparently the belief in the reality of this help that encouraged the prospective insurgents to proceed with their plans.46 Several captured rebels later admitted that 'Their plan was to open a passage to the 6,000 men who were at Landeron [a small village over the Swiss border'.47 As we have seen, this was the only aspect of their original project with which they persevered. Belief in the reality of outside military assistance died hard. One fleeing vendeen who reached the safety of the border voiced the pathetic question: 'And those 14,000 Prussians, who are here with our priests and with the carts of guns and munitions, where are they? We have come out ahead of them, and we want to take them back with us.'48 Had there been no anticipation of help from over the border it is probable that there would have been no Petite Vendee.

44

ADD, LI305, municipality to dept., 31 May 1793; L211, letter to dept., 4 August 1793; L1626, district to the administrators of the dept. of Mont-Terrible, 6 September 1793. « ADD, L211, Vernier to dept., 14 August 1793. 46 See above, n. 11. 47 ADD, LI 18, municipality of Orchamps to dept., 7 September 1793. 48 Quoted in letter from Pierre Marion to his father, the mayor of Charquemont, 7 September 1793: ADD, L1658.

The Petite Vendee

97

The second factor helping to explain the uprising was the localism and strong regional identity of the Haut-Doubs, an aspect of counterrevolution which, as Alan Forrest has suggested, is often referred to, but rarely analysed in depth.49 As its name suggests, the Haut-Doubs was a rugged upland, a continuation of the great mountain chain of the Jura, where the altitude rose to over 1,300 metres.50 The vigorous road building programme of Intendant Lacore and his chief engineer, Querret, which had successfully linked the western part of the old province of Franche-Comte to the rest of the French kingdom, had made little impact here. This remained the most isolated region of the new department of the Doubs. The Haut-Doubs' geography and isolation were reflected in its autarkic economy. Poor soil and a harsh climate prevented the cultivation of vines or any but the more hardy cereals - oats, barley and rye - except in the most favoured areas. Many inhabitants concentrated upon cattle-raising for their livelihood. The milk which was produced was converted into cheese at one of the many local fruitieres. Insofar as there was any export of these agricultural products, much of it was directed into a semi-legal cross border trade with Switzerland. Smuggling too played a significant role in the economy of the area, though it was far from absent in the rest of Franche-Comte. If a distinctive geography and an autarkic economy contributed to the regional identity of the Haut-Doubs, so too did its linguistic and cultural particularism. Although the use of local patois had declined in the face of French since Louis XIV's conquest of Franche-Comte in 1668, it nevertheless persisted, and nowhere more so than in the Haut-Doubs.51 The area's distinctive culture manifested itself in several ways. For example, almost every civil, religious or family occasion was celebrated by dancing in the old province of Franche-Comte. But the speciality in the mountains was the branle, a dance performed nowhere else. There was a greater tendency towards intermarriage in the uplands, if the large number of requests for dispensation from the church's rules concerning consanguinity is any guide. Patterns of farming had cultural repercussions., The system of transhumance employed to raise cattle required collective decisions about the exploitation of pasture and woodland, decisions that were usually taken at a village assembly.

49

'Regionalism and Counter-Revolution in France', in C. Lucas (ed.), Rewriting the French Revolution (Oxford, 1991), p. 150. 50 For much of what follows see R. Fietier, Histoire de la Franche-Comte (Toulouse, 1977), pp. 26Iff, and the bibliography cit. there especially L. Four, Le long des routes de Franche-Comte au XVIHe siecle (Besancon, 1935), his 'Le Tabac: privilege comtois', Memoires de I'Academic de Besanqon, 173 (1960), pp. 5-24, and R. Mougey, 'Notes sur la vie rurale en Franche-Comte au XVIIIe siecle', Memoires de la societe d'emulation du Doubs, 8 (1938), pp. 77-87. 51 M. Vernus, La vie comtoise au temps de I'ancien regime, 2 vols (Lons-le-Saunier, 1985), ii, pp. 195-98. For what follows see ibid., i, pp. 55, 176-77, 183-84, 118; ii, pp. 124-25.

98

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

The Haut-Doubs was distinct in other ways too. Dispersed habitation was the norm, though each individual household might be quite large, occupying one of the fortress-like houses that combined stables, cattle pens and living quarters under one roof. Doctors even claimed to detect a medical topography in the province: the uplands escaped the fevers and pestilences, caused by the impurity of the air, which afflicted lower lying regions. Proximity to the frontier was also important in establishing the area's self-identity. Although they might trade with the Swiss, the inhabitants of the Haut-Doubs nevertheless regarded them with suspicion and even loathing. The cahier of Thiebouhans complained that they harboured vagabonds and criminals.52 But they were above all suspect because of their Protestant religion. The Haut-Doubs' inhabitants were scarcely less resentful of their French neighbours to the west, and particularly hostile towards any form of outside authority, whether it was the rural police (marechaussee), the agents of the general farm, the officers of the militia or customs officials. The cahier of Bourguignon, in a striking passage, described the ills inflicted by the officials of the intendance and subdelegation with those set loose by the opening of Pandora's box.53 The Haut-Doubs thus had those elements of geography, economy, language, culture and mentality that have led Fernand Braudel to single it out as a pays: one of those sub-regional groupings which, rather than the province, the kingdom or the nation, claimed its inhabitants' allegiances.54 To be sure, it was not the only distinct area within Franche-Comte. Lucien Febvre long ago pointed to the profound diversity of the component parts of the province.55 Yet in no other area was the sense of regional identity as strong; nowhere else was there such a high level of autarky; nowhere else .were local traditions so jealously guarded and outside authority so fiercely resented. It is against this background that we need to assess the impact of the Revolution. The first year of the Revolution brought an enormous increase in the level of government experienced by the local community, providing a foretaste of what was to come.56 A plethora of officials from the six districts of the department busied themselves with a range of tasks:

">- R. Jouvenot, Taysans du Haut-Doubs a travers leurs cahiers de doleances', Memoires de la societe d'emulation du Dmtbs, 13 (1971), p. 37. 53 Ibid., pp. 42-43 and passim. 54 The Identity of France, 2 vols (London, 1988), pp.37, 41-44. Cf. also the essays by A. Soboul and M. Cresset in C. Gras and G. Livet, Regions et regionalisme en France (Paris, 1977). 55 Philippe II et la Franche-Comte (Paris, 1970), p. 37. 56 The argument here follows that advanced by T.J.A. Le Goff and D.M.G. Sutherland, 'The Revolution and the Rural Community in Eighteenth-Century Brittany', Past and Present, 62 (1974), pp. 96-119.

The Petite Vendee

99

conducting a land survey, cataloguing ecclesiastical possessions, estimating their value, proposing schemes for the draining of swamps and listing the numbers of poor. They implemented the new revolutionary legislation. Much of this, for instance permitting requisitioning, compelling the use of the assignats and curbing the cross-border trade, was not only unwelcome in itself, but was also seen as an unwarranted intrusion into the affairs of the community. Other pieces of legislation, on seigneurialism, tithes and land-use, which ought to have been widely welcomed, were drafted and introduced in so crass a fashion as to sour their appeal. The net result of it all was nevertheless to draw the Haut-Doubs into the economic and administrative orbit of the department and the wider world. Given the intense localism of the area this was bound to cause particular resentment. One aspect of state intervention above all evoked antipathy. This was the attempt in 1791-92 to replace the refractory priests who had refused to swear the oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the decree reorganising the French church, with jurors or constitutional clerics. There were various responses to this initiative in the department. Some parishes seemed positively glad to see their old cure go. For instance, in the district of Besangon a majority of communes, according to one authority, denounced the priest and demanded his removal.57 This reaction was unusual, however, and generally the replacement proved unpopular. Nowhere was it more fiercely resented than in the area of the Haut-Doubs. Here, acts of collective resistance to the incoming priest were relatively numerous and could be violent.58 Popular disaffection also manifested itself in the elections held in 1791-92. In some communes electors boycotted the elections altogether, contrasting with the high turnout in 1790. Elsewhere, they refused to swear the oath required of them (it was identical to the one demanded of the clergy), or they added restrictive clauses to it exempting the Civil Constitution. Sometimes rival assemblies met, one composed of supporters of the refractory clerics the other of patriots.59 Additionally, villagers in the Haut-Doubs took positive action to retain the cure. From the spring of 1791 a trickle of petitions began to reach the departmental authorities from communes asking permission for the refractory priest to remain. By the autumn the trickle had become a flood. The one from Bretigney was typical. 'The inhabitants of those communities whose priests have not conformed [to the Civil Constitution] have shown as much patriotism as any others . . . . But now that there is 57

J. Sauzay, Histoire de la persecution revolutionnaire dans le departement du Doubs, 10 vols (Besangon, 1867-73), i, p. 551. 58 The area was singled out in a letter from the dept. to the Minister of the Interior, 11 November 1791, quoted in Sauzay, Histoire, ii, p. 72. 59 Examples are to be found in the proces-verbaux of elections in ADD, L213, L873, L988, L1120, L1126, L1122.

100

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

talk of taking from us our cure, whom we love and respect, we can no longer hold back; our patriotism is not strong enough to oblige us to keep silent'.60 Some petitioners asserted their legal right to a pastor of their own choice. An assembly at Chaleze in December resolved that since liberty of worship was guaranteed, they would 'follow their old religious opinions, and choose such a minister as they judged suitable'61 - an ingenious attempt to keep the priest by opting out of the state church on the basis of an appeal to rights granted by the Revolution. Matters went still further early in 1792 when the mayor of Flangebouche, Goguillot, established a 'federation' of the communes of the Haut-Doubs, an expanded version of a project organised earlier at Flangebouche and elsewhere. Claiming that the Catholics were under threat and appealing to rights supposedly enshrined in the Constitution, Goguillot argued that his 'federation' would enable the local communes to choose their own priests and to provide the necessary armed protection for them and their supporters.62 It is clear that the inhabitants of the Haut-Doubs had turned against the Revolution by 1791-92. To be sure, they did not become openly counter-revolutionary until 1793 when conscripted to fight in defence of the Revolution, though they had gone to the very margins of the law - and beyond - the previous year. But attitudes had been decided by 1792. As a local observer noted at the time 'The separation between the Catholics . . . and the Revolution began here'.63 Why did the replacement of the non-juror by a constitutional priest arouse such hostility in the Haut-Doubs? The early religious legislation of the Constituent Assembly concerning the abolition of monastic vows and the sale of church lands had not done so. Of the changes introduced by the Civil Constitution, provisions for redrawing parish boundaries did cause some apprehension. But in practice almost nothing was done in this respect outside the town of Besangon in the first two years of the Revolution, and little enough after that.64 One individual who boycotted the elections in 1791, Jean Frangois Martin thejuge depaix for the canton of Vercel, cited concern over the lay election of priests as his reason,65 but his was an unusually discriminating view. Most people were not so subtle: they simply did not want to lose their rector. Why, then, were the inhabitants of the

60 ADD, L744, petition of Bretigney. Other examples in ADD, L213, L1471 and Sauzay, Histoire, i, pp. 423, 425-26, 622-30. 61 ADD, 1054, extract from register of district of Besangon, 25 December 1791. 62 ADD, L951, Declaration of Sieur Goguillot. The inter-village links he established may well have prefigured those set up during the revolt. 63 J.-E. Laviron, Annales, in the Bibliotheque Municipale de Besangon, MS 1638, p. 16. 64 Correspondence in ADD, L59, 63, L53, fol. 56, L743. Resentment at the suppression of old regime dioceses helped to foment counter-revolution in towns of the Midi, but was not a significant factor in the Doubs: C. Lucas, 'The Problem of the Midi in the French Revolution', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 28 (1978), p. 13. 65 ADD, L213, proce-verbal of clerical elections.

The Petite Vendee

101

Haut-Doubs to staunch in defence of the refractory clergy and so hostile to the jurors? It is not difficult to see why opposition to the constitutional priest was so marked in this area. Not only was he an outsider - 'intruder' was the commonest term of abuse for him - he was perceived to be an agent of the state. The authorities fostered this perception by sending troops to back him up and by using attendance at his mass as proof of civisme;66 and it was a role that a few clerics - notably Vernier at Sancey - positively relished.67 In an area such as the Haut-Doubs, with its strong sense of community and distrust of outside authority, he was always going to be unwelcome. It is perhaps more revealing to ask why the loss of the old priest was so particularly resented in the Haut-Doubs. The answer to that may be found in an appreciation of the distinctive characteristics of its parish clergy. Of the c. 1,300 parish clergy serving in the diocese of Besangon in 1789, the overwhelming majority were native-born.68 However, as the study by the abbe Huot-Pleuroux has demonstrated, recruits were not drawn equally from all sections of the diocese. The area comprising the future department of the Doubs furnished the majority; and from within this region it was the Haut-Doubs that proved easily the most fertile catchment area, although its population was relatively small. Thus, the upland canton of Le Russey furnished one priest per 714 inhabitants, the neighbouring Maiche one for every 750. This compares with one per 2,380 inhabitants in the canton of Audeux lying to the west.69 The parish clergy in the Haut-Doubs was thus recruited from the immediate locality in which it would serve, although it was not the practice to appoint priests to their parish of origin.70 Although it is not easy to discern in detail the social origins of this clergy, it appears to have been drawn substantially from the wealthier, elite elements of society, including the peasantry, though rarely from the ranks of the nobility.71 Indeed, there are indications in the Haut-Doubs of a particularly strong tradition (not altogether absent from the rest of the diocese) of priesthood within particular families, some of whom would be associated with an individual parish over several

66 The constitutional priests of Valdahon and Vercel were even appointed to command troops sent to repress the revolt: Gensse, 'Petite Vendee', p. 93. 67 Vernier was the founder and driving-force behind the club at Sancey and involved himself heavily in policing and administrative matters. 68 Thus in 1743 of ninety-four candidates examined by the seminary only six were from outside the Comte: ADD, G908, examens: matieres d'interrogation. 69 P. Huot-Pleuroux, Le recrutment sacerdotal dans le diocese de Besan^on de 1801 a 1960 (these de doctoral, Paris, 1966), pp. 45-49. 70 A.-M. Kaminski, 'Les cures de campagne en Franche-Comte au XVIIIe siecle', Ecole Nationale des Charles, Positions des Theses (1975), p. 139. 71 ADD, G909, register of ordinations for 1744—57 and 1765-72; Vernus, Vie comtoise, pp. 91—92. There is no list of insinuations ecclesiastiques, the normal source of information on clerical origins, for the diocese of Besangon.

102

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

generations.72 This pattern of recruitment is highly significant. It suggests that the clerical vocation was held in relatively high esteem in the HautDoubs. It also seems likely, to put it no higher, that this autochthonous clergy would have been familiar with local dialect and custom and would have integrated with particular ease into the local community, Moreover, as Tackett has suggested in another context,73 the clergy's local roots and solid family connections may well have enhanced its status and position in lay society. Also helping to underpin the priest's social status was the relative wealth of the Haut-Doub's parish clergy. It should be said at the outset that levels of income from the benefice varied quite considerably, and that the parish clergy of the diocese as a whole was hardly the most affluent in the kingdom. But the overwhelming majority received over 800 livres per year, some much more than this.74 In addition, priests not infrequently disposed of personal wealth as well. For example, Simon Burgillard, cure of Frasne, had a cellar containing wine and equipment worth over 2,000 livres besides well-stocked barns and a lavishly furnished house. Many others in their wills left furniture and other effects valued at between 2,000 and 3,000 livres. This indicates a degree of affluence that few rural inhabitants could match. Only 10 per cent of inventories of peasant wealth showed goods to a value of 1,000 livres, and only 2—3 per cent of these went substantially higher.75 The average priest, then, disposed of resources that allowed him to live at a level to which the majority of his parishioners could not aspire. He could often afford to employ one or even two servants, for example. There is no suggestion that the clergy of the Haut-Doubs was richer than its counterpart elsewhere in the diocese; indeed the reverse may have been the case. The point to note, however, is that since the HautDoubs was a poor area the relative disparity between clerical wealth and lay poverty would have been particularly marked. While the parish clergy of the Haut-Doubs was not so wealthy as to be resented, nevertheless the parish priest's wealth would have been especially important in singling him out as a notable in this area. The status of the parish priest in the Haut-Doubs was additionally enhanced by the absence of religious rivals. To be sure, many cures

72 Abbe Loye, Un coin des montagnes du Doubs: Laval et ses dependances (Montbeliard, 1894), p. 211. 73 Tackett, 'The West in France', p. 726; Religion, Revolution, p. 243. 74 See above, n. 30, for sources. More generally see T. Tackett, 'Les revenus des cures a la fin de 1'ancien regime: esquisse d/une geographic', in A. Croix et. al. (eds), La France d'ancien regime: etudes reunies en I'honneur de Pierre Goubert (Toulouse, 1984), pp. 665-71; M. Faucheux, L'insurrection vendeenne de 1793 (Paris, 1964), pp. 86-87, on clerical income in the area of the Vendee. 75 M. Vernus, Le presbytere et la chaumiere (Rioz, 1986), p. 55; idem, Vie comtoise, pp. 98-99; idem, 'Le clerge paroissial du doyenne de Lons-le-Saunier, 1662-1790', 2 vols (these de 3e cycle, Nancy, 1975), ii, pp. 235-40.

The Petite Vendee

103

enjoyed the services of a vicaire, though these were most numerous in the towns. However, the Haut-Doubs was remarkable for the absence of familiers and members of the regular orders. There were over 300 familiers in the diocese of Besancpn in 1789. Where a familiarite existed the priest was generally a member.76 Disputes between the priest and the familiers were common, notably over the division of revenues and the ordering of services. Such disputes did little to enhance clerical status generally. However, the parish clergy of the Haut-Doubs was spared these embarrassments, by virtue of the fact that familiers were found in this area in only two locations: at Pontarlier and La Riviere.77 Similarly, the houses of the regular orders, although they were not entirely absent from the Haut-Doubs, were nevertheless far less numerous than in the west of the diocese.78 Lay resentment at the decadence of the men's orders in particular was intense, compounded by the fact that the houses were significant owners of seigneurial rights.79 Such resentment may have fostered a more generalised anti-clericalism, with which the parish clergy of the Haut-Doubs did not have to contend.80 Additionally, the absence of familiarites and religious houses meant that there were fewer religious services to rival the cure's parish mass. One further distinctive feature of the parish priests of the Haut-Doubs may be proffered, albeit more tentatively. Like their colleagues elsewhere in the diocese they performed a range of 'social' services in addition to their purely religious functions. These included, for example, finding potential marriage partners, providing loans and charity, and - a function unique to this area - issuing certificats de besoin that allowed peasants to export grain and other products across the frontier.81 Was the priest more highly valued for these services in the Haut-Doubs than elsewhere? It is tempting to think so. Parishes in the mountain were generally larger than elsewhere in the diocese and contained many small, widely-separated 76 Over 25 per cent of priests in the doyenne of Lons-le-Saunier were members of a familiarite: Vernus, 'Clerge paroissiale', p. 48. 77 Vernus, 'Clerge paroissial', pp. 55-56; idem, Vie comtoise, pp. 90-91; Huot-Pleuroux, Recrutement sacerdotal, 57 n. 30, who posits a causal link between low levels of clerical recruitment and the presence of familiarites in the old regime diocese. 78 J. de Trevillers, Sequania Monastica: dictionnaire des abbayes, 2 vols (Vesoul, 1950-55). 79 Religious houses were frequent targets in the anti-seigneurial riots of 1789-90: Lefebvre, The Great Fear, pp. 106-8. 80 In this context, one may speculate that the unusually low level of clerical vocations in the upland canton of Morteau (one priest per 1,526 inhabitants) owed something to the Cluniac establishment there. The cure of Morteau noted, 'Leur eglise est commune avec la paroisse. Us ont deja etc incendies trois fois par leur faute, et suscitent des proces a tout le monde': Archives Nationales G9 26, quoted in Huot-Pleuroux, Recrutement sacerdotal, pp. 48, 56. 81 There were inevitable and apparently well-founded complaints that priests connived at smuggling by issuing false certificates. Cf. the complaint from customs officials on this score as late as 1792 in ADD, L533.

104

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

hamlets. In 1758 the vicaire of Russey noted that he served 'one hundred and twenty dispersed farms and holdings one hour's journey from the village'.82 In these circumstances, the priest and the local church generally may have provided a community adhesion that was especially important and valued. To be sure, one should not exaggerate, either the dichotomy with other areas of the diocese or the extent to which priest and church provided the focal point of life. The village assembly itself and the need for communities to take collective decisions with respect to the utilisation of common lands and the distribution of the tax burden, for instance, also provided powerful bonds. Nevertheless, it is interesting that even in this context community and church were closely linked. The village assembly frequently met in the church building or the cemetery; at Dampierre it was held under the lime tree in front of the church. Villagers were informed of the assembly by a note pinned to the church door and summoned by the ringing of the church bell. And the assembly usually met after mass or vespers.83 Thus priest and church may have been especially important in the Haut-Doubs in establishing and maintaining the community's solidarity and self identity. When the departmental authorities attempted to replace the non-juring priest in the Haut-Doubs they were attacking a figure who was highly esteemed and valued and who was peculiarly closely integrated into the fabric of local life. Can any wider conclusions be drawn from this particular study of counter-revolution? The particular conjuncture of circumstances that helped to produce revolt in the Haut-Doubs - the anticipation of help from outside, a strong sense of regional identity, and the distinctive characteristics of the parish clergy - were not of course precisely replicated in other counter-revolutionary areas of France. In this sense, an analysis of the Petite Vendee merely confirms the significance of local circumstances, hardly surprising in a country of such immense variation as France in the late eighteenth century. More positively, a study of the Petite Vendee suggests that, notwithstanding the significance of economic relations and patterns of land tenure in the outbreak of the Vendee and Chounnerie in the west, an economic cost-benefit analysis of the impact of the changes wrought by the Revolution may not provide a universal key to an understanding of the incidence of counter-revolution more generally. It also suggests that historians may have been unwise in relegating religious issues to the second rank of importance as an element in counter-revolution, although our understanding of precisely what was involved in those religious issues needs, as Tackett has also indicated, to be much more nuanced than in the past.

82 83

Vernus, Le presbytere, p. 23; Mougey, 'Vie rurale', p. 84. Vernus, Vie comtoise, pp. 66—67.

7 Female Religious Orders in Nineteenth-Century France Ralph Gibson

We still tend to see the nineteenth century in France as the century of urbanisation, modernisation, secularisation. It was probably more the century of the Virgin Mary and of the bonne soeur (the non-cloistered nun). It is the latter that concern us here. There were certainly a lot of them. By 1878 there were 135,000 religieuses in France; seven out of a thousand French women were in a religious order (as opposed to four out of a thousand on the eve of the Revolution). If one lumps together the religious orders and the secular clergy, almost three-fifths of them were women (as opposed to one in three in 1789).1 That is to say, at the beginning of the Third Republic there were in France more members of female religious orders than there had ever been before, or have been since. In most parishes, the bonne soeur had become almost as much a part of the religious furniture as the cure himself. Studies of these female religious orders are beginning to appear.2 Their history is not however all that easy to write, because government sources are marked by a pervasive anticlericalism, while the orders' own archives are in private hands and not always open to the lay historian.3 I have been fortunate enough to have had access to the archives of three orders operating in the diocese of Perigueux: 1. 2. 3.

The Soeurs de Sainte Marthe, a non-cloistered order doing paramedical and educational work. It was founded in 1854, out of nine very localised groups of a similar nature. The Ursuline Sisters, the Perigueux branch of a cloistered but noncontemplative order dating from the Catholic Reformation, specialising in teaching. The Visitation, the Perigueux branch of a cloistered and partially con-

1 C. Langlois, Le Catholicisme au feminin: Les congregations franc^aises a superieure generate au XIXe siecle (Paris, 1984), pp. 307-13, 519-45. 2 Notably O. Arnold, Le corps et I'dme: la vie des religieuses au XIXe siecle (Paris, 1984); and Y. Turin, Femmes et religieuses au XIXe siecle: le feminisme "en religion" (Paris, 1989); and of course Claude Langlois' absolutely fundamental thesis cited above. 3 See the introduction to Yvonne Turin's book cited above.

106

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789 templative order founded by Saint Frangois de Sales, which in the nineteenth century had taken on some teaching functions.4

This essay is an attempt to use those archives to think about why it was that so many women flooded into religious orders in nineteenth-century France. I shall be mostly concerned with the social and psychological determinants of behaviour. It needs always to be borne in mind that, although such factors played a crucial role in women's religious vocations, the women themselves did not experience it that way. They thought they were responding not to social stimuli but to the grace of God. It is not my purpose here to say that they were wrong - that is scarcely a historian's job. What a historian can however determine, with reasonable certainty, is that even if their vocation was subject to social and psychological determinants, their religious faith was sincere. There is no ground, at least where the nineteenth century is concerned, for being cynical about the motives for joining religious orders. What they wrote about their faith may have a slightly off-putting tone for the unbeliever, but there is no denying its genuineness. Thus Eva Chanier, a postulant at Sainte-Marthe in 1895, kept notes during a retreat: Thanks be to you, oh God, a thousand times thanks! I am too happy now that I am at peace with you. It now only remains for me to prove my love to you, to assure you that I want to be entirely yours until my last breath. Ah! I am wholly certain about the choice that I have to make. I want only Jesus! and Jesus crucified! . . . I am entirely consumed by your love, oh my God, and I will make any sacrifice to be your faithful servant. I want no other bridegroom but You . . .5 There is no reason to believe that she didn't mean what she wrote — and there were many more like her.6 4 It is a particular pleasure to thank those who generously made their archives available to me, and who welcomed me with great kindness: Soeur Frangoise-Dominique, archivist of the Soeurs de Sainte-Marthe [SSM], at their maison-mm at Perigueux; Soeur Marie du SaintEsprit, archivist of the Ursuline Sisters at Lyon, where the archives of the Perigueux Ursulines have ended up (their school at Perigueux was closed in 1946 and the remaining sisters went to Montauban; they are now all dead); Soeur Marguerite-Marie, former superior of the Visitation at Perigueux, at Lourdes, where the archives of the Perigueux Visitation have ended up (it closed in 1981; the remaining Visitandines joined the Visitation of Lourdes). I am very grateful to them, and to their fellow-religious, for their openness and generosity. 5 Archives, SSM, necrologies, ii, pp. 236-54. 6 See (for example) the notes made by Madeleine Lafaye (future superior of the Perigueux Ursulines) during a retreat in 1856, in abbe A. Mathet, 'Mere Saint-Joseph Lafaye (1835-1913), superieure de Sainte-Ursule du Sacre-Coeur de Perigueux (1866-1913) (undated typescript deposited in the Perigueux diocesan archives), pp. 15-16.

Female Religious Orders in Nineteenth-Century France

107

One test of the sincerity of vocations is that many of them were asserted against strong parental opposition. It is true that after the Revolution some impoverished aristocratic girls may have finished up in a religious order because there was really nowhere else for them to go. Dowries were expensive. Victoire de Malbec, born in 1812, may have been a case in point. Her parents 'had inherited the antique and lively faith of their fathers, rather than their land and property, lost in the great Revolution'. Victoire never had much of a chance: The sons received a sound formal education; but the daughters, as was the custom at that time, got a very good education in the broad sense but little learning: reading, writing, arithmetic, spinning and weaving, and looking after the home, was about all that they were taught. Little Victoire learned, however, very quickly and at an early age, the Old and New Testaments and various prayers.

Her religious upbringing did not prevent her falling in love with a young man, but her parents disapproved of him - perhaps because they couldn't afford the dowry; 'Victoire, unable to change their minds, sought peace in prayer and concentrated all her affections on God' - that is, she joined the Sisters of Sainte-Martha.7 There were some other aristocratic girls like her. But there were not a great many of them - and in any case there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of their religious faith and vocation. The point here, at any rate, is that many more vocations were asserted against strong parental opposition. Commonly, parents regarded their unmarried daughters as permanent live-in housemaids, and were often very reluctant to let them go. A number of future religieuses had literally to flee the parental roof under cover of darkness, to knock on the door of a novitiate which their father (usually) would never have allowed them to enter. In the case of Anne-Madeleine Magne, sister of the minister of Napoleon III, it was her mother: Anne-Madeleine became a novice at the Visitation in 1833 without her mother's permission, making her vows without maternal blessing.8 Another sign of the sincerity of vocations is that very few religieuses subsequently regretted them. A few did: a daughter of the aristocratic Dupin de Saint-Cyr family, for example, joined the Ursulines in 1825 to escape from years of vicious treatment by her mother, who had kept her locked up and made her beg for bread in tenants' farmhouses. Twenty-one years later, the poor woman could no longer stand the religious life for which she had no real vocation, and jumped over the wall.9 Of 132 other Ursuline vocations in the nineteenth century, however, only three nuns

Archives, SSM, necrologies, i, pp. 321-27. Archives, Visitation, livre du couvent, iii, pp. 182-86. 9 Archives, diocese de Perigueux, D5. 7

8

108

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

left the convent after their profession: two because they found obedience to the conventual way of life too difficult to sustain, the third probably because of lesbianism (discreetly referred to as amities particulieres).10 At the Visitation, out of 143 vocations in the nineteenth century, one woman had to be expelled in 1852, for erratic behaviour; and another left in 1905, following family pressure.!l The fall-out rate was of course greater among novices before the final vows - but even at the noviciate the Visitation seems only to have admitted, in the course of the century, nine novices who lost their vocation or who found that the life didn't suit them.12 Of the 444 vocations between 1853 and 1914 at Sainte-Marthe, only eleven returned 'to the world'.13 There are thus a number of convergent reasons for regarding the vast majority of nineteenth-century vocations as sincere: the joy expressed by the young women themselves, their frequent determination to pursue their vocation in the face of parental opposition, and their perseverance in it through life. But sincerity of vocation did not of course mean that social and psychological factors were not also crucial. God was no doubt working in mysterious ways, and one way was through social and psychological determinants. It is of course extraordinarily difficult to demonstrate the role of such factors in practice, because it involves assessing the motivations of people who wrote very little about themselves. Motivation is always hard to determine, but we can get some idea from the obituary notices which were systematically written for every member who died.14 The purpose of such notices was evidently edification as much as information, but the authors are surprisingly willing to call a spade a spade, and one does get the impression - after reading several hundred of them - of being in touch with the ordinary religieuse. It is clear that female religious orders appealed to those who had a vocation to teach. Jeanne Conte, for example, came from a poor background: her father was a charpentier and her mother a cultivatrice. She was the best student in her convent school, going on to become a

10 Archives, Ursulines, annales: cases of Jeanne Lamy (1823), Jeanne Lafaye, soeur converse (1842), Jeanne Focke (1868). 11 Archives, Visitation, livre du chapitre, pp. 599ff (cases of Elizabeth Canler and Jeanne Martin). 12 Archives, Visitation, livre du chapitre, pp. Iff. 13 Archives, SSM, registres du personnel, i, pp. 14, 27, 38, 95; ii, pp. 60, 69bis, 145bis; iii, pp. 27, 37, 67bis, 74bis, 112. (Three of these were Irish girls who took their vows just before the First World War.) Only one, to the best of my knowledge, got married (AD, Dordogne, 5E 317/210*, naissances 1876, no. 281 - which also gives the marriage). 14 The obituaries of the Soeurs de Sainte-Marthe fill two large registers (for the period 1852-1905). Those of the Visitandines were printed, and most of them are in the diocesan archives at Perigueux (D195, also D5); the manuscript originals are in the Livre du Couvent, at Lourdes. The Ursulines almost certainly wrote similar obituaries, but they have not survived.

Female Religious Orders in Nineteenth-Century France

109

private tutor, having taught herself basic Latin and Greek. In 1884 she took her vows with Sainte-Marthe and became headmistress of one of their primary schools; she died in 1895 of a bronchial complaint.15 There were many like her. Their desire to teach coincided, in the second half of the century, with a massive increase in demand for girls' education - measured by the fact that in 1855 only 55 per cent of women were able to sign the marriage register, whereas fifty years later 96 per cent could do so.16 To a considerable extent, this demand stimulated vocations to teach - many of which took the form of religious vocations as well. This was the case until 1904 when members of religious orders were forbidden to teach - which accounts, no doubt, for the fall in vocations to Sainte-Marthe (where only the paramedical side was kept going). The case of the Perigueux Ursulines is particularly striking: in the 1880s and 1890s their highly successful pensionnat provided practically the only suitable formal education for daughters of the bourgeoisie - there being as yet no lycee de jeunes fille in the town. Ursuline vocations rose accordingly until the school was closed in 1905.17 The need for teachers, both in primary schools and in bourgeois pensionnats, clearly called forth a number of religious vocations. As the Republican state became increasingly prepared to provide education for girls, and finally to prevent anyone else from doing so, that stimulus ceased. But the state was not yet prepared to provide the paramedical services, particularly nursing, which was the other speciality of female religious orders. Republicans who closed down Catholic schools without any qualms of conscience would still call on the religious orders to provide nursing staff for hospitals. As the doctors of a Perigueux clinic declared in 1911, 'the lay personnel necessary to replace in quantity and quality the religieuses currently employed does not exist' — and if it did it would be too expensive.18 The whole of the period saw an unrelenting demand for paramedical services such as the Soeurs de Sainte-Marthe (though not the Ursulines or the Visitation) traditionally provided. Young women with a vocation for the caring professions — and a strong religious faith — were

15 Archives, SSM, necrologies, ii, pp. 90—93; registre du personnel, ii, p. 134. AD, Dordogne, 5E 346/27*, naissances 1862, no. 14. 16 Statistique Generale de la France, Annuaire statistique, 34 (1914 and 1915), partie retrospective, pp. 18*-19*. 17 There were 132 Ursuline vocations between 1821 and 1914; the most fruitful decade was the 1890s (with twenty-eight). The school did reopen immediately afterwards, in another location and with lay or secularised staff, but the new format could scarcely inspire Ursuline vocations. The Soeurs de Sainte-Marthe had eighty-seven vocations between 1880 and 1904, but only nineteen between 1905 and 1914 (the SSM figures concern only those who were born in the diocese; non-local recruitment after 1904 is distorted because the order diversified to the suburbs of London). is AD, Dordogne, V245.

110

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

thus attracted. Marguerite Dusolier, who took her vows at Sainte-Marthe in 1822, is a striking case in point: The most repulsive sores were those that she treated with the greatest devotion and even pleasure; for fifty-two years as a hospital sister she occupied the post of pharmacist, in which she had acquired great skill . . . . From all sides people came to consult her like a doctor . . ,19 Obituary notices are full of expressions like 'she suffered when she saw other suffer'.20 What the nineteenth century saw, in effect, in the diocese of Perigueux as elsewhere in France, was a coming together of on the one hand a large number of young women of strong Catholic faith who wanted to care for humanity, and on the other a public demand for their services which the state was not as yet prepared to meet - another reason for the nineteenth-century success of female religious orders. The orders thus gave young Catholic women a chance to be teachers or paramedical workers. The orders also gave some a chance to be managers. The convent offered a definite career structure, leading to the elective position of mother superior, which involved administrative and personal skills of a high order. In the early twentieth century, for example, the superior of Sainte-Marthe controlled a budget of some 160,000 francs for a maison-mere and a score of branch houses.21 Strong-willed and able women delighted in the challenge. Catherine Dolezon, head of the Bergerac house of the Soeurs de Sainte-Marthe, was one of them: 'some people [says her obituary] complained of her virility; a woman, a religieuse, they claimed, should not show such strength of will and vigour in action'.22 Marie-Anne Raymondie, superior of the Visitation for four separate three-year periods, chafed at the bit when she was not in charge: The period of rest accorded her by the Rule was for her charity a time of physical and moral suffering . . . she seemed at the end of her tether; but as soon as she was re-elected she was herself again, spreading life, joy and peace around her.23 But the classic case was that of Marie-Madeleine Lafaye, daughter of an impoverished family of the rural bourgeoisie, who took her vows as an Ursuline in 1855; at twenty-five she was appointed novice mistress (by a superior who was herself only thirty-seven at the time), becoming superior from 1866 until her death in 1913 (with a brief interruption from 1875 to 19 Archives, SSM, necrologies, i, pp. 133-34. 20 Archives, SSM, necrologies, ii, pp. 199-201. 21 AD, Dordogne, V243. 22 Archives, SSM, necrologies, ii, pp. 307-22. 23 Archives, Visitation, annales, i, p. 191.

Female Religious Orders in Nineteenth-Century France

111

1881). She appears to have been a brilliant headmistress, presiding over a highly successful convent school through which passed nearly all the daughters of the Perigueux bourgeoisie - including the daughter, sister and nieces of the anticlerical deputy who in 1905 helped to get it close down.24 It was not a career which would have been available to any woman of her generation outside a religious order. The female orders offered such careers, and therein lay a part of their appeal, at least to a certain kind of woman. Marie-Madeleine Lafaye was clearly an extraordinary woman, but she was also typical of many strong-willed religieuses in that she enjoyed the intellectual rewards offered by the exercise of responsibility and authority in the power structure of a religious order. But not all women wanted to be powerful. Indeed, the upbringing that most of them experienced was more likely to make them docile and submissive, obtaining security by accepting the authority of others. In the tradition of the Catholic Reformation, religious orders insisted on the virtues of obedience and humility; in the words of the 1856 reglement of Sainte-Marthe, one should 'renounce one's own will to seek only the will of God, in the prescriptions of one's Rule or in the will of one's superiors'.25 Many religieuses found this not only easy, but psychologically reassuring. Obituaries are full of expressions like 'this timorous and tranquil soul whose only pleasure was in solitude',26 or 'from her tenderest years she showed an extraordinary taste for silence and solitude, quite unable to mingle with the cries and games of the other children'.27 Timid girls who found the world difficult to cope with often fled from it into the silence of the cloister - even if the cloister might in the nineteenth century turn out to be the classroom or the hospital ward. One might hazard the hypothesis that female religious orders appealed to a particular kind of personality, loosely described as an authoritarian personality. In some women, this took the form of a desire to exercise power. In others however - probably the majority - it was more likely to take the form of seeking security in an order imposed by others. Marie Delage, a daughter of the rural bourgeoisie who made her profession at Sainte-Marthe in 1840, is a striking example. She received a virile education in which respect for age, honour for the family name, and constant dedication to duty played the major role — after faith and the fear of God. Sister Delage . . . never quite got over the excessive austerity that had been imprinted on her spirit and her heart.

24

See her biography, cited in n. 6. Reglement general de la congregation des Soeurs de Sainte-Marthe du Perigord (Perigueux, 1856), pp. 131-32. 26 Archives, SSM, necrologies, i, pp. 73-76. 27 Archives, SSM, i, pp. 90-94. 25

112

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

Like others of the same authoritarian personality structure, she sought psychic satisfaction in the ritualistic acceptance of order imposed from outside, in the form of the Rule of her order — appropriately known as regularite: delighting in the most punctilious and constant regularity, from the threshold of the noviciate to the threshold of the grave . . . . Infractions of the Rule distressed her profoundly and sometimes even provoked her into excesses of zeal. The regular life was her ideal, her passion; she led it come what may

28

The personality type is, I think, fairly obvious. Sister Delage was perhaps a caricature of that authoritarian personality, but there were many like her. It could break either way: either into the inability to accept a subservient position (as with the Visitandine Marie-Anne Raymondie), or into a pressing desire to abandon one's freedom to another (the mother superior) or - better still - to the abstract authority of the Rule. Religious orders offered both possibilities to nineteenth-century women - though necessarily more of the latter. Whether such possibilities were particularly appealing to nineteenth-century women is perhaps another matter.29 Certainly there were enough such personalities around to provide a constant flow of recruits to female religious orders, some wishing to dominate, most perhaps wishing to be dominated, either by the power hierarchy of the order or by the abstract Rule. Dominant or dominated, teachers, paramedics, managers, all had a very strong sense of being part of a community. At a critical level, that was what attracted them to it. Religious orders provided nineteenth-century French women with an unparalleled opportunity to lead their lives in a structured community of their own sex. In 'the world' (as they called it) there were very few opportunities for female sociability, and what there was (mass, the lavoir, perhaps the veillee} was episodic. One of the important functions of female orders was to cater for an unsatisfied female desire for the company of their own sex. That is why, I think, the word communaute recurs like a leitmotiv in the archives that I have consulted. It is particularly noticeable at the point of death - always a community event, in which a nun

28

Archives, SSM, necrologies, ii, pp. 114-16. There are a few indications about infant experiences that may have influenced personalities in F. Mayeur, De la Revolution a Vecole republicaine, vol. iii of the Histoir generate de I'enseignement et de ['education en France, dir. L. Farias (Paris, 1981), pp. 168, 177-78, 180. She suggests that for much of the nineteenth century child-rearing practices were fairly unauthoritarian (breast-feeding on demand, very little toilet-training), with a reaction towards the end of the century in favour of more authoritarian methods (strictly scheduled feeds, early and systematic toilet-training). Insofar as I understand anything about the effects of such child-rearing practices on personality structure, this limited information does not fit well with the hypothesis advanced here. 29

Female Religious Orders in Nineteenth-Century France

113

died surrounded by her sisters. Gabrielle Lagorce, dying of Tuberculosis in 1882 at twenty-one, a month after having taken her vows at Sainte-Marthe, 'gathered her strength to tell her companions in a clear voice how happy she was to die en communaute .'M It was that sense of community (as well of course as their religious faith) which sustained many religieuses not only in death but also in their lives, and which had perhaps helped to attract them to 'the community' — as the order was often called — in the first place. Perigueux was not France, but I think it illustrates some of the factors which made female religious orders in France as a whole strikingly successful in the nineteenth century. They provided young women with teaching and caring careers at the time of a specific conjuncture between great demand for such services and the unwillingness of the state (except latterly in the case of education) to provide them. They provided opportunities for some women for careers in management - at a time when no such career was remotely possible elsewhere. They also provided a large body of women, timid by nature or by upbringing, with a haven in which they could lose their fear of freedom - at a time when women were strongly encouraged to be humble and docile rather than to be free. They provided many women with the structured company of their own sex in an exclusively female community - at a time when such opportunities for women were rare or non-existent. These are not exactly new conclusions, but what I have tried to do here is to give them an archival base. I have tried, finally, to use that archival base to emphasise that, although the religious life appealed to women for a whole complex of non-religious reasons, the religious dimension itself was crucial. These women were not - consciously - striving to be teachers, paramedics, obedient servants, or even just to enjoy the company of other women. They were striving to know God, to love Him and to serve Him all their days.

30

Archives, SSM, necrologies, i, pp. 264-67, 236-38, and passim.

This page intentionally left blank

8 Female Martyrdom and the Politics of Sainthood in Nineteenth-Century France: The Cult of Sainte Philomene Caroline Ford

In 1837 a group of women from the Norman city of Bayeux were granted permission by their bishop to dedicate a cathedral chapel to Sainte Philomene, an adolescent Christian martyr who was allegedly tortured and killed for resisting the sexual advances of the Emperor Diocletian in the third century AD. The women assumed the entire cost of furnishing the chapel and wrote to the Parisian painter Franc,oisLouis de Juinne (whose fees they could not afford) to ask him to recommend an artist to paint the chapel's devotional centrepiece.1 De Juinne proposed Theodelinde Dubouche, a young woman working in his studio. She gladly accepted the commission for the sum of 400 francs and devoted much of the winter of 1837-38 to painting the martyred young saint. When the work was first unveiled in the Parisian church of Saint-Sulpice, de Juinne was greatly impressed by the skilful quality of its execution, and other painters remarked on its mix of classical and romantic styles which 'so often conflicted with one another'.2 The cult of Sainte Philomene was one of the most important saintly cults in nineteenth-century France, and Theodelinde Dubouche's painting of Philomene became one of many images of the saint that adorned chapels, churches and cathedrals in France from the 1830s onward.3 Baptismal records reflected her growing renown, and itinerant colporteurs contributed to her fame by hawking countless copies of the Neuvaine en Vhonneur de Sainte Philomene, vierge et martryre, thaumaturge au XIXe siecle. By 1886 a 1 Some of France's most illustrious aristocratic names, including Polignac and d'Aubigny, were associated with the enterprise. Marie-Therese du Coeur de Jesus, Souvenirs d'une amie sur la vie de Theodelinde Dubouche, par une religieuse ursuline, 2 vols (Paris, 1882), ii, pp. 7-8. I wish to acknowledge the helpful comments provided by Dr Ruth Harris in the preparation of this essay. 2 Ibid., p. 10. 3 The Parisian church of Saint-Gervais alone contained eight paintings of the martyred virgin. One of them was executed by the female artist Clemence Fernal in 1839. Inventaire general des richesses d'art de la France, iii, Paris, monuments religieux (Paris, 1901), pp. 153-54. Also see Mrs Anna Brownell Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, 2 vols (Boston, 1865), ii, pp. 287-89.

116

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

confraternity devoted to Philomene established at the church of SaintGervais in Paris boasted 7,000 members.4 Philomene ultimately became the subject of literary work as well.5 When the Goncourt brothers wrote a novel about a young nun in 1861, it was not surprising that they entitled it Soeur Philomene.6 Philomene's popularity is, in retrospect, astonishing because she was by and large a figment of imagination.7 Even though all saints are, in the words of Pierre Delooz, 'more or less constructed', Sainte Philomene, unlike Anthony of Padua or Saint Perpetua, left no historical record of her life in the form of a name, a place of birth, a life story or a date of death.8 Her cult sprang up after the discovery of a young girl's bodily remains during excavations of the Roman catacombs in the early nineteenth century. Her name, vital statistics and the story of her martyrdom were only later supplied by the visions of an Italian nun. Philomene's popularity in the century following the French Revolution is intriguing because the narrative of her martyrdom bore a striking and surprisingly close resemblance to the stories surrounding secular saints of the French Revolution. Her martyrdom and theirs were expressed entirely in terms of the virtues of bodily containment and purity. Although sexual renunciation and virginity are old themes in western Christianity, they were given distinctive forms in the narratives of sexual danger and violence surrounding Philomene and the martyred female revolutionary saints of the late 1790s.9 4 Its mission was to honour the saint; to encourage the imitation of her Christian virtues; and to obtain divine mercy for France. Abbe Gauthier, Manuel de la devotion a Sainte Philomene (2nd edn, Paris, 1911), p. 99. 5 Charles Nisard, Histoire des livres populaires ou de la litterature de colportage, 2 vols (Paris, 1864), ii, p. 51 and Catherine Rosenbaum-Dondaine, L'image de piete en France, 1814-1914 (Paris, 1984), pp. 52-53. 6 Edmond and Jules Goncourt's Soeur Philomene (Paris, 1861) was turned into the play by Jules Vidal and Arthur Byl. Jeanne Ponton, La religieuse dans la litterature franqaise (Quebec. 1969), p. 400. Characters bearing the name Philomene began to appear in a number of nineteenth-century novels. See, for example, Emile Zola's Germinal (Paris, 1885). 7 For the cult of Sainte Philomene, see Mgr Poveda, Memorie storiche riguardanti il martirio e culto della vergine Santa Filomena e I'inventione del suo corpo nel cimitero di Priscilla (Foligno, 1834); Jean Darche, Vie tres complete de Sainte Philomene (Paris, 1876); Mgr Francis Trochu, La petite sainte du cure d'ars, Sainte Philomene, vierge et martyre (Paris, 1929). Theodelinde Dubouche's biographer remarked on the considerable attention that 'this young Greek princess, martyred for having refused the hand of the Emperor Diocletian' received in the late 1830s. Marie-Therese, Souvenirs, ii, p. 8. For a regional perspective, see Yves-Marie Hilaire, Une chretiente au XIX siecle? La vie religieuse des populations du diocese d'Arras 1840-1914, 2 vols (Villeneuve d'Ascq, 1977), i, pp. 406-47. 8 Delooz, 'Toward a Sociological Study of Sainthood', in ed. Stephen Wilson Saints and their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore, and History (Cambridge, 1984), p. 207. 9 Modern historians have devoted a great deal of attention to representations of the female body and the meanings with which it has been invested. See, for example, Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley, 3 vols (New York, 1978);

continued

The Cult of Sainte Philomene

117

Cults of saints have long been important cornerstones of Catholic Christianity, but models of martyrdom and fortunes of individual saints have changed significantly through time. Although historians of late Antiquity and early modern Europe have devoted considerable attention to saintly cults, they have been less a subject of inquiry among historians of modern Europe, and there have been few sustained attempts to reveal the contexts that give rise to martyrs and inspire their followers. This essay explores the emergence of the cult of Sainte Philomene, and the polysemic meanings with which she was invested, by placing the representations of Philomene's martyred body and the narratives of sexual danger surrounding her and the revolutionary saints of the 1790s in the context of France's revolutionary past, the growing importance of the female religious vocation in the nineteenth century, and a widespread preoccupation with sexual violence in nineteenth-century French society.10 While I will argue that the propagation of Philomene's cult was an evident part of the Catholic church's search for new sources of legitimacy in the aftermath of the French Revolution, her popular appeal, particularly among women, had much to do with the nature of her martyrdom and

continued

Catherine Gallagher and Thomas Lacqueur (eds), The Making of the Modern Body: Sexuality and Society in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley, 1987); essays in Lynn Hunt (ed.), Eroticism and the Body Politic (Berkeley, 1991); essays in Susan Suleiman (ed.), The Female Body in Western Culture (Cambridge, MA, 1986); Marina Warner, Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (London, 1985); and Dorinda Outram, The Body and the French Revolution: Sex, Class and Political Culture (New Haven, 1989). Religious representations of the martyred female body have failed to evoke the same interest. These representations have provided historians of Antiquity and early modern Europe with an excellent lens through which to view changing conceptions of self and community. See, for example, Giulia Sissa, Greek Virginity, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA, 1990); Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988); Brent D. Shaw, The Passion of Perpetua', Past and Present, 139 (May 1993), pp. 3-45; Averil Cameron, 'Virginity as Metaphor: Women in the Rhetoric of Early Christianity', in Averil Cameron (ed.), History as Text: The Writing of Ancient History (London, 1989), pp. 181-205; Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, 1987); Clarissa Atkinson, '"Precious Balsam in a Fragile Glass": The Ideology of Virginity in the Later Middle Ages', Journal of Family History, 8 (1983), pp. 131-43; and Bynum's essays in Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York, 1992). For an illuminating study of the significance of the nude female body in Christian art, see Margaret M. Miles, Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West (Boston, 1989). 10 For a discussion of the 'polysemic' nature of religious symbols, see Caroline Walker Bynum, 'Introduction: The Complexity of Symbols', in Caroline Walker Bynum, Steven Harrell and Paula Richman (eds), Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols (Boston, 1986), pp. 1-20. The multivalent or changing meanings with which 'real' or imagined saints have been invested is reflected, for example, in the cult of Mary Magdalene, the repentent prostitute, who was first venerated by women, but gradually became the patron saint of male and female penitents. Victor Saxer, Lc citlte de Marie Madeleine cu Occident des origines a la fin du moyen age (Paris, 1959).

118

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

her alleged miraculous healings.11 The essay concludes with a reflection on the eventual decline of the cult of Sainte Philomene, for unlike Sainte Genevieve, the patron saint of the city of Paris, Philomene's popularity was very short-lived. By the turn of the century a new generation of Catholics preferred to honour Joan of Arc and Sainte Therese de Lisieux, both of whom had supplanted the young virgin martyr by the First World War. The bodily remains of Sainte Philomene were discovered on 25 May 1802 when a group of workmen digging in the cemetery of Priscilla came upon a tomb inscribed with the words Lumena Paxte Cum Fi and with symbols that included three arrows, two anchors and a symbol that resembled a lily or a virgin's lamp. The presence of what appeared to be a vial of dried blood near the decapitated skeleton of the young girl, aged between thirteen and fifteen, quickly led to the belief that the remains were those of an early Christian martyr.12 When her bones were unearthed, according to one account, they were transformed into 'luminous bodies', which further confirmed their sacred character.13 Her remains were transferred to the Sacred Reliquary until a priest from Mugnano, near Naples, convinced the Vatican to allow him to transfer the relics to his church in 1805. It was only after their transfer to Mugnano that miracles were reported. These included miraculous cures and a sudden rain that occurred in drought-stricken Mugnano when she was brought to the town. Little was known about Philomene's life or her martyrdom until the 1830s, when her personal history was unveiled in a series of visions that came to three people: a young artisan, a priest, and most importantly, a nun in Naples, Mother Luisa de Gesu, a Dominican tertiary. These visions revealed that Philomene, a young adolescent girl, whom the nun claimed was a princess from a small state in Greece, refused the Emperor Diocletian's sexual advances and offer of marriage. A rebuffed and enraged emperor had her stripped, flagellated and thrown into the Tiber, with an anchor around her neck. According to the visionary, two angels saved her and brought her to shore. She was therefore shot with arrows, which reversed their course to kill the soldiers charged with the duty. Finally, Diocletian was said to have resorted to lancing her to death and decapitating her body. The cult of Philomene was given official sanction in 1837 — the same year the women of Bayeux created a chapel of Sainte Philomene - when 11 This argument has been convincingly made by Philippe Boutry in his pathbreaking article, 'Les saints des catacombes: itineraires frangais d'une piete ultramontaine', Melanges de I'Ecole Fran$aise de Rome, 91 (1971), pp. 875-930. 12 Arranged in another order the inscription could read 'Pax Tecum Filumena', or 'Peace be with you Philomena'. 13 Sainte Philomene: Sa vie, son martyre, ses premiers miracles. Pratiques de devotion (Montreal, 1910).

The Cult of Sainte Philomene

119

Pope Gregory XVI accorded her a mass. In 1855, Pius IX assigned 10 August to her in the calendar of saints. After the miraculous cure of a French woman, Pauline Jaricot, in Mugnano in 1835, her cult found a home in France, where Philomene rapidly gained an enormous following. The archbishop of Paris gave a small relic of the saint to Sempigny, a small town near the city of Noyon, and a large number of chapels, including that of Bayeux, were dedicated to her. To the extent that historians have commented on Sainte Philomene in France, they have examined her cult from two interconnected perspectives. Thomas Kselman suggests that 'the vision of Philomena's martyrdom would bear psychological interpretation' as 'a masochistic expression of sexual repression'.14 Ralph Gibson has recently concurred by arguing that the vision of the Italian nun who supplied the narrative of Philomene's life 'contained strong elements of repressed sado-masochism'.15 Her popularity has also been given a sociological interpretation, as evidence of the 'feminisation' of Catholicism in post-revolutionary France. This 'feminisation' of Catholicism has been defined in two ways: first, in the growing discrepancy between male and female practice of religion in a formal sense through attendance at mass and Easter service and through the massive entry of women into religious orders; and secondly in the reputed 'feminisation' of religious devotion itself, which allegedly became increasingly sentimental, emotional - read 'feminine' - during the course of the nineteenth century.16 The narrative of Philomene's martyrdom might well warrant a psychological interpretation as far as the vision of the individual nun is concerned, but this interpretation tells us little about what her martyrdom meant to her followers and why her cult became popular when it did. Any analysis of the cult of Sainte Philomene must elucidate the reasons that led certain saints and devotions to become popular or unpopular, without reducing religious expression to social history or psychology.17 To point to the feminisation of devotion to explain both the causes and consequences of new forms of popular devotion, which the cult of Sainte Philomene represented, only reifies the category of the feminine without explaining what devotions meant to those concerned and how changes in devotional 14 Thomas Kselman, Miracles and Prophecies in Nineteenth-Century France (New Brunswick, NJ, 1983), p. 104. 15 Ralph Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism, 1789-1914 (London and New York, 1989), p. 152. 16 For a discussion of this phenomenon, see Claude Langlois, Le catholicisme au feminin: les congegations feminins a superieure generate au XIXe siecle (Paris, 1984); Olwen Hufton, 'The Reconstruction of the Church, 1796-1801', in Gwynne Lewis and Colin Lucas (eds), Beyond the Terror: Essays in French Regional History, 1794-1815 (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 21-52; Suzanne Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred: Lay Religion and Popular Politics in Revolutionary France (Ithaca, NY, 1990), pp. 197-216; Caroline Ford, 'Religion and Popular Culture in Modern Europe', Journal of Modern History, 65 (March 1993), pp. 166-75. 17 Delooz, 'Towards a Sociological Study of Sainthood', p. 207.

120

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

patterns related to other kinds of historical change or continuity. In short, while the psychological interpretation does not account for the historical specificity of the cult, the sociological interpretation is inherently tautological because devotion to the cult of Sainte Philomene is cited as both a consequence and cause of the feminisation of religion in nineteenth-century France.18 The cult of Sainte Philomene cannot simply be reduced to psychological problems among its adherents or to the church's changed social constituency in nineteenth-century France. The cult would not have spread without the sponsorship of the French clergy; and it would not have flourished unless it provided lay men and women with a means of making sense of their world. The cult must therefore be placed within the social, ecclesiastical and political context of post-revolutionary France, but the narrative of Philomene's martyrdom must also be viewed as a manifestation of a 'lived religion' experienced by men and - more significantly - women in nineteenth-century France. The Roman catacombs have undergone successive periods of excavation since late Antiquity, and they have provided an almost inexhaustible storehouse of relics to the Christian world. When the unregulated traffic in bodily remains became a source of increasing embarrassment and scandal for the Vatican in the late seventeenth century, the catacombs were closed to the public and papal authorities established criteria to determine whether or not bodily remains found in them could be designated as those of a Christian martyr. These criteria included the inscription of a palm in the tomb and the presence of a vase containing the martyr's blood. The test of these identifying characteristics persisted into the nineteenth century, when interest in the Roman catacombs and the bodily remains allegedly belonging to early Christian martyrs became the object of renewed interest. Between 1800 and 1850, 1,347 new martyred bodies, including that of Philomene, were discovered and removed from the catacombs - the majority after 1815 - and they were distributed throughout the Catholic world.19 Two characteristics distinguished the nineteenth-century 'saints of the catacombs' from earlier periods. First, the majority of saints were young adolescents and many of them were female, like the great visionaries of the post-revolutionary period. Secondly, a very large number of these bodily remains and relics found a permanent home in France. France imported 23.2 per cent of the martyrs' remains between 1800 and 1850 For a discussion of this tautology see Caroline Ford, 'Religion and Popular Culture in Modern Europe', p. 169. 19 For an analysis of the discovery of a large number of 'new' catacomb saints during the first half of the nineteenth century see Philippe Boutry's, 'Les saints des catacombes'. The number could be as high as 1,600 and 1,800 because of lacunae in Vatican records between the years 1824-37. Boutry, 'Les saints des catacombes', p. 885. 18

The Cult of Sainte Philomene

121

and, after Italy, was the second most important recipient of saintly relics.20 The 1830s, 1840s and 1850s marked the 'gallicisation' of the traffic in alleged saintly bodies, and Sainte Philomene, in the words of Boutry, played a 'pioneering role' in the development of this phenomenon.21 The diffusion of cults attached to the saints of the Roman catacombs was the deliberate work of a largely ultramontane clergy in France. Sainte Philomene had the particular good fortune to have an influential proselytiser in the person of Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianney, the cure d'Ars, the priest who had almost single-handedly rechristianised the parish of Ars, which had been largely indifferent to religion at the beginning of the nineteenth century, thus becoming the marvel of clerics and anticlericals alike. The cure's reputation for saintliness and extraordinary spiritual power was known far and wide by the middle of the nineteenth century, and the parish ultimately became a pilgrimage site. The cure d'Ars was one of the chief propagators of the cult of Sainte Philomene in nineteenth-century France and made a concerted effort to direct his attention to a female audience. He entered into correspondence with a number of women who wrote to him of their concerns, and he gradually became the object of saintly veneration himself.22 The cure d'Ars first learned of the virgin saint from Pauline Jaricot, after she had been allegedly cured of a serious illness while in Mugnano in 1835.23 Vianney immediately obtained a relic of Philomene for his church. The first baby carrying the name of Philomene was baptised in Ars in 1835 and, between 1836 and 1845, Philomenes represented 43 per cent of all girls born in the parish.24 As soon as her relics were transported to Ars, the parish became a site of holy healings. Indeed, Philomene ultimately came to be known as 'thaumaturge of the nineteenth century'.25 While the cure d'Ars placed the healing hand, he attributed the miraculous cure to Sainte Philomene. In the process, Philomene was very important in the cure d'Ars' own progress toward sainthood. If the cult of Sainte Philomene legitimised the work of the cure d'Ars, who was in part responsible for popularising the cult, Philomene and other saints of the catacombs became a source of legitimation for the 20

The largest number of relics - 642 or 47.66 per cent - remained in Italy, ibid., p. 887. 21 Ibid., p. 895. 22 For the cure d'Ars, the saint of parish priests who was canonised in 1925, see Philippe Boutry, 'Un sanctuaire et son saint, Jean-Marie Baptiste Vianney, cure d'Ars', Annales, economies, societes, civilisations, 36 (1980), pp. 353-79; Mgr Francis Trochu, Le cure d'Ars: Saint Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianney (Montsouris, 1903); and Ralph Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism, 1789-1914, pp. 100-2. 23 Pierre Boutry, 'Un sanctuaire et son saint au XIXe siecle: Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianney, cure d'Ars', p. 371. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid.

122

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

Catholic church itself. The French church had suffered severe blows during the French Revolution. Many religious sites had been physically vandalised and desecrated. Holy objects and relics had been destroyed, and hundreds of parishes had been without priests or any form of religious direction for years. The early years of the nineteenth century witnessed a full-scale effort on the part of the Catholic church, aided in part by governments of the Restoration, to revitalise the Catholic religion through missions, conversions and proselytising, and through the encouragement of religious vocations.26 These efforts met with uneven success. While female religious congregations witnessed extraordinary growth during the course of the nineteenth century, few men entered male orders. The Restoration did, however, bring an upsurge in clerical vocations and the emergence of a largely ultramontane clergy. The social face of this clergy was very different from that of the ancien regime in that the majority of young men came from the popular classes to whom they ministered.27 This clergy faced the difficult task of bringing entire villages back into the fold, as the cure d'Ars was reputed to have done with miraculous speed. Methods of conversion or reconversion varied but, by the 1840s, it became clear that forms of officially sanctioned devotions had changed significantly from those of the eighteenth century. The nineteenth-century clergy, unlike their largely urban and bourgeois counterparts of the eighteenth century, were far more tolerant of popular religious practices and 'superstitions'. Instead of attempting to repress them, they sought to control and encourage them.28 Clerical recuperation of popular religion reflected new forms of institutionalised popular piety that were simultaneously fostered by the intellectual currents of romanticism and the fascination with tombs, ruins and the dead.29 Ultramontane sentiment among the clergy manifested itself in a shift to Latin liturgical forms in the 1840s and the 'romanisation' of popular piety was reflected in the revival of cults of saints and the veneration of relics, a practice that had been frowned upon by many members of the French clergy in the eighteenth century. Interest in the early Christian martyrs was also thoroughly in keeping with a new ultramontane aesthetic reflected in French religious art and articulated by Alexis Francois Rio's influential De la poesie chretienne dans sa matiere et dans ses formes, published in 1836, a study of Italian painting from 26 See E. Sevrin, Les missions religieuses en France sous la Restauration, 1815—1830, 2 vols (Saint-Mande, 1948-59). 27 See Timothy Tackett, Priest and Parish in Eighteenth-Century France: A Social and Political Study of the Cures in a Diocese of Dauphine, 1750-1791 (Princeton, 1977), pp. 305-6. 28 See Kselman, Miracles and Prophecies in Nineteenth-Century France, pp. 141-88; and Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism, pp. 134-57. 29 These themes are an integral part of Rene de Chateaubriand's Genie du christianisme (Paris, 1802), published in the same year that Philomene was discovered, and in his novel A tala.

The Cult of Sainte Philomene

123

the Trecento to the early Renaissance, which led to a revival of interest in the art of Fra Angelico.30 The disparagement of the Renaissance as well as the art of the eighteenth century was echoed by the renowned Montalembert in a combative essay entitled, 'De 1'etat actuel de 1'art religieux en France', published in the Revue des Deux Mondes in 1837 and reprinted several times. Montalembert launched an attack on the art of the eighteenth century, arguing that it was a final chapter in the degeneration of Christian art, a process which began during the pagan Renaissance. This French form of Pre-Raphaelitism, embodied in ultramontane aesthetics and religious art, in turn stimulated a renewed interest in the styles and art of the early Christian church and the early Christian martyrs, both old and new. Nineteenth-century priests, bishops and laymen became avid collectors and traders of relics belonging to the saints. The cure d'Ars, for example, collected more than 500 relics. Between 1860 and 1873 the house of the eighteenth-century Saint Benoit Labre was periodically ransacked by those in search of relics, after which an iron grille was installed to protect it. The correspondence of one priest from Perigeux contained bills for nearly 600 saintly remains, reflecting payment of an average of 40 to 50 francs for a half-skull, tibia or femur. 31 A disproportionately large number of these relics came from across the Alps and were the bodily remains of the saints of the catacombs. About 400 or more were brought into France and placed in countless holy edifices before Pope Leo XIII closed the catacombs and forbade further exhumations in 1881. The relics were distributed unevenly throughout France. By far the largest proportion found their way to diocese of Paris - the bodily remains of nineteen alleged martyrs - and to the diocese of Lyons, where more than twenty catacomb saints were housed.32 Relics and the veneration of saintly remains have long been a part of Catholicism, but they have served different functions over time. They have provided communities and individuals with a sense of protection and identity; they have played a thaumaturgic role; and they have been a source of wealth to communities that became pilgrimage sites.33 The presence of relics and cults devoted to the young saints of the catacombs 30 For a discussion of the aesthetics of ultramontanism see Michael Paul Driskel, Representing Belief: Religion, Art and Society in Nineteenth-Century France (University Park, PA, 1992), esp. pp. 59-67. 81 Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism, pp. 151-52. 32 Boutry, 'Les saints des catacombes', p. 893. 33 See F. Pfister, Die Reliquienkult in Altertum (Giessen, 1909-12); Hippolyte Delehaye, Les origines des cultes des martyrs (Brussels, 1933); Delehaye, Sanctus: essai sur les cultes des saints dans I'antiquite (Brussels, 1927); For non-Christian cults of relics, see P. Saintyves, Les reliques et les images legendaires (Paris, 1912), pp. 56-83. For a discussion of meanings with which relics have been invested through time, see Patrick J. Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, 1990), esp. pp. 3-43.

124

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

in France in the aftermath of the French Revolution gave holy sites new and tangible sources of sacrality following the destruction and desecration of the revolutionary decade. In the words of one nineteenth-century episcopal biographer: 'France, physically and morally ruined by the impious Revolution, had seen the majority of its venerable relics dispersed and destroyed. One began to sense the necessity of recuperating the numerous [Christian] treasures, and of gathering the bones of saints, our elder brothers, into our impoverished and devastated churches.'34 While the transfer of relics from Rome to France provided holy places scarred by civil war with a new legitimacy, they also served as a means to reinvigorate old rituals and to create new ones. The transfer of saintly remains was generally accompanied by the creation of new holy feast days, which served as a means to draw the faithful and unfaithful back into the Christian fold. Indeed, the transfer of the last set of Roman relics in the nineteenth century - those of Sainte Theodosie - to the site of Valence Cathedral in 1853 occasioned a great fete that celebrated both the Roman church and the regeneration of Catholic France.35 In short, the newly discovered catacomb saints contributed to the rejuvenation of the French Catholic church and to the propagation of ultramontane piety, and they were tangible reminders of the intense religious fervour associated with the early Christian church. If Sainte Philomene and other saints of the catacombs helped to legitimise the proselytising efforts of the French Catholic church and reflected the development of new forms of piety that were strongly encouraged by an ultramontane clergy, her cult prospered because it attracted a wide popular following. However, it must be said from the outset that it is far more difficult to deduce the individual or collective meanings which Philomene's rank-and-file followers gave her than it is to place her cult within the political and ecclesiastical context of nineteenth-century French Catholicism. Those who venerated Philomene came from a variety of social and regional backgrounds. They included the aristocratic ladies of Bayeux and peasant and middle-class women who flocked to the parish of Ars. However, the place that Philomene occupied in their lives was shaped as much by common religious and cultural frames of reference as by divergent social experiences. Philomene was undoubtedly venerated for her real or imagined thaumaturgic powers and complemented the cult of the Virgin Mary, which gained ground with the apparitions at La Salette, Pontmain, and

;!4 Guillaurne Delmas, Vie de Mgr Bouangc, eveque de Langres, 2 vols (Aurillac, 1885). Quoted in Boutry, 'Les saints des catacombes', p. 909. sr > Boutry, 'Les saints des catacombes', pp. 903-4.

The Cult of Sainte Philomene

125

Lourdes.36 The difference between the cult of Sainte Philomene and that of the Virgin Mary, however, was the centrality of the saint's martyred and tortured body as a symbol of chastity and purity. Martyrdom has acquired different meanings since the emergence of the Christianity. The early saints of the church, who died violently at the hands of Roman authorities, were all, by definition, martyrs. The meaning of martyrdom expanded, however, with the changing nature of Christian society.37 At times, a violent death was considered to be sufficient for martyrdom by the Catholic church; at others, as in the case of Joan of Arc, a violent death was initially not enough for a victim to be considered a martyr by the Catholic church. During the Reformation and Wars of Religion, some Catholics killed by Protestants were immediately declared martyrs, but many others were not. Sainte Philomene's martyrdom - and that of other revolutionary and catacomb saints - raises questions about a specific model of female martyrdom. This form of martyrdom assumed a decidedly sexual form. Although sexual overtones are not absent from narratives surrounding other Christian martyrs, including the saints Agnes and Agatha, the youth of the catacomb saints and the circumstances of their martyrdom merit careful reflection. Sainte Angelique, for example, was martyred when she resisted the sexual overtures of the governor of Rome's son. She is alleged to have declared to him: 'Remove yourself from my sight, food of death, for I have given my heart to another husband! I love Jesus Christ: in loving him I remain chaste, in coming close to him, I am pure, in receiving him, I remain a virgin.'38 Her martyrdom assumed the form of sexual resistance. The female martyr was not a powerless victim, however, but rather a resolute defender of her body and her faith. Moreover, in narratives of female martyrdom surrounding the catacomb saints, the figures representing physical and sexual aggression were those of authority. In the case of Sainte Philomene and Sainte Angelique, the young girls resisted sexual transgression by representatives of a prominent secular authority in the persons of the Emperor Diocletian and the son of a governor of Rome. While sexual renunciation was one of the obvious features of early

36 p or tne cuit of tne Virgin Mary see Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (London, 1985). For the cult in France, see Thomas Kselman, Miracles and Prophecies in Nineteenth-Century France, pp. 89-112; Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism, pp. 145-51; and Barbara Corrado Pope, 'Immaculate and Powerful: The Marian Revival in the Nineteenth Century', in Clarissa W. Atkinson, Constance H. Buchanan and Margaret R. Miles (eds), Immaculate and Powerful: The Female in Sacred Image and Social Reality (Boston, 1985), pp. 173-200. 37 For a discussion of the varieties of martyrdom see Delooz, 'Towards a Sociological Study of Sainthood', p. 206. 38 Quoted in Boutry, 'Les saints des catacombes', p. 915.

126

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

Christianity, and both male and female chastity a valued attribute since late Antiquity, these virtues were given a new emphasis by the Catholic clergy and secular republicans alike at the end of the eighteenth century.39 Boutry suggests that the chastity and youth of the Roman saints may have helped the church to illustrate the brutality of their secular, pagan torturers and served a pedagogical purpose of encouraging the Christian virtues of purity and chastity, particularly among young women.40 At the same time, the saint appears to have been embraced by French women with genuine enthusiasm. That enthusiasm had a great deal to do with the growing popularity of the female religious vocation. The story of Theodelinde Dubouche, who painted Philomene's martyrdom of the cathedral of Bayeux, is a case in point. Theodelinde Dubouche was the daughter of an anticlerical government official from Perigord and a religiously devout mother. She first became interested in painting in 1826 at the age of seventeen when she met Laure Girard, a successful female artist, who painted portraits of the British royal family. Girard introduced Dubouche to the painter de Juinne in Paris, and she soon obtained permission to join his studio as an apprentice and assistant. By day she painted, helping de Juinne in a commission he executed for Louis-Philippe in 1835. A lover of music, by night she went to the Theatre des Italiens and the Opera. In 1840, two years after painting Sainte Philomene, she exhibited two paintings in the Paris Salon. In 1841 and in 1844, she exhibited four more paintings. According to Theodelinde's biographer, the 'greatest influence in her life was the painting of the martyrdom of Sainte Philomene for the cathedral of Bayeux'.41 It marked a turning-point in two respects. First, the painting of Philomene was her greatest artistic achievement and brought her to the attention of the public. Secondly, it marked the beginning of her vocation as a nun after having spent almost ten years as an artist in Paris. Theodelinde Dubouche went on to found one of the most successful of female religious congregations established in nineteenth-century France, the Congregation des Soeurs de 1'Adoration Perpetuelle.42 The story of Theodelinde Dubouche and that of other nuns illustrates the significance of the cult of Sainte Philomene in the lives of 'women religious' during the course of the nineteenth century. Hazel Mills has argued that the church began to lionise and legitimise the femme forte, the virtuous woman who played an active role in worldly affairs through

39 Dorinda Outram, 'Le langage male de la vertu', in Peter Burke and Roy Porter (eds), The Social History of Language (Cambridge, 1987), p. 125. The meaning attached to sexual renunciation in early Christianity is explored in Peter Brown, The Body and Society. 40 Boutry, 'Les saints des catacombs'. 41 Marie Therese, Souvenirs d'une amie sur la vie de Theodelinde Dubouche, ii, p. 7. 42 Charles de Cherge, Histoire des congregations religieuses d'origine poitevine (Poitiers, 1856, p. 225.

The Cult of Sainte Philomene

127

charitable work.43 Sainte Philomene embodied the other side of female virtue expressed in both the language of sexual renunciation and in sexual models of female martyrdom extolled in sermons, confraternities and schools throughout the nineteenth century. While the narrative of Philomene's martyrdom conflated chastity with female virtue, and served as a lesson for young Catholic girls, it is intriguing because it mirrored many narratives of sexual danger surrounding the female martyrs of liberty during the Revolution. Indeed, the proliferation of narratives of sexual danger in the stories surrounding both the female saints of the catacombs and female martyrs of the Revolution is conspicuous. Two of the most popular revolutionary martyrs of liberty, Perrine Dugue and Marie Martin, were praised in terms similar to those of Philomene, and their martyrdom occurred in the context of resisting sexual defilement. Perrine Dugue was a nineteen-year-old girl from the Mayenne in the west of France who was martyred in 1796. Her brothers were fierce supporters of the French Revolution. On her way to see them, she was attacked by three Chouans and murdered. Her body was found the next day and buried in a nearby field, which became the site of miraculous cures. Contemporary ballads portrayed her as 'a good Christian who preferred death to being raped'.44 Her murder seized the popular imagination, and her tomb became a site of pilgrimage and miraculous healing. A chapel was built in her name in 1797, and she was seen to ascend to heaven with tricoloured wings. Unlike the male martyrs of liberty, this popular republican saint's martyrdom was defined in terms of resistance to sexual pollution, and her saintly quality resided in her purity. The same could be said of the more famous Marie Martin, alias Sainte Pataude, who became a popular 'saint' after her murder in 1795. Her martyrdom took the form of torture and rape at the hands of her aggressors. Martin, who sympathised with the revolutionary cause, was seized by a group of Chouans. They systematically raped and tortured her by removing her nails, gouging her eyes and mutilating her breasts.45 They then hung her 43 Hazel Mills, 'Negotiating the Divide: Women, Philanthropy and the "Public Sphere" in Nineteenth-Century France' in Frank Tallett and Nicholas Atkin (eds), Religion, Society and Politics in France since 1789 (London, 1991), pp. 29-54. 44 Albert Soboul, 'Popular Cults during the French Revolution', in Stephen Wilson (ed.), Saints and their Cults, p. 220. Also see abbe Augustin Ceuneu, Un culte etrange pendant la Revolution: Perrine Dugue, la sainte au ailes tricolores, 1777-1798 (Laval, 1947); Georges Lefebvre, 'Perrine Dugue, la sainte patriote', Annales historiques de la Revolution Franqaise (1949), p. 337; and Michel Lagree and Jehanne Roche, Tombes de memoire: la devotion populaire aux victimes de la revolution dans I'ouest (Paris, 1992), pp. 92-94. 45 Pataud was the Chouan term for a republican. Soboul, 'Popular Cults during the French Revolution', pp. 220-21. Also see Roger Joxe, 'Encore une sainte patriote: Sainte Pataude', Annales historiques de la Revolution Franqaise (1952), p. 91; and Lagree and Roche, Tombes de memoire, pp. 72-75.

128

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

from a tree with only a shirt to cover her. When Martin was discovered by villagers, they buried her at the foot of the tree, which became an object of devotion and the site of miraculous healings. The revolutionary cults of saints reveal the extent to which revolutionary ideology was grafted onto more traditional forms of Catholic devotion, but while Jacobin revolutionaries and Catholic peasants invested their cults with different meanings, the sexual model of female martyrdom attached to them, bore a very evident similarity to that of the catacomb saints. Articulations of virtue assumed a sexual form during the Revolution and suggest that narratives of sexual danger surrounding the female martyrs of the Revolution were as much an inherent part of the language of republican female virtue as they were a reflection of time-honoured Christian virtues of chastity and sexual renunciation. Indeed, the cult of Sainte Philomene and that of the female revolutionary saints were a part of secular and religious discourses on the nature of female virtue in the early nineteenth century.46 The symbolism of the martyred female body may also have reflected collective anxieties that assumed similar meanings among Catholics and the proponents of the Revolution. Just as narratives surrounding rape by enemy forces during war have often been transformed into images of a violated - and often feminine - national body, these narratives of sexual danger could become individual or collective metaphors of resistance.47 Philomene, a member of the community of embattled Christians, died defending its values from attacks by pagan secular authorities, as did Marie Martin and Perrine Dugue before the assaults of the counterrevolutionary Chouan. The anthropologist Mary Douglas has argued that the human body

46

'Women's personal virtue (virtue = chastity) is equated with political virtue (virtue = putting state above personal interests), like Brutus, who executed his sons when they attempted to betray the Roman Republic. The continuum between the two senses carries a whole series of messages: that female chastity is the prerequisite for political innovation undertaken in the name of universal will . . . . 'Virtue' was in fact a two-edged word, which bisected the apparently universalistic terminology of le sovereign into two distinct political destinies, one male and the other female.' Dorinda Outram, 'Le langage male de la vertu', in Burke and Porter (eds), The Social History of Language, p. 125. See Joan Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, NY, 1988); Joan Wallach Scott, 'French Feminists and the Rights of "Man": Olympe de Gouges' Declarations', History Workshop, 28 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 1-21; and Scott, '"A Woman who has only Paradoxes to Offer:" Olympe de Gouges Claims Rights for Women', in Sara E. Melzer and Leslie Rabine (eds), Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Revolution (Oxford, 1992), pp. 102-120. 47 Ruth Harris has argued the actual rape of women by German soldiers during the First World War became a metaphor in public discourse for the violated national body during and immediately following the First World War. See Ruth Harris, 'The "Child of the Barbarian": Rape and Nationalism in France during the First World War', Past and Present, 141 (1993), pp. 171-206.

The Cult of Sainte Philomene

129

cannot be considered apart from the social system that gives it value, and indeed, that the body is often the very 'symbol of society', and that the 'powers and dangers credited to social structure' are often 'reproduced in small on the human body'.48 I believe that some pollutions are used as analogies for expressing a general view of the social order . . . I suggest that many ideas about sexual dangers are better interpreted as symbols of the relation between parts of society, as mirroring designs of hierarchy or symmetry which apply in the larger social system . . . . Sometimes bodily orifices seem to represent points of entry or exit to social units, or bodily perfection can symbolise an ideal theocracy.49

If the human body has often served as a symbol of society, its 'boundaries can represent any boundaries that are threatened or precarious'.50 It is telling that the local inhabitants of Teillay in western France, where the cult of Sainte Pataude first emerged, now say that Marie Martin was shot by the Germans for her role in resisting the Nazis during the occupation.51 Philomene became a symbol of the persecuted Roman church, while Sainte Pataude became the embodiment of the besieged revolutionary nation. The pervasiveness of narratives of sexual threat and danger in stories surrounding the martyrdom of the catacomb and revolutionary saints raises tantalising questions about the fear of and fascination with sexual violence in nineteenth-century French society. Philomene's martyrdom gave value to virginity, but the punishment for sexual withholding was harsh and swift. Instead of viewing the cult of Sainte Philomene as an expression of sado-masochistic impulses and sexual repression, one might well consider it as a manifestation of the titillation and the real or feigned horror that sexual violence toward young girls inspired among the French public. The revolutionary decade certainly left the French countryside littered with human bodies. Rape, physical violence, and bodily mutilation were inherent parts of the revolutionary interlude. The murder and alleged sexual mutilation of the princesse de Lamballe, for example, became a symbol of the Revolution's barbarity for counter-revolutionaries and an important part of royalist martyrology. If many of these stories were

48 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London, 1966), p. 115. 49 Douglas, Purity and Danger, pp. 3-4. Theresa Coletti suggests that medieval theological thinking saw in the openness of the female body a lack of boundary 'analogous to its moral character', Coletti, 'Purity and Danger: The Paradox of Mary's Body and the En-Gendering of Infancy Narrative in the English Mystery Cycles', in Linda Lomperis and Sarah Stanbury (eds), Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature (Philadelphia, 1993), p. 69. 50 Douglas, Purity and Danger, p. 115. 51 Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism, p. 53.

130

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

apocryphal, the dread they occasioned and their narrative power survived into the nineteenth century.52 Novelistic narratives of sexual danger and violence abounded in postrevolutionary novelistic literature and were integral parts of the 'melodramatic mode' of the nineteenth century.53 Richardson's Clarissa was translated on the continent and came to feed into an already rich claustral literature, which was such an important part of French romanticism. For example, one year before Dubouche painted Philomene's martyrdom, Adele Daminois published a novel that explored the relationship between domestic sexual violence and a young girl's religious vocation. Daminois's Le cloitre au XIXe siecle is the story of a half-English, half-French girl who arrives in France from the West Indies, after her French mother has died during the ocean passage.54 She is forced to live with her mother's sister and her sister's husband. Isolated and alone, she becomes the victim of the uncle-in-law's unwanted sexual attention and flees to a convent to become a nun.55 The narrative of physical abuse - sexual and/or physical - also figured in a large number of real cases of young women who fled the maison paternelle for the religious life without parental consent in the nineteenth century. The Ministry of Religious Affairs sometimes cited evidence of abuse in cases in which it did not act to return the young women to their families.56 Public preoccupation with the subject was manifested in the growing number of abuse cases involving minors reported to legal authorities, and they ultimately shaped the framing of France's first law governing the abuse of minors in 1898.57 While the narrative of sexual 52 The princesse de Lamballe, who had been a close friend of Marie-Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI of France, was one of the many of victims of alleged sexual violence during the September Days (1792). She was hacked to death and decapitated. Royalists claimed that her genitals were mutilated and paraded, along with her head, through the streets of Paris. 53 See Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama and the Mode of Excess (New Haven, 1976). 54 Daminois, Le cloitre au XIXe siecle (Paris, 1836). 55 Two such cases that came before the ministry in 1840—41 were those of MarieAnne Pourchier and Marguerite Desiree Malherbe. For the Pourchier case, see AN, F19/6312 and for the case of Marguerite Malherbe, see AN, F19/6326. 56 Statistical data indicate that between 1830 and 1890 reported cases of rape and other sexual crimes increased dramatically before beginning to decline toward the beginning of the twentieth century. An increasing number of these growing cases involved victims who were children or adolescents. The increase in the number of children and adolescents registered in the legal record reflects a growing societal concern about or response to the abuse of minors. Jean-Claude Chesnais, Histoire de la violence en accident de 1800 a nos jours (Paris, 1981), pp. 181-86. 57 Stephen Wilson, 'Cults of Saints in the Churches of Central Paris', in Saints and their Cults, p. 240. For the cult of Saint Benoit Labre, see Jacques Gadille, 'Autour de Saint Benoit Labre: hagiographie et critique au XIXe siecle', Revue d'histoire de Veglise de France, 52 (1966), pp. 113-26.

The Cult of Sainte Philomene

131

and/or physical danger surrounding Philomene's martyrdom gave the clergy a story with prescriptive value, it evidently found resonance among the nineteenth-century reading public, and it reflected anxieties about sexual and physical violence that were expressed with greater frequency in the early years of the July Monarchy. Sainte Philomene and the many other virgin saints of the catacombs served to reinvigorate Catholicism and were part of a larger drive among the French clergy to recuperate the fervour of the early Christian church. Philomene's martyrdom, which took the form of resistance to sexual defilement at the hands of pagan unbelievers, ultimately became a symbol of an embattled French church. Her life was also a lesson to a young, and particularly female, audience. It validated the growing number of female religious vocations and resonated among a reading public gripped by real and fictional tales of horror and sexual danger. Philomene's star fell, however, almost as quickly as it rose. By the First World War the cult of Sainte Philomene had lost much of its popularity. The chapel devoted to Sainte Philomene in the church of Saint Gervais in Paris was, for example, rededicated to Saint Benoit Labre, and in 1961 the Vatican removed the by then largely forgotten Sainte Philomene from the calendar of saints.58 Sainte Philomene's loss of favour must above all be linked to developments in the new science of archaeology and to changes in Vatican policy. By the 1850s some clerics and laymen began to question the criteria used by the Vatican to determine whether or not tombs in the catacombs belonged to early Christian martyrs. Commentaries pointed out that epitaphs on the Roman tombs contained no mention of martyrs, that there was no evidence of the existence of these martyrs in the historical record, and that the so-called vial of blood was not definitive proof of martyrdom.59 As a result of these debates over the saints' authenticity they became a source of embarrassment rather than a source of legitimacy. Official sponsorship of the cults began to slacken. By 1881, Pope Leo XIII sharply restricted access to the catacombs and banned any further exhumation of bodily remains from the underground graves. However, archaeology and Vatican policy were not enough to send

58 The controversy over the vial of blood was passionately debated after the publication of Edmond Le Blant's La question du vase du sang (Paris, 1858). Boutry, 'Les saints des catacombs', pp. 919-21. 59 For the cult of Sainte Therese, see Guy Gaucher, The Story of a Life: Sainte Therese de Lisieux, trans. Sister Anne Marie Brennan (San Francisco, 1987). For the cult of Joan of Arc at the turn of the century, see Marina Warner, Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism (Harmondsworth, 1983), pp. 255-75; and Gerd Krumeich, 'Joan of Arc between Right and Left', in Robert Tombs (ed.), Nationhood and Nationalism in France: From Boulangism to the Great War, 1889-1918 (London, 1991), pp. 63-73.

132

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

the cult of Sainte Philomene into a decline. She was eclipsed by two 'real' young and virginal saints in the figures of Jeanne d'Arc and Therese de Lisieux.60 Jeanne d'Arc, who was condemned as a heretic and burned at the stake defending king and country in 1431, was beatified quite late, in 1909, following a revival of interest in the female patriot during the early years of the French Third Republic. She was canonised in 1920. Therese de Lisieux, who died in 1897 at the age of twenty-four, was beatified in 1923 and declared a saint in 1925. These saints shared Philomene's youth and chastity and came to be the favoured saints of the French clergy. Indeed, they encouraged their devotion at the expense of Philomene. The transfer of clerical allegiance reflected both the changing tides of Vatican policy and changing nature of clerical politics. The Vatican encouraged the French clergy to embrace the Republic and to renounce their resistance to the state during the period of Ralliement in the 1890s. When the Dreyfus Affair shattered this policy of appeasement, many in the church found a home among the xenophobic, nationalistic new right exemplified by the Action Franchise and the Ligue des Patriotes. While ultramontanism was still a force among the lower clergy, many of its members had joined forces with a new nationalist right represented by Charles Maurras and the Action Franchise.61 Jeanne d'Arc became the public chosen saint of those who linked throne and altar or who associated the church with right-wing causes. As the Catholic right became more nationalistic, Jeanne d'Arc became a saint more suitable for public devotion. Many of those within the church who did not necessarily share the right-wing convictions of the Action Frangaise were embarrassed by the dubious status of the Roman saints and preferred the very 'real' Therese de Lisieux, to whom Philomene is often compared.62 While Jeanne d'Arc and Therese embodied some of the qualities belonging to the child-saint Philomene - youth, chastity and intense spirituality - the nature of Philomene's martyrdom was fundamentally different from the trials of Therese de Lisieux and Jeanne d'Arc. The martyrdom to which Therese de Lisieux's aspired was that of Christ himself, Saint Bartholomew or Jeanne d'Arc: Martyrdom was the dream of my youth and this dream has grown with me within Carmel's cloisters. But here again, I feel that my dream is a folly, for 60

Eugen Weber, The Nationalist Revival in France, 1905—14 (Berkeley, 1959). 'Therese n'est-elle, a moins d'un siecle de distance, qu'une nouvelle Philomene?', Rosenbaum-Dondaine, L'image de piete en France, 1814-1914, p. 175. (i2 Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of Therese de Lisieux, trans. John Clarke (Washington, DC, 1976), p. 193. Therese visited the Roman catacombs in 1887, which left a 'deep impression' on her, asking for the 'grace' to become the first martyr of Jesus. During her visit she formed a special attachment to Saint Cecilia, patroness of music. Philomene, who was so important to Theodelinde Dubouche, is conspicuously absent from her account. Story of a Soul, p. 131. 61

The Cult of Sainte Philomene

133

I cannot confine myself to desiring one kind of martyrdom. To satisfy me I need all. Like You, my Adorable Spouse, I would be scourged and crucified. I would die flayed like Saint Bartholomew. I would be plunged into boiling oil, like Saint John; I would undergo all the tortures inflicted upon the martyrs. With St Agnes and St Cecilia, I would present my neck to the sword, and like Joan of Arc, my dear sister, I would whisper at the stake Your Name, O Jesus.63

The actual form that Therese's suffering assumed, described in her own words in the posthumous publication of Histoire d'une ame (1898) was that of psychological pain and bodily sickness rather than that of sexual violence or aggression. Indeed, Sainte Therese, the Little Flower, acquired much of her popularity in the twentieth century from the wounded and handicapped soldiers of the First World War. Philomene bore a greater resemblance to Therese's female saintly rival and 'sister.' Jeanne d'Arc, who burned at the stake. However, Jeanne d'Arc, though young and chaste, disguised herself as a man. She was an androgynous figure who bore little relation to the pale, angelic adolescent Sainte Philomenes that were painted for dozens of chapels, churches and religious communities in France. Moreover, the narrative of sexual danger surrounding Philomene's martyred body was never associated with Jeanne d'Arc, who came to represent martyred France and the lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. The young and virginal French saints - Sainte Therese and Jeanne d'Arc - supplanted Sainte Philomene, but their cults were invested with entirely different meanings. The cult of Sainte Philomene was the reflection of a particular time and place. The decline in Philomene's popularity must be interpreted in the light of changes in the nature of clerical politics and patronage, but those changes do not fully explain the disappearance of her cult among her lay adherents. Her disappearance must be seen through the lens of other developments in French society. The new science of archaeology called the authenticity of Sainte Philomene into question, but her earthly demise had more to do with the fading of the violent memory of the French Revolution by the end of the nineteenth century; the decline in religious vocations by the beginning of the twentieth century; and the appeal of saints like Sainte Therese, whose suffering assumed psychological rather than physical forms. Despite Philomene's fall from grace, tangible traces of her astonishing popularity survive in dozens of churches and religious houses throughout France. Not far from the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, an empty and unused chapel in the Eglise Saint-Merri contains an altar painting

«3 Ibid.

134

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

and peeling frescoes of Philomene's martyrdom by the Pre-Raphaelite artist, Eugene-Emmanuel Amaury Duval. One can also find Theodelinde Dubouche's painting of the martyrdom of Sainte Philomene in a darkened chapel of Bayeux cathedral. The story of Philomene's martyrdom is now largely forgotten, and the cultural and political world that gave rise to her cult has long since disappeared.

9 God, Man and Satan: Strands in Counter-Revolutionary Thought among Nineteenth-Century French Catholics Geoffrey Cubitt

'In Europe today, there are not two questions, but only one - the Revolutionary question. Will the future belong to the Revolution, or will it not? Everything hinges on that.'1 Thus the abbe Gaume, in the first chapter of his book La Revolution, published in 1856, denned the central issue of his age. For him, 'the Revolution' was not an event located in the past, but a present reality, whose existence stretched forward prospectively into the future and backward across several centuries (as his subtitle implies - La Revolution, recherches historiques sur I'origine et la propagation du mal en Europe, depuis la renaissance jusqu'd nos jours). Gaume in fact distinguished between the French Revolution (to which he devoted the first four of his twelve volumes) and 'the Revolution' in general - the substitution of human sovereignty for divine sovereignty - which in his view had been gaining ground steadily since the great resurgence of paganism (as he saw it) in the Renaissance.2 Not all French Catholics who denounced 'the Revolution' in the mid or late nineteenth century would have agreed with every aspect of Gaume's account. Many would have traced the origins of the modern evil to the Enlightenment, or to Socinianism, or to the Reformation, or back through repeated waves of heresies to the Crucifixion, to the Garden of Eden, or to the fall of Satan, rather than specifically to the Renaissance. They would, however, have agreed with Gaume on certain fundamentals: that the essence of 'the Revolution' was a rebellion against the divine order; that that rebellion had found an exceptionally striking and perhaps exceptionally significant expression in the French events of the 1790s; but that it transcended those events and was actively at work and gaining ground in the present. By the mid to late nineteenth century, in other words, the notion of 'the Revolution', which had begun as a notion of 'the French Revolution', had 1

J.-J. Gaume, La Revolution, recherches historiques sur I'origine et la propagation du mal en Europe, depuis la renaissance jusqu'd nos jours, 12 vols (Paris, 1856-59), i, p. 14. 2 Ibid., i, p. 7. In its attacks on modern 'paganism', La Revolution continued and broadened the polemical offensive launched in Gaume's Le ver rongeur des societes modernes, ou le paganisme dans I'education (Paris, 1851) and in F. Danjou, Du paganisme dans la societe et dans I'education (Montpellier, 1852).

136

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

become an altogether larger and less historically precise concept - one which dominated French Catholic thinking about the modern world, and which was used to make sense not only of fresh revolutionary outbreaks like those of 1830, 1848 and 1871, but also of more gradual trends and evolutions. As the Catholic intellectual Claudio Jannet put it in the 1880s, 'the Revolution' was the name for 'an instability' which had been afflicting the world for the previous century and a half, and which revealed itself 'sometimes by convulsions in which governments and secular institutions are swept away; sometimes by a slow but continuous action [travail] which dissolves the principles of religion, of law, of morality, on which society has always been based'.3 Jannet's definition conveys the concept's flexibility; its elusiveness is aptly captured in the Jesuit Pere Felix's slightly earlier description of the Revolution as 'a formidable power . . . which is at once mysterious and evident, invisible and visible'. Felix explained that his remarks on 'the Revolution' referred not to particular revolutionary events (though these were part of the revolutionary drama), but to 'the Revolution considered as idea, and, I may add, as passion, as fanaticism, as fury, as implacable hatred, swearing the oath of Hannibal against everything that was and even everything that is', and finally, 'as that current of subversive ideas and passions which is passing across Europe like a whirlwind across the forest, breaking, devastating, shattering, and sometimes scorching and setting light to everything in its path'. But the Revolution, for Felix, was not simply the idea; it was the idea in human form, 'the subversive idea incarnated in men, and today apparently in women'.4 The extravagance and conceptual fluidity of such definitions and descriptions of 'the Revolution' reflect all too clearly the weaknesses of a way of thought whose efforts at historical description and political analysis were perpetually undercut by the habit of moral and religious absolutism (for, as Mgr de Segur informed the youth of France in 1861, the revolutionary question was essentially 'a question of faith': to know where one stood on the Revolution, one had simply to decide whether or not one believed in Christ).5 To see in them merely the dismal products of conceptual undernourishment, born of dogmatic complacency or mental bewilderment in the face of complex historical developments, is tempting, but it is also too simple. For the ambiguities and endless inflation of the nineteenth-century notion of 'the Revolution' also had roots in a complex intellectual history, in which strands of historical, of theological and of

3 C. Jannet, 'Introduction sur 1'action des societes secretes au XIXe siecle', in N. Deschamps, Les societes secretes et la societe, ou philosophic de I'histoire contemporaine, 3 vols (6th edn, Avignon, 1882), i, p. xix. Jannet's introduction first appeared in the second edition (1880). 4 R.P. Felix, 'Pie IX devant sa siecle', Etudes religieuses, philosophiques, historiques et litteraires, 5th series, i (Jan. 1872), pp. 21-22. 5 Mgr G. de Segur, La Revolution (Paris, 1861), pp. 12-13.

God, Man and Satan

137

political thought were closely interwoven.6 They reflected the lengthy interaction between several different ways of understanding revolutionary developments, each of which had evolved initially in response to the French Revolution, and then had its scope extended. The purpose of this essay is to outline the basic thematic elements in this intellectual history, by examining the three main conceptual languages or styles of analysis that were brought to bear on the Revolution from a counter-revolutionary Catholic point of view, and by showing some of the relationships between them. The first of these languages sought to explain the Revolution as a product of human conspiracy; the second viewed it as a manifestation of the Satanic spirit; the third (of which there were several variants) saw it as an ordeal or experience endowed with providential significance. The first of these three strands in Catholic counter-revolutionary thought is the easiest to pin down. Its most influential statement was the abbe Barruel's Memoires pour servir a I'histoire du jacobinisme, published from exile in 1797-98. Barruel set out to refute two alleged misconceptions about the French Revolution. The first was the view that the Revolution had been the product of uncontrollable circumstances, which could not have been prevented and which might never occur again. On the contrary, Barruel argued, every detail of the Revolution 'was foreseen, premeditated, contrived, resolved on, ordained in advance: everything was the product of the deepest villainy, for everything was prepared and brought about by men who alone held the thread of conspiracies long woven in the secret societies, and who knew how to choose and hasten the moments favourable to their plots'. Circumstances had at best supplied the pretexts and occasions of conspiratorial action, but 'the great cause of the Revolution' had been independent of them. The second alleged misconception conceded that the Revolution had been deliberately planned, but held that the intentions of its authors had been pure, and that the violences and misfortunes that had attended it had been the product of obdurate circumstances rather than of Revolutionary principles. Against this, Barruel asserted that the crimes and atrocities had stemmed logically from the principles: the Revolution had been 'what it had to be in the spirit of the sect' that had brought it about.7 Barruel went on, in the rest of his book, to 6 The most recent general study of French counter-revolutionary thought is G. Gengembre, La contre-revolution, ou I'histoire desesperante: histoire des idees politiques (Paris, 1989); see also P. Beik, The French Revolution Seen from the Right: Social Theories in Motion (Philadelphia, 1956); F. Baldensperger, Le mouvement des idees dans I'emigration franqaise, 2 vols (Paris, 1924); M. Goldstein, The People in French Counter-Revolutionary Thought (New York, 1988). 7 A. Barruel, Memoires pour servir a I'histoire du jacobinisme, 2 vols (Chire-en-Montreuil, 1973), i, pp. 41-43 (1st edn, London, 1797-8). On Barruel and his theories, see J.M. Roberts, The Mythology of the Secret Societies (2nd edn, St Albans, 1974), pp. 199-213; A. Hofman, 'The Origins of the Theory of the Philosophe Conspiracy', French History, 2 (1988), pp. 152-72; M. Riquet, Augustin de Barruel: un jesuite face aux jacobins francs-masons, 1741-1820 (Paris, 1989).

138

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

reveal how the revolutionary activities of this 'sect' - 'the sect of Jacobins' had been rooted in a triple conspiracy developed in the eighteenth century, the three branches of which had been the philosophes (with their war on Christianity), the Freemasons (with their war both on Christianity and on monarchy), and the Bavarian Illuminati (with their war on every aspect of the religious, social and political order).8 This was the basic outline of the conspiracy theory that was taken up, added to (with material about nineteenth-century secret societies), and extended both backwards and forwards in time, by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Catholic writers like Jacques Cretineau-Joly, the Jesuit Nicolas Deschamps, Claudio Jannet and Mgr Delassus, and which figured, with varying degrees of emphasis and significance, in the writings of numerous others.9 Two points need to be made about the way in which the theory was formulated in Barruel's work. First, Barruel's analysis was one which, right from the start, encouraged counter-revolutionary conspiracy theorists to pass from an effort to understand the French Revolution to the development of a larger concept of 'the Revolution' as an enduring force in modern history. Remarkably little of his book - not much more than two chapters out of sixty-four - was directly devoted to developments in France between 1789 and 1797.10 The great bulk of it was concerned with showing how the events of those years were rooted in long-standing conspiratorial tendencies. Barruel was also emphatic that further developments were to be expected. The French Revolution, he argued, had been merely the first essay of strength by a sect whose destructive ambitions were universal;11 it had been 'but the fore-runner of a Revolution much greater and much more portentous [solennelle]'.12 Secondly, Barruel's account of the Revolution was developed almost entirely in human terms. This does not mean that supernatural forces were systematically excluded. Indeed, in his final pages, Barruel notified the rulers and leaders of European society that God had punished their connivance in the philosophes' attacks on religion by allowing these attacks to develop into a broader onslaught on monarchy and social order; he even wrote of God 'sending' the Revolution for a punitive purpose of this kind.13 The very occasional references of this kind did not, however, obscure the basic point. What Barruel saw in the Revolution was essentially 8

Ibid., passim, esp. i, p. 47. J. Cretineau-Joly, L'eglise romaine en face de la Revolution, 2 vols (Paris, 1859); Deschamps, Les societes secretes et la societe; Jannet, 'Introduction'; Mgr H. Delassus, La conjuration antichretienne: le temple mac,onnique voulant s'elever sur les mines de I'eglise Catholique, 3 vols (Lille, 1910). On this conspiracy theory tradition, see Roberts, The Mythology of the Secret Societies. 1° Barruel, Memoires, ii, pp. 433-546. 11 Ibid., i, p. 43. 12 Ibid., ii, p. 474. 13 Ibid., ii, pp. 543-46. 9

God, Man and Satan

139

a complex of human actions held together by human intentions; it was human intentionality that gave the Revolution its coherence as a historical phenomenon. To many Catholics, this was bound to appear an incomplete description: one that painted a picture of superhuman perversity and superhuman control, only to locate it ostensibly in human minds and human actions. For them, a conspiratorial account of how the Revolution was hatched and carried on might be acceptable, but only if combined with some more supernatural account of its deepest inspiration or ultimate ends. The idea that the Revolution was Satanic was one such account. It was Joseph de Maistre who first, in 1797, stated that the Revolution had 'a satanic character which distinguishes it from everything that has been seen before and perhaps from everything that will be seen after it'.14 By this, he meant that the Revolution was radically bad ('pure impurity') in the sense of being radically opposed to Christianity.15 On this point, the great majority of nineteenth-century Catholic denouncers of the Revolution were agreed: considered in its essential spirit, the Revolution was the rebellion of man against the divine order (of which Christianity was the embodiment and guarantor), and this rebellion was at best analogous to, and very possibly directly inspired by, the rebellion of Satan.16 Actual references to Satan in Catholic attacks on the Revolution varied in type and became more numerous as the century wore on.17 This increase no doubt owed something to the general renewal of interest in matters demonic that was inspired in some Catholic milieux by a confrontation 14 J. de Maistre, Considerations sur la France (Oeuvres, i), ed. J.-L. Darcel (Geneva, 1980), p. 109 (1st edn, Neuchatel, 1797). 15 Ibid., pp. 103-4. 16 Among numerous examples, see Gaume, La Revolution, i, p. 16: 'I [the Revolution] am the hatred of all religious and social order that man has not established and in which he is not at once king and God; I am the proclamation of the rights of man against the rights of God; I am the philosophy of revolt, the religion of revolt; I am armed negation . . .'; and Felix, Tie IX devant sa siecle', p. 22: 'The Revolution is the systematic, universal, perpetual, implacable opposition to authority, to all authority, but especially and most directly to the authority of God; it is the continuation and the prolongation, through humanity, of the opposition posed to the Word of God, from the beginning, by Lucifer at the head of the rebel angels.' 17 This was part of a more general tendency in certain kinds of Catholic literature, noted with disapproval by abbe Fremont in May 1886: 'I refer now to the abuse of the power of Satan, which is made to intervene ab hoc et ab hac, and which serves as an easy explanation for the disappointments, the blunders, the defeats which the presumption of men too often inflicts on the Church.' Fremont cited as an example abbe J. Lemann's statement (in his book L'entree des Israelites dans la societe franc^aise et les etats chretiens, published in 1886) that God and Satan were in competition not just for possession of human souls, but for control over the direction and historical evolution of society, and that adequate explanations of events could be formulated only if hell as well as divine providence were taken into consideration. Fremont's diary, quoted in A. Siegfried, L'abbe Fremont 1852-1912, pour servir a I'histoire religieuse, 2 vols (Paris, 1932), i, p. 234.

140

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

with spiritist and occultist movements — a renewal which runs from men like Gougenot des Mousseaux, with his mid century enquiries into the 'moeurs et pratiques des demons',18 to the considerable literature inspired at the end of the century by Leo Taxil's hoaxes concerning masonic Luciferianism.19 Even before Taxil got to work, however, some Catholics were all too ready to believe that Satan was the object of a masonic or revolutionary cult (or even conceivably a physical presence in masonic lodges), and many more believed, in a looser way, that Freemasonry was a 'synagogue of Satan', whose rituals mimicked those of the one true Church.20 At least as important as any renewed interest in demonology in inspiring counter-revolutionary references to Satan, however, was the increasing tendency of Catholics in the mid and late nineteenth century to believe that modern society was being steadily polarised along spiritual lines. 'The contemporary fact which dominates all others', wrote Gaume in the late 1850s, 'is the division of the world into two camps: one part of society is becoming openly pagan, the other frankly Catholic. Everything is accelerating this double movement.'21 Louis Veuillot, the journalistic champion of mid century Catholic intransigence, painted a similar picture: 'Two powers are alive and at war in the modern world: Revelation and Revolution. The two powers deny each other reciprocally; that is the heart of the matter.' In Veuillot's view, confusion and impotence were the lot of those (Catholic liberals especially) who sought a middle way between the two extremes.22 For writers like these, it was above all the progress of 'the Revolution' that was transmuting the eternal spiritual antipathy

18 R. Gougenot des Mousseaux, Moeurs et pratiques des demons ou des esprits visiteurs du spiritisme ancien et moderne (1st edn, Paris, 1854; revised 2nd edn, Paris, 1865). 19 See E. Weber, Satan franc-mag on: la mystification de Leo Taxil (Paris, 1964). 20 For examples, both of the strict and of the loose belief, see G. Cubitt, 'Catholics versus Freemasons in Late Nineteenth-Century France', in F. Tallett and N. Atkin (eds), Religion, Society and Politics in France since 1789 (London, 1991), pp. 130-32; also A.E. Waite, Devil-Worship in France, or the Question of Lucifer: A Record of Things Seen and Heard in the Secret Societies, According to the Evidence of Initiates (London, 1896), pp. 43—50. 21 Gaume, La Revolution, xii, p. 332. 22 L. Veuillot, 'L'illusion liberate', in L. Veuillot, Oeuvres completes, 38 vols (Paris, 1924-38), x, p. 339 (originally published in 1866). Catholic liberals themselves, however, might easily espouse the same kind of dualism. Thus Lacordaire affirmed in 1836: 'War exists between the Catholic power and the rationalist power, both old as the world, but which dispute it today on a vaster scale, because both of them have reached a point of internal and external force which no longer permits isolated combats and skirmishing, and which requires a solution.' Lacordaire also shared with many of his ecclesiastical opponents the conviction that rationalism was satanic in origin: 'The rationalist power also [i.e. like the Catholic one] descends from a height; it comes from the devil through all those who have imitated his pride, and its dogma is that human nature is sufficient to itself in every order of things, in life and in death.' H. de Lacordaire, 'Lettre sur le Saint-Siege', in his Oeuvres, 6 vols (Paris, 1860-1), vi, pp. 191-92.

God, Man and Satan

141

between Good and Evil into a polarised confrontation between rival human camps. The presence of Evil - of the spirit of rebellion against God - as a dynamic force in modern history supplied the impetus to concentrate the forces of Good ever more closely around their natural centre — the Catholic church, and the papacy in particular. In this repeatedly described scenario, Satan, as the symbolic embodiment of Evil and the arch-rebel against the Christian God, had his obvious place. Satan, according to Mgr de Segur, was 'the father of the Revolution'; it was 'his work, begun in heaven, and perpetuated in humanity from age to age'. This was the 'mystery of iniquity' which the Revolution, unbeknownst perhaps to the revolutionaries, embodied.23 Others agreed; as Pere Felix put it, the Revolution was 'Satan in humanity'.24 To speak of the Revolution in these terms was clearly to condemn it forcefully, and to re-emphasise the dualistic structures of Catholic thought. The habit of referring to the Revolution as satanic did not, however, resolve all ambiguities about its significance, since Satan's own status in Christian thought was traditionally ambiguous: on the one hand, he was God's opposite and antagonist; on the other, at least according to one interpretation of his biblical role as tempter, he was an agent whose vile actions were subordinate to a broader and more mysterious divine scheme.25 There was thus no necessary incompatibility between the notion that the Revolution was satanic and the suggestion that it was in some sense divinely arranged or divinely modulated. Catholic writers were certainly not slow to detect providential significance in revolutionary events and experiences. Several different kinds of providential involvement, however, could be imagined, involving different relationships between divine and satanic or merely human agency. The simplest and most limited was the act of divine rescue. References to moments when the arm of the Almighty had been stretched out miraculously to shield France or the church from specific revolutionary disasters were widespread in counter-revolutionary literature. It was thus, to give one widely-cited example, that God had intervened to secure an uninterrupted papal succession in 1799, when Pius VI had died in French captivity, and the might of revolutionary France had seemed set to 23

Mgr de Segur, La Revolution, p. 14. Felix, Tie IX devant sa siecle', p. 22. 25 See, for example, abbe Lecanu, Histoire de Satan: sa chute, son culte, ses manifestations, ses oeuvres, la guerre qu'il fait a Dieu et aux hommes (Paris, 1861), p. 7: 'In the order of Providence, Satan is the fire which the sovereign Master uses to test, to purify, to consume, to destroy, to renew, to produce the agitation by means of which he himself brings the world to its destinies'; pp. 28-29: 'whatever the power of Satan, it is necessarily subordinate, and exerts itself only within the limits, in an order of things and in circumstances conceded by God.' Lecanu was also one of many who combined a belief that the Revolution was Satanic in spirit with an explicitly Barruelian view of its mechanics (pp. 429-30). Indeed he tended to blur the distinction between Satan himself and his human followers (pp. 2, 6). 24

142

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

prevent the conclave assembling to elect his successor. 'At His voice', the future bishop of Chartres, Clausel de Mentals, recalled in 1817, 'the Muscovite rushes in from the extremities of Europe and the deserts of Asia; the vanquished peoples revive; the Ottoman himself joins his efforts to the Christian armies; Italy is delivered; and it is thanks to such a novel and extraordinary protection that the Sacred College meets and that a Pope is elected and proclaimed in Venice.' And then, as if to emphasise the surgical precision of divine intervention, the normal course of human events was abruptly resumed with the French victory at Marengo.26 Divine interventions of this protective kind could stand on their own, as intrusions into a revolutionary history otherwise dominated by human or satanic wickedness. They could also, however, be given a more comprehensively providential setting. There are signs of this, for example, in the provocative account which the Jesuit textbook writer Pere Loriquet gave in 1816 of the Russian campaign of four years earlier: If one is attentive to the designs of Providence, one will recognise in the disasters of the French the punishment for the devastations, the massacres, the sacrileges, the atrocities of every kind, of which this army, still recruited from the children of the Revolution, and devoted, less by profession than by habit and by taste, to every kind of crime and misdemeanour, had for twenty years made itself guilty. Divine justice had used it to parade terror and desolation throughout Europe. Now that this redoubtable scourge had fulfilled its mission, it was broken in its turn by the breath of the Almighty, and disappeared from the Earth. If one considers in addition that God had designs of mercy on France and on the family of Saint Louis, one will readily conceive that it was part of the execution of these designs to deliver them both from an impious and sanguinary generation, which, after having devoured Europe, would have devoured its own country, and made eternal the domination of the tyrant whose power it supported and whose furies it served.27 Loriquet's providence played a complex game: deliverance was part of it, and punishment another, but punishment was administered to those whose atrocities had previously served a (presumably punitive) divine purpose. Indeed, if one read back through Loriquet's pages to learn how the 'tyrant' whose power these miscreants sustained had come to

26

C.-H. Clausel de Montals, La religion prouvee par la Revolution, ou exposition des prejuges decisifs qui resultent, en faveur du Christianisme, de la Revolution, de ses causes et de ses effets (2nd edn, Paris, 1817), p. 16 Clausel credited the bishop of Ales with the first development of this interpretation (in 1802). In the bishop's account (quoted pp. 187-90), the armies of the powers are described as halting 'to allow the chiefs of the Christian tribes to pass, as once the waters of the Red Sea halted, in the presence of Moses, to let through the chosen people of God'. 27 J.-N. Loriquet, Histoire de France a I'usage de la jeunesse, avec cartes geographiques. Par A.M.D.G.***, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Lyon, 1816), ii, p. 332 (the work was published anonymously).

God, Man and Satan

143

power in the first place, one discovered that the 18 Brumaire had occurred 'because it entered into the designs of Providence to establish over their [Frenchmen's] heads he whom it destined to be the scourge of Europe and the executor of its justice against a people guilty of all the crimes of the Revolution'.28 No doubt the schoolboys who were exposed to Loriquet's textbook did not bother themselves unduly with the need to unravel this confusing bundle of scourges and counter-scourges; it is clear, nevertheless, that they were offered a vision of providential involvement in revolutionary history that went beyond the simple registration of intrusive providential moments to the speculative analysis of an unfolding providential process. If we seek a more intellectually accomplished rendition of such a vision, we find it most classically in Joseph de Maistre's Considerations sur la France (the work, of course, not of a Frenchman, but of a Savoyard aristocrat who had seen his homeland invaded by the revolutionary armies).29 De Maistre began his book by relating the French Revolution to the broader framework of relations between divine control and human agency. 'We are all', he argued, 'attached to the throne of the Supreme Being by a supple chain, which restrains us without subjugating us.' Under normal circumstances, the chain is kept slack: human beings do what they want under God's remote control; effect follows cause in the social and political world with the same natural regularity as in the physical one. In times of revolution, however, the chain is abruptly tightened: man's 'action diminishes, his means deceive him'; he finds himself driven along by 'an unknown force'.30 This, according to de Maistre, was what France and Europe were witnessing in the 1790s. Wicked as the men of the Revolution were, they were not (as men like Barruel imagined) in control; like other human beings, they did not manipulate circumstances, but were driven and hemmed in by circumstances that were divinely arranged and combined. It was this divine co-ordination, rather than human intentions, 28 Ibid., p. 285. For a detailed study of de Maistre's views on Providence, see J.M. Montmasson, L'idee de providence d'apres Joseph de Maistre (Lyon, 1928). For his attitude to and theories concerning the Revolution, see J.-L. Darcel, 'Joseph de Maistre and the French Revolution', in Maistre Studies, ed. and transl. R. Lebrun (Lanham, 1988); Darcel's introduction to J. de Maistre, Ecrits sur la Revolution (Paris, 1989); R. Lebrun, 'The "Satanic" Revolution: The Religious Judgement of Joseph de Maistre on the French Revolution', in M. Vovelle (ed.), L'image de la Revolution Franc^aise: communications presentees lors du congres mondial pour le bicentenaire de la Revolution, Sorbonne, Paris, 6-12 juillet 1989, 4 vols (Paris, 1990), ii; M. Boffa, 'La Contre-Revolution: Joseph de Maistre', in The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, iii, The Transformation of Political Culture, 1789-1848, eds F. Furet and M. Ozouf (Oxford, 1989); J. Hayward, After the French Revolution: Six Critics of Democracy and Nationalism (New York, 1991), ch. 3; Gengembre, La Contre-Revolution, passim; Goldstein, The People, pp. 62-71. More generally see R. Lebrun, Joseph de Maistre: An Intellectual Militant (Kingston, 1988). 30 De Maistre, Considerations, p. 285. 29

144

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

that effectively constituted 'the Revolution' as a dynamic historical force (and one whose career would be ended only when God allowed). As de Maistre put it: 'it is not the men that lead the Revolution; it is the Revolution that leads the men. It is very well said that it [the Revolution] runs of its own accord. This phrase signifies that never before has the Divinity revealed itself so clearly in any human event.'31 This view of the Revolution as a Divinely energised passage of history was in obvious superficial tension with, and helps to qualify any overemphatic reading of, de Maistre's other suggestion - that the Revolution was Satanic For him, the Revolution was Satanic (i.e. radically anti-Christian) when considered in the intentions and actions of its human agents - a fact which condemned it to ultimate sterility as a human movement.32 But the fullest significance of the Revolution as an epoch (to use another of de Maistre's terms) came not from these intentions and actions in themselves, but from God's manipulation of them.33 What, then, was the divine purpose that was working itself out through the revolutionary events? The answer, according to de Maistre, was that God was 'punish[ing] in order to regenerate'.34 France was being chastised, both for the criminal abuse of her moral and religious leadership over Europe that had begun with the Enlightenment, and for the national crime against sovereignty which the execution of Louis XVI represented.35 In de Maistre's account, in other words, the excesses and atrocities of the Revolution were both the climax of the offence and the vehicle of divine retribution, punishment pressing so hard upon crime that at times they are hard for the reader to disentangle. They were also, however, the essential means of regeneration. Once the Revolution had begun, de Maistre asserted, only Jacobinism could preserve France from foreign invasion, and only revolutionary terror could purge her of the revolutionaries themselves, and only if these two things were achieved could France emerge repurified, to resume, under Bourbon leadership, her vital mission to lead and regenerate Europe.36 It was this remarkable coincidence between the means of punishment and those of protection that made the Revolution such a prodigious spectacle of providential virtuosity.

si Ibid., p. 68. ; «Ibid., p. 110. 33

De Maistre's view that the Revolution was to be understood not as an 'event' but as an 'epoch' - that is to say, as a passage of historical turbulence forming part of the periodic 'convulsions of a condemned and suffering nature' - was formulated in his 'Discours a Mme la Marquise de Costa' (1794), reprinted in J. de Maistre, Lettres et opuscules, 2 vols (Paris, 1853), ii, p. 159. 34 De Maistre, Considerations, p. 68. 35 Ibid., pp. 69-73. De Maistre assured his readers that 'all national crimes against sovereignty are punished without delay and in a terrible manner. This is a law that has never suffered an exception' (p. 73). 36 Ibid., pp. 74-83.

God, Man and Satan

145

This potent Maistrean cocktail of crime and punishment and regeneration, of Satanic spirit and providential design, was to have a lasting appeal.37 We find it reproduced, for example, in Louis Veuillot's counter-revolutionary drama Le lendemain de la victoire, published with fairly obvious topical intent in 1849.38 Veuillot's work was a fantasy of civil war and national regeneration: it told of a France plunged in murderous revolution, of the initial divisions and failure of counter-revolutionary forces, of their eventual rallying under the banner of Catholicism to form a militant Christian republic, and of the final triumph of this renascent Christian France and self-destruction of the revolutionary forces. The Revolution, in Veuillot's account, is the work of demagogues and Parisian riff-raff manipulated by secret conspiratorial forces. The leader of these forces, known simply as le Vengeur, is human in appearance, but distinctly Satanic in spirit. In an early confrontation with the drama's aristocratic hero, he clearly separates his own motivation from that of his socialistic followers: while they are driven by resentment at a society which has no room for their depravity, he is impelled by an 'infinite and insatiable hatred' of mankind, a pure taste for bloodshed and desolation.39 And again, in the final scene, as he contemplates his own defeat, he hints at his Satanic nature: 'Humanity', he says, 'is escaping me and returning to the yoke of Christ.'40 Like de Maistre, however, Veuillot ultimately subordinates his satanic theme to a providential one, hinted at early in the drama,41 and made explicit in the final scene. Assassinated by his own henchmen in the hour of defeat, the dying Vengeur is approached by the Jesuit, Pere Alexis, who offers him the consolations of Heaven. He declares that there is no Heaven for him, but the Jesuit insists that, whoever he may be, Heaven will not close itself against his repentance. Mindful to the last of his Satanic dignity, le Vengeur discloses his identity: 'I am le Vengeur and I

37 Thus, Lacordaire in his 'Discours sur la vocation de la nation franchise' (1841) rooted the Revolution in a subversive assault by 'le demon' or Tesprit de tenebres' which had begun with the Reformation, and went on to explain its providential significance: 'France had betrayed her history and her mission; God might have allowed her to perish, like so many other fallen peoples . . . He chose not to; he resolved to save her, by an expiation as magnificent as her crime had been great.' (Lacordaire, Oeuvres, vi, pp. 272-77.) 38 L. Veuillot, 'Le lendemain de la victoire', in Veuillot, Oeuvres completes, v. The second of the author's 'Dialogues socialistes', this was originally published in the Revue des deux mondes in July and August 1849, and issued in book form in 1850. A new edition (coinciding with a new revolutionary wave) was issued in 1871. 39 Veuillot, 'Le lendemain', pp. 441-42. As Veuillot makes clear in a note (pp. 535-36), Proudhon (as demonised by the right) provided a kind of model for the Vengeur's nihilistic hatred, but one which merely emphasises its status as pure evil, 'proud and content to be evil'. 40 Veuillot, 'Le lendemain', p. 532. 41 Ibid., p. 441.

146

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

do not repent.' But the Jesuit deflates him mercilessly: 'Malheureux! Le seul Vengeur est la-haut! Tu n'etais que la vengeance.'42 What Veuillot's drama and other works in similar vein provided was an account of how divine providence dealt with human societies, punishing them for their sins, and (if they were fortunate) thereby purging them and preparing their regeneration. A text like Le lendemain de la victoire had less to say about the relationship between the collective fates of societies and the sins and sufferings of individuals. It was de Maistre's own effort to address this question - to put it bluntly, to explain why, in a divinely controlled punitive catastrophe like the Revolution, the seemingly innocent were smitten along with the plainly guilty — that gave an additional depth to his own analysis of the Revolution. De Maistre's achievement was to formulate a theological understanding of catastrophe that turned the Revolution into part of the universal moral drama of human suffering. This understanding, the application of which to the Revolution was partially sketched out in the Considerations sur la France, and the theoretical terms of which were more fully developed in the Soirees de Saint-Petersbourg (1821), involved three kinds of response to the problem of 'innocent' suffering. The first response suggested that innocence was far less widespread than was generally imagined: the vast majority of Frenchmen, for example, were guilty of aiding and abetting the crimes of the Revolution, if only by shameful non-resistance.43 The second response conceded that innocent people did suffer and perish, in wars and revolutions as in natural catastrophes, but insisted that this in no way undermined the notion of divine justice: in allowing the innocent to fall victim to dangers to which all humans were randomly but justly exposed by virtue of original sin, God was not maltreating their innocence (which He had eternity to reward anyway) but merely observing the conditions of their humanity. 44 Where this argument in one sense dismissed the 42

Ibid., pp. 532-33. For Veuillot, as for de Maistre, the divine purposes of vengeance and regeneration here ran in parallel: 'I believe', he wrote in the introduction to the book version, 'that, through revolutions, through fires, through scaffolds, through ruins, God will give the Earth a ploughing, from which immense harvests will arise for the church' (p. 383). 43 De Maistre, Considerations, pp. 68-74. In particular, de Maistre considered the French collectively guilty of the killing of Louis XVI: without necessarily having desired the king's death as such, 'the immense majority of the people desired, for over two years, all the follies, all the injustices, all the crimes that brought the catastrophe of 21 January about' (p. 73). In the Soirees de Saint-Petersbourg, de Maistre advanced a more general and extreme line of argument: since no men are truly just in the sight of God, the suffering that befalls them (whether in the form of natural malady or disaster or of human violence and 'injustice') is always a vehicle of divine justice, even when the precise rationale of the punishment escapes the human eye. J. de Maistre, Les soirees de Saint-Petersbourg, ou entretiens sur le gouvernement temporel de la Providence (Oeuvres, iii), ed. J.-L. Darcel, 2 vols (Geneva, 1993), i, pp. 217-23; ii, pp. 469-70. 44 De Maistre, Soirees, i, pp. 96-102.

God, Man and Satan

147

sufferings of the innocent as insignificant, de Maistre's third response and, to the majority of his nineteenth-century admirers, his most profound one - exalted their significance on another plane, by presenting them as an essential ingredient in the redemptive process which a fallen humanity was forced to undergo. For while bloodshed and violent destruction were no more than the normal conditions of life in a creation whose 'tonic note' had been lowered by the Fall (a point which de Maistre made with grim relish),45 the blood of the innocent, like that of Christ (whose sacrifice was re-enacted in the central ritual of the Catholic faith) possessed a special expiatory significance: it was through 'the reversibility of the sufferings of the innocent to the benefit of the guilty' that collective redemption the temporary salvation of nations in history, that of mankind in eternity — could ultimately be achieved.46 Viewed in this perspective, the Revolution and its atrocities became something more than a devastating instance of divine punishment, more even than a necessarily purgative prelude to national regeneration; they acquired an almost sacramental significance. The notions of expiatory sacrifice and of 'reversibility' that de Maistre had elaborated had numerous applications in later Catholic reflections, some very general, others exceedingly specific.47 One of their most obvious uses was to promote the martyr cult of Louis XVI. 48 De Maistre himself had hinted in passing that the king's suffering might have contributed to France's ultimate salvation (even while the crime of his execution contributed to her immediate chastisement).49 Others took the idea further. In a work published in 1800, for example, abbe Proyart combined a roughly Barruelian account of

45 De Maistre, Considerations, pp. 87-95. For remarks on the continuing significance of the Fall in the thinking of nineteenth-century French legitimists, see S. Rials, 'Legitimisme et catholicisme (1830-1883)', in his Revolution et Contre-Revolution au XIXe siecle (Paris, 1987), pp. 209-10. 46 De Maistre, Considerations, p. 94; the idea is developed further in de Maistre, Soirees, ii, pp. 440, 460-67, 530-33. 47 A good example (close to de Maistre in its obsessive concern with blood) comes from a sermon preached in 1889 (for the bicentenary of the apparition of the Sacred Heart, but with the centenary of the Revolution clearly in mind): 'To wash away the ignoble stain of the century of Louis XV, of Voltaire and of Marat, it took the blood of Louis XVI, the blood of priests and virgins - thousands of priests and virgins. Under the First Empire, three million Frenchmen reddened with their blood the battlefields of Europe. And since then, the blood of France has not ceased to flow.' Pere Vaudon, 'La fille ainee du coeur de Jesus', quoted in C. Amalvi, De I'art et la maniere d'accommoder les heros de I'histoire de France: essais de mythologie nationale (Paris, 1988), p. 371. 48 The conception of Louis XVI as a Christlike martyr expiating the sins of France has continued to find exponents in right-wing Catholic circles in the twentieth century: see, for example, the chapter on Louis in R.P. Charton, Les saints de la fanlille capetienne (Paris, 1939); marquis de la Franquerie, Louis XVI le roi-martyr (Montsurs, 1981; originally published 1943). 49 De Maistre, Considerations, p. 95.

148

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

the Revolution's human origins,50 and a strong emphasis on its place in the scheme of divine vengeance,51 with the portrayal both of Louis XVI and of Pope Pius VI as innocent victims of providence, whose sufferings had both an expiatory and a regenerative significance. Each of them, Proyart argued, though blameless in himself, had 'sinned in his predecessor':52 Louis's death atoned for the bellicosity of Louis XIV and the later condoning of philosophisme; that of Pius for the treasonable conduct of Clement XIV in abolishing the Jesuits.53 By discharging hereditary guilt and bringing to a climax the associated process of divine punishment, the deaths of king and pope prepared the eventual reconciliation of France and of the church both with each other and with the God whose Providence had managed the whole affair.54 Proyart argued as an ardent supporter of monarchy and of the Jesuits, a counter-revolutionary in the most obvious sense. In the different circumstances of the Restoration, and from a far more irenic standpoint, PierreSimon Ballanche integrated outwardly similar ideas into a view of history that (unlike de Maistre's) presented man's recovery from original sin as a progressive if painful movement towards social and individual perfection.55 In L'homme sans nom, published in 1820, he suggested that Louis XVI could be seen as an 'expiatory victim' chosen by God to redeem the sins of France, just as Christ had redeemed the sins of humanity. France having now in turn atoned for its part in the king's death (the criminality of which as regicide was not diminished by its glorious significance as redemptive sacrifice) by its long sufferings in the Revolution and under Napoleon, all debts on the nation's account were paid, and the painful experience of the Revolution could bear its vital progressive fruit.56 For, as

50

L.-B. Proyart, Louis XVI detrone avant d'etre roi, ou tableau des causes necessitantes de la revolution franqoise, et de Vebranlement de tons les trones; faisant partie integrante d'une vie de Louis XVI qui suivra (London, 1800), passim, esp. pp. 50-60, 121-36. 51 Ibid., passim, esp. pp. 10-11, 15-16. 52 Ibid., p. 417. 53 Ibid., passim, esp. pp. 6-7, 15-18, 416-20. Proyart insisted (p. 220) that Louis was 'neither the plaything of blind fortune, nor the hero of an unhappy destiny, but the true Chosen One of an attentive Providence, and the preferred instrument of its deep designs in the catastrophe with which it [had] resolved to chastise a great people, and through it the universe'. 54 See esp. ibid., p. 420. 55 On Ballanche, see M. Ozouf, 'Ballanche: 1'idee et 1'image du regicide', in her L'homme regeneree: essais sur la Revolution Fran^aise (Paris, 1989); Gengembre, La Contre-Revolution, pp. 135-39, 230-33. On similarities and differences between Ballanche and de Maistre, see J.-R. Derre, 'Ballanche, continuateur et contradicteur de Joseph de Maistre', Revue des etudes Maistriennes (1980), pp. 5-6. 56 P.-S. Ballanche, 'L'homme sans non', in P.-S. Ballanche, Oeuvres, 6 vols (Paris, 1833), iii, pp. 263-65, 276-77. The image of the Bourbon as sacrificial victim reappeared in Ballanche's Elegie, written on the occasion of the assassination of the Due de Berry in 1821 (Oeuvres, iii).

God, Man and Satan

149

Ballanche insisted 'if this horrible crisis had not been necessary, it would not have happened. Nothing useless is accomplished in this world of trials, of expiations, and of progress'.57 From Barruel to Ballanche is a long distance: the distance from a stress on conflict and incompatibility to one on reconciliation and common destiny, and from one way of dramatising the Revolution - by depicting its eruption through the arbitrary operation of sectarian wickedness into an apparently static and structureless history - to another, which wove it into the brutal but progressive logic of a historical evolution governed by the divinely-ordained systemic necessity of human redemption. To move from one to the other is to move from a vision of human agency, into which the divine hand is only momentarily (and as if in afterthought) seen to intrude, to a vision of providential control in which individual human actions are but the co-ordinated vehicles of a transcendent purpose. The juxtaposition of these two ways of framing the Revolution reveals the breadth and diversity of Catholic counter-revolutionary thought in the century following the Revolution. It would be wrong, however, to see this body of thought, considered as a whole, in terms of rigid polarities and sharp divisions between different analytical approaches; what was really distinctive about counter-revolutionary thinking was its frequent ability to combine different orders of perception - different conceptual languages - without seeming to sacrifice the absolutist pretensions of each. The Revolution could be - and often was - viewed as both conspiratorial and Satanic, both Satanic and providential. No doubt this was sometimes because those who interpreted it were confused or mentally indecisive, or because they were simply playing with inherited rhetoric. But it was also because different conceptual languages did not simply offer different explanations of events that were fixed in space and time and observed from outside; they stood for different perceptions of meaning - different ways of grasping an experience whose limits and whose connections with the larger realm of human destiny required to be explored and defined. Each conceptual language established a different kind of distance from this experience, based on a different construction of its essential nature. The conspiracy theory construed the Revolution as a coherent set of events and actions, and achieved the distance by blaming these events and actions on agents whose intentions set them apart from the rest of humanity. The Satanic theme achieved it by looking beyond events and actions and agents to the spirit that ran through them, finding the essence of the Revolution not in the realm of historical connections but in that of spiritual oppositions. The providential interpretation, in its more developed and philosophical forms, watched a fallen humanity (and a fallen France) suffering under the bell-jar of redemption: its distance was

57

Ballanche, 'L'homme sans nom', p. 162 (preface to 2nd edn).

150

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

achieved not by denying the sinister patterns in events and the frightening explosions of Satanic spirit, but by subordinating them to the higher, broader but therefore more inscrutable logic of human ordeal and divine intention. We can see the three styles of interpretation as different lenses which could be brought to bear, in different combinations, upon the same patch of history, but which seldom coincided either perfectly or stably. Different lenses brought different areas and aspects of modern experience into focus: conceptions of 'the Revolution' therefore evolved and shifted, and tended, by accumulation over time, to become more inclusive. Further research might permit one to chart with greater precision the evolutions involved. It may be, for example, that a providential perspective was relatively strong in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, as Catholics struggled to come to terms with the unprecedented disruption and actual suffering of the French Revolution itself, and to make sense of its unpredictable continuations;58 and that conspiracy theory and satanic references enjoyed a certain resurgence from mid century onwards, as Revolution came to seem more and more endemic, and as the gradual secularisation and democratisation of the structures of state and society, coupled with the erosion of papal temporal power, drove militant Catholics into increasingly intransigent opposition to 'the modern world'. In the end, however, such evolutions were shifts in emphasis within a tradition of thought that continued to play in several registers,59 and to combine them in ways that extended, without greatly adding to, the lines of argument developed at the end of the eighteenth century by thinkers and polemicists improvising their declarations of faith and horror in response to the French Revolution.

58

The correspondence of Lamennais provides a good example of this providential turn of mind. 'Everything is supernatural in what we are seeing,' he wrote to a friend in September 1815, 'and the evils like the remedies derive immediately from a higher order of causes, as elevated as it is impenetrable to the eyes of man . . .'; and again in December 1830: 'I read virtually nothing any longer, save the great book which providence has placed under our eyes for the past thirty years.' Similar references with an increasingly strong tone of apocalyptic expectation - litter Lamennais's letters throughout the Restoration. F. de Lamennais, Correspondence generate, ed. L. Le Guillou, 9 vols (Paris, 1971-81), i, p. 265; ii, p. 157; passim. 59 Certainly, providential themes retained a significant place in counter-revolutionary thought more generally: see the examples from legitimist writings given by Rials, 'Legitimisme et catholicisme', pp. 210-13.

10 Catholicism and Nationalism in France: The Case of the Federation Nationale Catholique, 1924—39 James F. McMillan

Despite the fact that it could lay claim to being the foremost representative of French political Catholicism in the inter-war period, the Federation Nationale Catholique has been largely overlooked by historians. Indeed, French political Catholicism, in the twentieth century remains in general an under-researched historical topic, no doubt because it never produced any French equivalent of the German Catholic centre party, the Zentrum, or the kind of mass Catholic party to be found in say Belgium, Italy or Spain.1 Only after the Second World War, with the founding of the Christian Democratic Mouvement Republicain Populaire (MRP), did the prospect of a mass Catholic party seem capable of realisation, and even it failed to live up to its founders' hopes and ambitions. Such scholarly work as has been done on French political Catholicism has tended to concentrate on the emergence of a 'new Catholic left' over the course of the twentieth century, epitomised in the post-Second World War period by the review Esprit and other avant-garde groups.2 Likewise, the role of the Christian Democrats of the small Parti Democrate Populaire (POP) in the inter-war period has been recognised in a recent monograph.3 The FNC, however, still awaits its historian. What follows here is necessarily a brief account, but it is hoped that it will be adequate to convey some idea of the organisation's character, influence and importance.

1 The most useful general surveys of French political Catholicism can be found in J.-M. Mayeur, Des partis catholiques a la democratic chretienne, xixe-xxe siecle (Paris, 1880) and A. Dansette, Destin du catholicisme fran^ais, 1926-1956 (Paris, 1957). See also J.F. McMillan's chapter on France in T. Buchanan and M. Conway, Political Catholicism in Europe, c. 1920-c. 1960 (forthcoming). The author wishes to thank the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland for an award which helped defray the costs of carrying out research on this chapter in Paris. 2 R. William Rauch, Jr, Politics and Belief in Contemporary France: Emmanuel Mourner and Christian Democracy, 1932-1950 (The Hague, 1972); J. Hellman, Emmanuel Mourner and the New Catholic Left, 1930-1950 (Toronto, Buffalo, London, 1981); and M. Kelly, Pioneer of the Catholic Revival: The Ideas and Influence of Emmanuel Mourner (London, 1979). 3 J.-C. Delbreil, Centrisme et democratic chretienne en France: le Parti Democrate Populaire des origines au MRP, 1919-1944 (Paris, 1990).

152

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

Of particular interest is the degree to which the FNC served as the standard-bearer of what might be called 'national Catholicism', a fusion of a certain kind of traditionalist Catholicism with a certain kind of right-wing French nationalism. Since the time of the French Revolution, most Catholics in France had refused to identify with the idea of the nation propagated by apologists for the republican and Jacobin tradition and symbolised by the figure of the peasant girl Marianne. Instead, they clung to a notion of France as 'the eldest daughter of the church', a country of Catholic Christianity, whose true symbol and inspiration was Joan of Arc.4 Outraged at the harm wreaked by nineteenth-century anticlericalism, which had culminated in the separation of church and state in 1905, these intransigent Catholics were fired by the desire to undertake a vast work of re-Christianisation, and sought out political allies on the right. Right-wing political Catholics were far from orthodox conservatives, however, since their alliance with conservatism was based not so much on shared economic and social objectives as on a visceral antipathy to the left as the agents of secularisation. While these clerical nationalists subscribed to many of the doctrines of integral nationalism as preached by the Action Franchise (notably the distinction between the pays legal - the republic, allegedly run by a combination of Jews, Protestants and freemasons - and the pays reel - real, 'eternal' France, embodied by the church and the army), they parted company with the royalist league over its slogan 'politique d'abord' - politics first. National Catholicism preached 'catholicisme d'abord' - Catholicism first - since its adepts refused to accept that religion was simply a matter for individual consciences.5 Instead, they insisted that it was a social phenomenon which aspired ideally to the reconstruction of a Christian social order. In this regard, supporters of the FNC were the heirs of the nineteenth-century Legitimists, who thought of themselves latterly as the parti catholique par excellence.6 The founding of the FNC was a direct response to the renewed anticlerical attack on the church initiated by the government of the Cartel des gauches in the wake of the victory of the left in the general elections of May 1924. Led by the veteran radical politician Edouard Herriot, who preferred to devote his energy to the perennial and congenial issue of the 'clerical

4

J.F. McMillan, 'Reclaiming a Martyr: French Catholics and the Cult of Joan of Arc, 1890-1920', in Martyrs and Martyrologies, Studies in Church History, 30, ed. D. Wood (Oxford, 1993). 5 Y. Tranvouez, Catholiques d'abord: approches du mouvement catholique en France xixe-xxe siecle (Paris, 1988). 6 The importance of religion in the Legitimist world view is emphasised by S.D. Kale, Legitimism and the Reconstruction of French Society, 1852-1883 (Baton Rouge and London, 1992).

Catholicism and Nationalism in France

153

threat', rather than to the financial issues besetting the country, the government served notice that it would reverse the policy of 'religious pacification' pursued by the previous right-wing governments of the Bloc National elected to power in 1919. Diplomatic ties with Rome were once again to be severed, the Separation Law of 1905 extended to the provinces of Alsace-Lorraine recovered from Germany and 'unauthorised' religious congregations expelled from French soil, just as they had been before 1914 in conformity with the sectarian legislation passed by the government of the Cartel des gauches under Emile Combes at the beginning of the century. Catholics were outraged, not least because many of the members of the religious orders who had returned home had done so in order to volunteer for service with the French armed forces during the war. Resistance began immediately in the diocese of Strasbourg and soon spread throughout Alsace and then to the whole country. Everywhere Catholic defence committees were set up to resist what was widely regarded as the beginning of a new round of republican persecution. One such committee was established in the diocese of Rodez, under the direction of General Noel-Marie-Joseph-Edouard Castelnau and in October 1924 he was charged by the assembly of cardinals and archbishops of France as the man to co-ordinate the Catholic resistance campaign. The FNC was the result, a movement that was shaped in the image and likeness of its founder. Born in 1851 into a noble and Catholic family of the Rouergue in the Aveyron, Castelnau was educated at the Jesuit college of the rue des Postes in Paris and then at Saint-Cyr. His military career began with active service in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and culminated in a series of senior commands during the First World War. It was at this time that he first began to show interest in a political career and, having developed contacts with conservative parliamentarians and the right-wing press (in particular the Echo de Paris, which had a large Catholic readership), he entered parliament as deputy for the Aveyron in 1919 on the Bloc National ticket. In the chamber, he stood out among the large number of mediocre and inexperienced deputies who constituted the right's majority, and in 1920 he was the leader of the French parliamentary delegation to Rome on the occasion of the canonisation of Joan of Arc. In 1923 Poincare used him as an intermediary in the delicate negotiations between Paris and Rome for the reopening of the French embassy at the Vatican, closed since 1904. In 1924 he lost his seat with the swing to the left, after a particularly dirty and personalised election campaign in which local radicals accused him of being a war-monger. Their charge was that not only had he supported the French invasion of the Ruhr in 1923 to enforce reparations payments from Germany, but also that, having sacrificed three of his own sons in the butchery of the trenches between 1914 and 1918, he would have no compunction about sacrificing the sons of others in any future war.

154

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

A family man who had fathered twelve children, Castelnau was deeply wounded by these insinuations.7 The cartel could not have had a tougher or more energetic opponent. Even before he received the call from the French ecclesiastical hierarchy, he had started his own crusade against Herriot, whom he depicted as a mere tool in the hands of the Freemasons. In August 1924 he distributed to all French bishops a pamphlet entitled La dictature de la maqonnerie en France, in which it was claimed that government policy was made in the masonic lodges and that the text of Herriot's ministerial declaration merely reproduced resolutions originally formulated in these sinister establishments.8 Once mandated by the cardinals and archbishops, he repeated the accusations in a series of articles in the Echo de Paris and at the same time stressed the need for the formation of a vast Catholic organisation of resistance. It was thus that the FNC came into existence in November 1924. At its first constitutive general assembly held in Paris in 1925 it prescribed 'a religious, social and national programme, simultaneously defensive and constructive, with the aim of protecting and restoring the entire Christian social order'.9 As Castelnau put it: What will be the outlook of our federation? It won't be a political group. It does not constitute an association which as such demands its place in the electoral and parliamentary sphere. Neither is it a group which can be numbered with religious charitable organisations. These charities have a directly spiritual objective, which they pursue under the exclusive direction of pastors and bishops. The sphere of the FNC is that of public life. As Pius X has said, it involveds 'fighting by all just and legal means anti-Christian civilisation, replacing Jesus Christ in the family, in the schools, in society . . . taking profoundly to heart the interests of the people, and in particular of the industrial and agricultural workers . . .'10 The new federation quickly became a mass movement, an achievement all the more remarkable since it was never particularly well funded and was run by Castelnau on a very tight budget. According to Xavier Vallat, one of the federation's most prominent orators, its income never amounted to more than 500,000 francs a year. Its leading lights followed Castelnau's example and gave their services free. Two of the general's daughters, along with some of their female friends, helped out with the secretarial work (notably in the book division, which distributed the federation's propaganda). Retired ex-army colleagues also lent a hand. There was

7

Y. Gras, Castelnau: ou I'art de commander, 1851-1944 (Paris, 1990). A.G. Michel, La dictature de la maqonnerie en France (Paris, 1924). 9 Quoted by R. Rousseau, Le General de Castelnau et la Federation Nationale Catholique (Paris, 1936), p. 20. 10 Ibid., p. 2. 8

Catholicism and Nationalism in France

155

only one professional secretary, though Pironneau, Castelnau's secretary at the Echo de Paris, also assisted.11 Thanks to Castelnau's formidable organisational talents, the movement took off, built up on a broad base of parish, cantonal and diocesan organisations. All the Catholic men of the parish unions were enrolled, while the cantonal unions grouped together a number of parishes. The diocesan union had its own diocesan committee, representing the principal organisations of the diocese and operating under the authority of the bishop. A national council, numbering delegates from every diocese, met twice a year in Paris, while the national management committee also operated from Paris and likewise comprised regional representatives as well as delegates from national Catholic organisations and a representative of the hierarchy, R.P. Janvier, the well-known Dominican preacher. Within a year, the movement claimed a membership of 1,200,000 and by September 1926, 1,832,000. Another 900,000 were enrolled over the next three years. The press service, which produced the federation's bulletin Credo under the direction of the first secretarygeneral, Ernest Pezet (interestingly, a well-known figure from the world of Christian Democracy), served to keep members in touch with one another and to disseminate propaganda. By the late 1920s, therefore, the FNC had emerged as a formidable force for the representation of Catholic interests.12 The characteristic method of publicising itself adopted by Castelnau's association was the public meeting. The federation had a team of orators (who spoke also on behalf of other organisations such as the DRAG (Droits des Religieux Anciens Combattants) and the PAC (Pretres Anciens Combattants). Led by Castelnau himself, speakers went out from Paris to speak to rallies held all over France. Between October 1924 and January 1925, 392 public meetings were held in larger urban centres, the ground having been prepared by countless smaller parish meetings. According to the FNC's own figures (police estimates were usually considerably lower), 18,000 people turned out at La Roche-sur-Yon; 18,000 at Pau; 21,000 at Bayonne; 7,000 at Rodez; 12,000 at Monpellier; 10,000 at Cholet; 12,000 at La Rochefoucault; 20,000 at Quimper; 50,000 at Folgoet; 12,000 at Bordeaux; 12,000 at Nancy; 14,000 at Flers; 10,000 at Nimes; and 30,000 at Saint-Brieuc.13 Biggest of all was the rally at Landernau in Brittany held on 28 February 1926, which, according to the FNC, attracted 100,000 people, though the Catholic press claimed only about 60 to 80,000 and the police suggested 35,000.14 Whatever the true numbers, it was

11 X. Vallat, Le nez de Cleopatre: souvenirs d'un homme de droite, 1918-1945 (Paris, 1957), pp. 139-49. 12 G. Viance, La Federation Nationale Catholique: Son passe, son avenir (Paris, 1939). 13 Ibid., p. 15. 14 AN, F7 13219. Commissaire special to prefect of Finistere, Landernau. 28 February 1926.

156

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

certainly an extraordinary occasion. The ceremonies were presided over by the bishop of Quimper and Leon, Mgr Duparc, but Castelnau, as usual, was the star speaker, giving his ritual diatribe against the wiles and iniquities of freemasonry. The festive atmosphere was enhanced by a great deal of lusty hymn singing, including some hymns in the Breton language. In its propaganda the FNC represented itself as first and foremost a Catholic organisation. It stood for Catholicisme d'abord, and proclaimed its mission as being to defend the Catholic faith and Catholic interests. It constantly repudiated the charge that it was in any way a political party - not even a Catholic party and still less a fascist party. Its watchword, set out in its monthly bulletin Credo, was 'Action outside of and above all political parties and all party politics'.15 Castelnau, speaking at an FNC rally at Chaumont, in the Haute-Marne, on 21 March 1926 claimed: 'Contrary to rumours being put about, the Federation Catholique does not engage in politics, it limits its action solely to the Catholic interests of its adherents, who may be recruited from all the different political parties - except the revolutionary groups.'16 Other leaders such as Xavier Vallat and Philippe Henriot were at pains to repeat the same message.17 The FNC, in short, had pretensions to be recognised as an exemplar of Catholic Action on the model prescribed by popes Leo XIII and Pius X, and indeed, initially, it was complemented by the Vatican for conforming exactly to the papal ideal.18 As a Catholic organisation, the FNC proclaimed its aims to be threefold.19 First of all, to defend, which meant to defend all the rights of Catholics in the face of the threat of persecution; the right of Alsace-Lorraine to remain exempt from the Separation Law; the right to maintain diplomatic relations with the Vatican; the right of Catholics to education in their own schools; and the rights of the family and of children. Secondly, it wished to conquer, that is to win back all 'legitimate liberties unjustly destroyed'; freedom of education; freedom of association for the religious orders; freedom of association for Catholic charitable organisations; and freedom of conscience for Catholic civil servants. Finally, the FNC existed to restore, since its ultimate objective, as Philippe Henriot put it at a rally in the Charente-Inferieure in June 1926, was 'to work for the restoration in France of a Christian social order'.20 What this involved was described by 15 AN, F7 13219. L'activite de la Federation Nationale Catholique au cour de I'annee 1926, March 1927. 16 AN, F7 13219, prefect of Haute-Marne to Minister of the Interior, 21 March 1926. 17 AN, F7 13219, commissaire special to Director of La Surete Generale, Rochefort, 28 June 1926. 18 Bulletin Officiel de la Federation Nationale Catholique, December 1925. 19 Ibid., February 1925, p. 8. 20 AN, F7 13219, commissaire special to Director of La Surete Generale, Rochefort, 28 June 1926.

Catholicism and Nationalism in France

157

Georges Viance as 'the return to normal Christian life, which is a social life, the definitive break with the wretchedness of the last century, which was so unchristian, so profoundly penetrated by materialism and secularism, that even Catholics agreed to smother their religious faith in the private sphere, and to hide it there as a completely individual conception of life, which had no need to communicate'.21 In the ideology of the FNC, by far the greatest obstacle to the rebuilding of the Christian city was the continuing malign influence of Freemasonry. Castelnau, as we have seen, subscribed totally to the myth of the masonic plot, according to which the destiny of the country was controlled from the masonic lodges. Communism, of course, was also a threat, but in FNC discourse Freemasons remained the principal enemy as late as the mid 1930s, when another pamphlet distributed by Castelnau and his organisation blamed the masons for the rise of the Popular Front.22 Writing in 1936 in another FNC publication, Rene Rousseau stated that the anti-masonic struggle had always been 'the first objective of FNC activity. It still is - more so than ever since the recent scandals - one of its principal preoccupations. For there is the chief adversary of Christianity.' He added: It is at the FNC that one can find the most serious and the fullest documentation on Freemasonry. Everything is there. Whatever the origins and history of Freemasonry, it strikes one that, under philanthropic appearances, it has always been a force for disintegration and anticlericalism and that it has become in countries like France, where in fact it holds power, an association of careerists and profiteers whose whole power resides in secrecy: the secrecy of its doctrines, of its numbers and of its means of action. To unmask it through knowing the case is to place it in a position where it can do no harm. The FNC actively works at this task.23

The theme of the masonic plot was a staple feature of speeches at FNC rallies, and by no means simply an obsession of Castelnau himself. Thus the abbe Desgranges, speaking at Reims on 13 June 1926, denounced 'the occult influences which at the present time give orders to our governments'. Secularism, he maintained was what led to the collapse of civilisation, the increase in juvenile crime and the decrease in the birth rate.24 Xavier Vallat told an audience at Besancpn in April 1926 that a struggle was being waged by Freemasonry against Catholic schools under the banner of the ecole unique (the campaign for free secondary schooling for all). Catholics, he insisted, ought to have nothing to do

21

Viance, La Federation Nationale Catholique, pp. 84-85. A.G. Michel, La France sons I'etreinte nuifonnique (Paris, 1935). 23 Rousseau, Le General de Castelnau, pp. 24-25. 2 ^ A N , F7 13219, commissariat de police, Reims, 13 June 1926. 22

158

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

with this but should demand instead their fair share of public funds for their own schools.25 A leaflet issued to participants at the Landernau rally already mentioned informed them that before 1914 'the freemason politicians spent the best part of their time fashioning oppressive laws against Catholics'. Herriot, the spokesman of the lodges, was merely renewing the struggle which had abated only during the period of the union sacree during the war.26 In Castelnau's eyes, the ultimate sin of the lodges was to be sectarian and antipatriotic. Their politics, in his view, were 'anti-religious and anti-national' and therefore a crime against God and the patrie.21 For FNC adherents, patriotism and Catholicism went hand in hand. The abbe Desgranges, speaking alongside Castelnau at Cognac in 1926, said Catholics should take as their watchwords 'Dieu, Patrie et Liberte'. In his view, it was the French above all other peoples who had given the world the notion of civilisation, a civilisation made essentially by Catholics and in which France was recognised as 'the first nation in the world'.28 The Landernau rally was as much a demonstration of patriotism as of religious fervour. Castelnau concluded his speech with a peroration calling on Catholics to affirm their faith 'pour Dieu, la Patrie, le Foyer'.29 Equally revealing were the words of one of the hymns sung at the occasion. Entitled Catholiques et Bretons toujours, it neatly encapsulated the links between the FNC's conception of Catholicism and the conservative nationalism of the classic right: O Marie, o mere cherie Garde aux coeur des Bretons la foi des anciens jours Entends du haul du ciel le cri de la patrie Catholiques et Bretons toujours (bis) Dieu fit la France fille ainee De son Eglise, aux premiers jours Et Dieu des lors te 1'a donnee Reine! Protege-la toujours. O! regne, regne, bonne Mere! Tes sujets sont a tes genoux! Sois leur refuge tutelaire Sauve la France, sauve-nous!

25 AN, F7 13219, commissaire central to director of Surete Nationale, Besancon, 28 April 1926. 26 AN, F7 13219, brochure, Ligue de defense et d'Action Catholique. 27 AN, F7 13219, commissaire special to prefect of Finistere, Landernau, 28 February 1926. 28 AN, F7 13219, reunion de la Ligue Catholique, Cognac, 2 May 1926. 29 AN, F7 13220, commissaire special to Ministry of the Interior, Menton, 13 March 1926.

Catholicism and Nationalism in France

159

La Bretagne est toujours fidele A 1'Eglise, au Pontife-Roi Elle est a toi, veille sur elle Garde-lui son Christ et sa foi.30

The devotion of Bretons to Christ and the Virgin Mary, their fidelity to the pope and to France, venerated as the eldest daughter of the church, the inextricable mixture of piety and patriotism - here, in a few verses, was the essence of the national Catholicism for which the FNC stood and which convinced its many opponents that it was by no means the innocent, religious, apolitical organisation which it made itself out to be. For some, indeed, the FNC was not merely political but fascist. The federation indignantly repudiated the charge. The abbe Desgranges responded to a communist heckler at a meeting at Menton by affirming that Catholics were not at the service of any party and that he personally was opposed to any kind of fascism, Catholic or otherwise. According to Desgranges (whose own sympathies lay with Christian Democracy), fascism existed only because communists talked about it so much.31 Yet the links between the FNC and organisations of the extreme right cannot be so easily dismissed. Until its condemnation by the papacy in 1926, the Action Franchise enjoyed widespread support among Catholics for its strong defence of the church in the face of the secularising policies of the state.32 FNC militants like Xavier Vallat considered their own organisation and the Action Franchise to be engaged in the same fight against a common enemy and had many ties of personal friendship with members of the royalist league. The result of the papal ban was that members of the FNC's committees could no longer remain also members of the Action Franchise, which caused considerable dismay in the ranks of the federation. The latter was obliged to accept the papal decision - Valla described himself as 'a docile son of the Roman Church [who] condemned 30 O Mary, O dearest Mother, keep in the hearts of the Bretons the faith of former times. Hear in heaven the cry of our motherland, Catholics and Bretons forever.

God made France the eldest daughter of his Church, from the earliest days. Since then God has given her to you, our Queen. Protect her always. O reign, reign, good mother. Your subjects are on their knees. Be their tutelary refuge. Save France, save us. Brittany is still faithful to the Church and to the Pontiff-King. She is yours, watch over her. Preserve for him her Christ and her faith. :M

AN, F7 13220, commissaire special to Ministry of the Interior, Menton. The prestige of the Action Frangaise in the aftermath of the First World War is attested by the Dean of the Faculty of Letters at the Institut Catholique in Paris, Memoires de Mgr Jean Culvet (Lyon, 1967). 32

160

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

what the Sovereign Pontiff condemned' - but he thought it unfair to Maurras and refused to sever his connections with Action Franchise at the personal level. A royalist who attended mass every 21 January in memory of the executed Louis XVI, he remained a maurrassien fellow-traveller until after the Second World War, when he was finally converted by the master himself while they were serving prison sentences together for collaboration under Vichy and the German Occupation.33 Apart from the Action Franchise, the FNC had contacts with other organisations of the extra-parliamentary right.34 Castelnau subsidised Redier's Legion, which had a mainly Catholic membership, a good many of them either university or high school students. He likewise contributed substantially to the coffers of the Jeunesses Patriotes founded by the champagne magnate Taittinger in 1924 and like the FNC dedicated to the fight against Freemasonry and the secularisation of society. The Faisceau, founded in 1925, was headed by George Valois, who returned to Catholicism after an anticlerical phase, and by Marcel Bucard, a member of the FNC and a friend of Cardinal Mercier, the primate of Belgium. Its newspaper, Le nouveau siecle, contained articles written by well-known Catholic journalists.35 As well as a shared Catholicism, all of these organisations, the FNC included, professed an open admiration for Mussolini, whom they regarded as an exemplary model and inspirational leader. Thus if the FNC was not itself fascist, as its defenders maintained, its enemies were not entirely wrong to regard it as more than the purely religious body which it claimed to be. Its apoliticism was strictly rhetorical, and in practice it was highly active on the political front, joining hands with similar-minded elements of the right to promote catholicisme d'abord. However much he might deny it, Castelnau was effectively the head of a Catholic party which saw its terrain as being that of la vie publique.36 He made no secret of his desire to draw Catholics away from 'that somnolent passivity which had cost them so dear between 1870 and 1910' in pursuit of the ultimate goal of restoring the Catholic social order.37 At first the FNC seemed to go from strength to strength. The Herriot government fell on 17 April 1925 and, while it is true that financial problems rather than the religious issue forced Herriot's resignation, it is surely significant that the new government formed by Painleve gave in

33

Vallat, Le nez de Cleopatre. This paragraph is based on information in R. Soucy, French Fascism: The First Wave, 1924-1933 (New Haven, 1986). 35 O.L. Arnal, Ambivalent Alliance: The Catholic Church and the Action Frangaise, 1899—1939 (Pittsburgh, 1935); N. Ravitch, The Catholic Church and the French Nation, 1589-1989 (London, 1990). 36 Viance, La Federation Nationale Catholique, p. 21. 3 ? Ibid., p. 5. 34

Catholicism and Nationalism in France

161

to all of the FNC's immediate demands, promising to maintain the embassy at the Vatican, to desist from applying the Separation Law to Alsace and to allow the religious orders to remain in the country. Thus encouraged, Castelnau began to present the FNC as less a movement of religious defence than as a mouvement de combat, though he was anxious to maintain its non party-political profile. In the elections of 1928, the FNC did not field its own candidates but drew up a programme (based on freedom of education and association and the rights of the religious orders) which was presented to candidates of all the other parties. Catholics were urged to give their votes only to those candidates who endorsed the FNC's programme. In this way it was able to claim that some 227 deputies (46 per cent of the new chamber) were on its side.38 In retrospect, however, it can be seen that the late twenties represent the peak of the FNC's influence. By 1929 its status as an organisation uniquely placed to speak for Catholic interests was being undermined in various ways, one of which was Pius XI's ambitious plans for a complete revamping of the structures of Catholic Action. While the pope shared the FNC's dream of rechristianising society, he was as determined as his predecessors to keep Catholic Action free from any taint of politics. He therefore wished to see the movement reorganised not just along more 'specialised' lines (with separate organisations for workers, farmers, students and so on) but also placed firmly under episcopal control. In the French case, he wished to see the new arrangements in place by 1932, and inevitably they demoted the FNC from its leading role. Symbolically, the federation's newspaper was ordered to change its name from Action Catholique de France to La France Catholique. In this way the Vatican blocked the further political development of the FNC, just as it had always blocked attempts to form a Catholic party in France in the past.39 Where the Vatican led, the French Catholic hierarchy followed. In the face of the crises of the 1930s, its members began to show increased solidarity with the beleaguered governments of the Third Republic. A truculent FNC was advised to do likewise. Thus at the annual assembly of the FNC in 1935 Cardinal Lienart told the gathering that, while the appearance of extra-parliamentary leagues was understandable, the FNC should steer clear of them. The church, he declared, had always upheld the duty of Christians to recognise legitimate authority, which belonged to the government. Those who sought to undermine government on the pretext that it was weak served only to weaken the state further. Political problems, according to the cardinal, were therefore best left to those in power, and Catholics were best preoccupied with the work of non-political Catholic Action, in the interests of rebuilding a Christian society.40 38

Gras, Le General de Castelnau, p. 404. H. Rollet, Albert de Mun et le parti catholique (Paris, 1947). 4 0 AN, F7 14614. Lille, 36 October 1935.

39

162

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

A further problem for the FNC was that its conception of nationalism increasingly placed it at odds with Vatican foreign policy. Whereas the FNC remained belligerently anti-German and opposed to any softening of the Versailles Settlement, the Holy See under Pius XI favoured a Briandiste, pro-League of Nations, policy. Castelnau regularly denounced the 'spirit of Geneva' in La France catholique and the Echo de Paris, waxing indignant at the visit of the German Chancellor Briining in July 1931 and his presence at a Mass at Notre Dame des Victoires, and also expressing outrage at the religious funeral accorded to Briand, one of the architects of the Separation Law of 1905, in 1932. As an admirer of Mussolini, on whom he called on his visits to Rome, Castelnau was also strongly opposed to sanctions against Italy for its aggression against Ethiopia in 1935. Fascist Italy, in his view, was potentially an invaluable ally against Hitler's Germany, and he had no wish to see the ideals of the league preferred to the 'realistic' Stresa Front of France, Italy and Great Britain.41 The FNC's claims to speak for Catholic interests were also diminished by the emergence of the Christian Democratic PDF after 1924. It is true that, to begin with at least, there were links between the FNC and the POP, personified in men such as Ernest Pezet and the abbe Desgranges. Pezet, one of the leading lights of the PDF, was also initially generalsecretary of the federation and a regular columnist in Credo, where he argued that if Catholics were .divided by 'party polities' they were united by 'religious polities'. As we have seen, the abbe Desgranges, later a PDF deputy, regularly addressed FNC rallies, and there were always some PDP members who favoured 'entryist' tactics in the party's dealings with the FNC for the sake of trying to present a united Catholic front. From 1925, however, it was increasingly apparent that the FNC was split between 'monarchist' and 'republican' tendencies among its membership. While the central committee of the FNC was biased in favour of the conservatives, in the diocesan committees there were Christian Democrats who refused to confine their activities to the issue of religious defence and who questioned the wisdom of collaborating with men of the far right. The 'international' tendencies of the PDP further reinforced the gap between the Christian Democrats and the FNC and led to a heated polemical exchange on the subject of Franco-German rapprochement between L'Ouest eclair, the voice of Christian Democracy in the west of France, and Castelnau's Echo de Paris. The PDP's obsession with not being seen as a confessional party encouraged a significant portion of political Catholic opinion to operate at a discreet remove from the FNC, which in turn hindered the latter's ambitions to be in effect, if not in name, the indisputable parti catholique in France.42

41 42

R. Remond, Les catholiques dans la France des annees 30 (Paris, 1979). Delbreil, Centrisme et democratie chretienne, p. I74ff.

Catholicism and Nationalism in France

163

What the FNC did succeed in doing, however, was to keep alive the religious politics of the nineteenth century well into the twentieth century. Consistent with its belief that the French state was dominated by anticlericals and freemasons, the FNC refused to accommodate itself to 'the modern world' but persisted in its adherence to an intransigent Catholicism which still aspired to the reconstruction of a Catholic social order. There was no 'second Ralliement' as far as the FNC was concerned.43 Moreover, since the Catholic social order was in practice a conservative social order, the FNC, for all its much vaunted apoliticism, was the ally of the traditional right. As such, it helped to prepare Catholic opinion for adherence to the Vichy regime. Like most French people, Catholics welcomed the assumption of power by Marshal Petain in 1940 in the wake of military defeat and the disintegration of the republican state, but their enthusiasm for Vichy amounted to more than simply relief at the restoration of order. For someone like Xavier Vallat, a notorious antisemite soon to be the minister responsible for implementing Vichy's legislation against Jews, Catholics had cause to celebrate the new regime as the triumph of their campaigns against the godless Third Republic. Secularism was ended, with the return of religious ceremonial in public life and visible support for the church from the new regime in the shape of the rescinding of the laws against the congregations and concessions to Catholic schools.44 If many Catholics saw in Vichy revenge for 1905, it was in no small measure because their outlook had been shaped by exposure to the doctrines of the FNC, which, with all its limitations, remained arguably the largest single influence on French Catholic opinion in the years between the wars.

43 H.S. Paul, The Second Ralliement: The Rapprochement between Church and State in France in the Twentieth Century (Washington, 1967). 44 Vallat, Le nez de Cleopdtre, pp. 148-49.

This page intentionally left blank

11 Les Maitres du Marechal: Catholic Schoolteachers in Vichy France, 1940-44 Nicholas Atkin

Until recently it was commonplace to believe that the French Catholic church had been an ardent supporter of the Vichy regime.1 Such a view was buttressed by the mass of episcopal declarations of support for Marshal Petain. Even in December 1942 - after the horror of the Vel d'Hiv round-ups, the beginnings of the Releve and the occupation of all of France - members of the Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops (ACA) could still reaffirm their support for Vichy's elderly leader.2 Yet it would be a mistake to believe that the church spoke with one voice. Drawing on the conclusions presented in Jacques Duquesne's pioneering study of 1966, Les catholiques franqais sous I'occupation, a growing number of historians are now convinced that the French church was painfully divided in its reaction to the war years.3 Rather than being a monolithic bloc, it comprised several different elements: the hierarchy; the lower clergy; the regular clergy; the Catholic institutes of higher education; the youth movements of Action Catholique; and the rank-and-file laity, to name but a few. As each one of these groups attracts the attention of historians, an elaborate mosaic of Catholic attitudes towards Vichy has begun to emerge.4 Yet the wartime world of one important group of Catholics remains unexplored: the 50,000 or so schoolteachers employed in church primary schools.5 1

For criticisms of the wartime role of the church, see J. Cottereau, L'eglise et Petain (Paris, 1946). For the Catholic defence, see A. Derro, L'episcopal franqais dans la melee de son temps, 1930-1954 (Paris, 1955) and Mgr Guerry, L'eglise en France sous I'occupation (Paris, 1947). 2 Declaration of the ACA, December 1942, quoted in J. Duquesne, Les catholiques franc,ai sous I'occupation (Paris, 1966), pp. 275-76. 3 In particular see Eglises et chretiens dans la Deuxieme Guerre Mondiale: la region RhoneAlpes. Actes du colloque tenu a Grenoble du 7 au 9 Octobre 1976 publies sous la direction de Xavier de Montclos (Lyon, 1978); 'Eglises et chretiens pendant la seconde guerre mondiale dans le Nord/Pas-de-Calais', Revue du Nord (1978), pp. 237-38; and Eglises et chretiens dans la Deuxieme Guerre Mondiale: la France. Actes du colloque tenu a Lyon du 27 au 30 Janvier 1978 publies sous la direction de Xavier de Montclos (Lyon, 1982). 4 Many of these attitudes are considered in W.D. Halls, 'Catholicism under Vichy', R. Kedward and R. Austin (eds), Vichy France and the Resistance: Culture and Ideology (London, 1985), pp. 133-46. 5 AN, F17 13390, note from the secretary-general of the Service d'Information de I'Enseignement Libre, 7 November 1941, gives details of the numbers of teachers.

166

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

The reasons for their neglect are not difficult to perceive. To begin with, any study of Catholic teachers poses formidable difficulties to the historian.6 Unlike their state counterparts, trained in the ecole normale and unionised in the Syndicat National des Instituteurs, Catholic teachers did not possess a corporate identity, thus making any generalisations about their existence extremely hazardous. Secondly, they played a far less obvious political role during the Occupation than did their cousins in enseignement public. State instituteurs had for a long while been the bugbear of the French right and it was no surprise that Vichy held them responsible for defeat in 1940. Over the next four years, the regime attempted to overturn their alleged secularism and convert them into being loyal disciples of the revolution nationale.7 In the event, poor wages and the vacuous rhetoric of Petain's many ministers of education did little to win over the teaching body. Thirdly, sources for Catholic teachers are hard to come by. Due to the sensitivity which the Occuplation continues to hold in the French national consciousness, diocesan archives remain officially closed to researchers. The problem of sources is compounded further by the disruption of the Nazi presence which ensured that several leading educational journals - including L'educateur chretien the organ of the Federation Nationale des Syndicats Diocesains d'Enseignement Libre (FNSDEL) - ceased publication for the war years.8 Not surprisingly, then, the impression of the Catholic teacher during the Occupation is often a stereotypical one manufactured by anticlerical polemicists in the post-Liberation era.9 This portrait is that of a dowdy, poorly-qualified individual, probably a former religious, blindly obeying the Petainist propaganda of the episcopacy, and all too ready to undermine the standing of state instituteurs. Like all stereotypes, this picture contains an element of truth yet ultimately it is a misleading one. To start with it needs to be acknowledged that, since the republic's assault on the religious orders in the early 1900s, the majority of teachers in church primary schools had been plucked from the ranks of the laity - and it is with these secular personnel that the present essay is primarily concerned.10 In 1912

6 The general difficulties involved in research on Catholic teachers are discussed in P. Guiral and G. Thullier, La vie quotidienne des professeurs de 1870 a 1940 (Paris, 1983), pp. 8-9. 7 See R. Austin, 'Political Surveillance and Ideological Control in Vichy France: A Study of Teachers in the Midi, 1940-1944', in Kedward and Austin (eds), Vichy France and the Resistance, pp. 13-35. 8 La croix, 19 September 1940. 9 See P. Delanoue, Les enseignants: la lutte syndicate du front populaire a la liberation (Paris, 1955). 10 On this legislation and the role of the religious orders during the Occupation see N. Atkin, 'The Politics of Legality: The Religious Orders in France, 1901-1945', in F. Tallett and N. Atkin (eds), Religion, Society and Politics in France since 1789 (London, 1991), pp. 149-65.

Catholic Schoolteachers in Vichy France

167

it has been calculated that lay personnel already constituted 40 per cent of the Catholic teaching body, the remainder being religious or former religious.11 By 1938 some 85 per cent may have been civilians.12 Drawn from the same clientele as enseignement primaire libre, these lay teachers had displayed an impressive dedication to Catholic education which had not been rewarded by higher wages. Instead they had come to occupy an ambivalent social position similar to that of the state instituteurs. No longer peasants nor artisans, their salaries and qualifications did not make them a part of respectable bourgeois society.13 The defeat of 1940, however, offered Catholic teachers new promise. The episcopate was full of praise for these fantassins of enseignement libre and it appeared that they would occupy an elevated role in Petain's new France. In the event, Vichy's revolution nationale failed to deliver and several teachers felt their interests had not been best served by church leaders. Teachers have frequently been the scapegoat for national setback.14 Following Bismarck's triumph in 1870, for example, it was argued that Prussian schoolteachers had been more realistically attuned to the needs of a rapidly industrialising society than had their counterparts in France.15 Whereas Prussian teachers had been nationalistic and scientific in attitude, French teachers (notably those belonging to the religious orders) had been unpatriotic and backward-looking. These slurs on the quality of Catholic teaching had been deeply resented by the church; yet in 1940 it had its moment of revenge. This time it was the turn of the state instituteurs to be chastised for military defeat. Members of the new regime strove to outbid one another in their denunciations of the pacifism and socialism of the state teaching body. Even Laval, not known for his comments on domestic issues, lambasted the instituteurs for their supposed internationalism.16 The church readily joined in this chorus of disapproval and was quick to play up the virtues of its own teachers. To begin with it stressed their patriotism, a direct rebuke to republican allegations that Catholic teachers were foreign in outlook. La croix, regarded by many as the official voice of the church, was most forthright in its claims. On 19 November 1940 it 11 A. Lanfrey, Les catholiques franqais et I'ecole, 1901-1914, 2 vols (Paris, 1990), ii, p. 655. 12 J. McManners, Church and State in France, 1870-1914 (London, 1972), p. xxiv. Unfortunately this figure gives no indication of how many religious were operating in civilian dress. 13 T. Zeldin, France, 1848-1945, 2 vols (Oxford, 1973-77), ii, p. 160. 14 R.O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944 (New York, 1972), p. 153. 15 See M. Breal, Quelques mots sur Vinstruction publique (Paris, 1872); and E. Renan, La reforme intellectuelle et morale de la France (Paris, 1871). 16 Laval cited in H. Becquart, Au temps du silence: de Bordeaux a Vichy. Souvenirs et reflexions (Paris, 1945), p. 217.

168

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

proudly proclaimed: 'Tout le monde rec.onnait le devoument quasi-illimite des maitres et maitresses de 1'enseignement libre.' The previous month Mgr Piguet, bishop of Clermont, had delivered a similar message. In an open letter addressed to teachers in his diocese, he proclaimed: La France, au cours de son histoire, n'a pas souvent connu de malheur aussi grand que celui de notre recente defaite militaire, precedee de tant de ruines spirituelles et morales. Les proclamations du Marechal Retain ont etc assez explicites. Ses appels aux vertus et aux methodes de renovation qui s'imposent disent assez ce qui a manque a 1'enseignement et a 1'education rec.us par tant de petits Frangais. Ce n'est pas chez nous que le sens du spirituel, que 1'education, 1'amour de la Patrie, de la pratique de 1'effort et du sacrifice ont manque.17 Later in 1941 these words were echoed by Mgr Bornet, the vicaire episcopal of Saint-Etienne and one of the church's leading experts in educational affairs. Speaking to the annual conference of the Syndicat des Maitres de 1'Enseignement Libre de la Loire, he reminded his audience that the instituteur libre had always dedicated himself to form 'des hommes, des chretiens, des franc.ais'.18 Alongside their patriotism, the church celebrated the pedagogical worth of its teachers. Once again, this was an attempt to dispel pre-war notions about Catholic education. Republicans had long maintained that the instituteur libre was not as well trained nor as well qualified as the instituteur public. To be sure, there was some truth in these claims. Whereas state personnel usually attended an ecole normale and were armed with a diploma testifying to their professional competence,19 the church's lack of money ensured that the majority of Catholic teachers were trained in a variety of institutions. Some attended seminaries; others went to secondary schools; and the dedicated persevered with night courses.20 More often than not, most training was received in the classroom itself. Only a privileged few attended a Catholic ecole normale; in 1945 the church possessed a mere twenty of these and most of this number catered for men.21 Nonetheless it should be noted that the church had never laid too much stress on formal training and paper qualifications, a point which it was keen to re-emphasise 17

Letter of Piguet quoted in La semaine religieuse de Clermont, 19 October 1940, no. 42, p. 549. 18 Bornet quoted in La croix, 20 November 1941. 19 A law of 30 June 1923 required all new state teachers to be in possession of the brevet superieur. in December 1940 the diocese of Paris made this a requirement for its own teachers; yet it appears that it was only in large urban areas where the church could make such stipulations. Information contained in La semaine religieuse de Paris, 7 December 1940, no. 4525, p. 849. 20 On the training of Catholic teachers see Lanfrey, Les c(itlioli(jiu'x fratiytis et I'ecole, ii, p. 683. 21 AN, 71 AJ 66, Dossier Andre Philip. Commission d'etude du probleme des rapports entre 1'enseignement public et 1'enseignement prive.

Catholic Schoolteachers in Vichy France

169

during the Occupation. As La Croix of 19 November 1940 remarked: 'Les plus beaux certificats d'aptitude pedagogiques ne garantissent pas toujours la maitresse reelle dans 1'art de professer.' The real art of teaching, it maintained, was derived from a sense of vocation, an understanding of morality and the experience gained in the classroom. Likewise in November 1940 La revue religieuse de Rodez, the weekly bulletin for the diocese, argued that qualifications, equipment and theoretical knowledge did not necessarily result in good teaching; a moral awareness was far more important.22 In this respect, the article thundered, the teachers of enseignement chretien had demonstrated their worth over those of the ecole sans Dieu. By following a Christian vocation, the church maintained that its own teachers had performed France a further service: they had saved Catholic teaching from extinction and had halted the tide of dechristianisation. In a long article addressed to educateurs Chretiens, La croix of 29 October 1940 declared that in spite of numerous obstacles - the secular legislation of the Third Republic, the expulsion of the religious orders, the refusal of the state to grant subsidies to private schools, and the tepid faith of some parents - Catholic education had survived. To a large extent, the newspaper concluded, this was due to the heroic efforts of les maitres chretiens. Similar thanks were expressed by members of the hierarchy, notably those bishops from dioceses where Catholic education remained firm. One of the most eloquent of these tributes came from Mgr Auvity, bishop of Mende, who presided over a diocese where church schools in 1940 educated some 30 per cent of all children in elementary schools.23 In an open letter of February 1941, he praised his instituteurs and institutrices libres for all their past labours: Si notre chere Lozere est demeuree profondement catholique, elle le doit, en grande partie, aux maitres et maitresses de 1'enseignement libre qui 1'ont marque de leur forte empreinte. Oui, le Diocese vous doit une vive reconnaissance a vous qui avez tant travaille, qui vous etes tant devoues aupres de 1'enfance, et cela, sans aucune perspective de recompense terrestre, sans espoir d'un bel avancement, d'une riche traitement, d'une retraite fructueuse, mais uniquement pour obeir a des motifs plus eleves, empruntes a un ideal superieur de sacrifice, d'abnegation, de renoncement, d'oubli de vous-memes et d'amour desinteresse du bien. Oh! certes vous n'etes pas du nombre de ceux dont parlait le Marechal Petain, chez qui 1'esprit 'de jouissance 1'a emporte sur 1'esprit de sacrifice'.24 In conclusion, Auvity celebrated the piety of Catholic teachers and exhorted them to continue their 'magnificent mission' of Christian education. 22

La revue religieuse de Rodez, 45, 8 November 1940, p. 422. Figures from W.D. Halls, The Youth of Vichy France (Oxford, 1981), p. 409. 24 Letter of Auvity quoted in La revue religieuse de Rodez, 8, 21 February 1941, p. 69. 23

170

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

Given this commitment to their country, the church believed that its own teachers were ideally suited to become disciples of the revolution nationale. Accordingly La Croix diligently reprinted the circulars of the Ministry of Education which exhorted the country's instituteurs to become the servants of the new France.25 Clearly this task of renewal was the work of all educators, not just those employed by the state. In a similar vein, the Semaine religieuse de I'archdiocese d'Aix urged the men and women of enseignement libre to heed the words of Xavier Vallat, Vichy's minister for anciens combattants and future commissioner-general for Jewish Affairs. Reflecting on past history, in July 1940 he had announced: 'On a dit que la defaite de 1870 fut 1'oeuvre de 1'instituteur allemand. Je souhaite que le relevement de la France de demain soit 1'oeuvre des maitres d'ecoles franchises.'26 In a more direct appeal, Mgr Piguet reminded Catholic teachers in the Puy-de-D6me of the importance of their mission: 'Dans cette oeuvre de redressement national, vous etes a 1'avant-garde, puisque c'est 1'ame de 1'enfant, c'est-a-dire la France de 1'avenir, que vous construirez au jour le jour.'27 Teachers themselves appear to have responded enthusiastically to such appeals, at least during the early months of the Occupation. On 11 September 1940 representatives of the FNSDEL gathered for a conference at Lyon. Here they made known their dedication to Christian education and the work of national renewal.28 On a regional level, the same commitments were expressed by the annual conference of the syndicat of Catholic teachers for the diocese of Viviers meeting at Voulte on 28 November 1940. Following the assembly, the directeur diocesain wrote to Petain on behalf of his members: Us tiennent a vous dire d'abord qu'ils sont tous de coeur avec vous dans la lourde tache que vous avez si courageusement entreprise. Dans les 350 ecoles libres de 1'Ardeche ou ils elevent pres de 18,000 petits enfants, ils se sont toujours efforces de leur enseigner 1'amour de la famille et de la patrie, en meme temps que 1'amour de Dieu, et d'inculquer dans ces jeunes ames la notion du devoir, du travail, de 1'obeissance et du sacrifice chretiennement accepte. Plus que jamais ils s'emploieront a former selon ces principes, la jeunesse qui leur est confiee et a apporter ainsi leur modeste mais loyale et totale collaboration aux efforts que vous faites pour la renovation morale de notre pays.29

25

For example see La croix 23/24 August 1940. Vallat quoted in La semaine religieuse de I'archdiocese d'Aix, 21 July 1940, no. 29, p. 292. 27 Piguet quoted in La semaine religieuse de Clermont, 19 October 1940, no. 42, p. 549. 28 La croix, 19 September 1940. 29 Letter of the directeur diocesain, 6 December 1940, quoted in La semaine religieuse de Viviers, 3 January 1941, no. 1, p. 4. 26

Catholic Schoolteachers in Vichy France

171

Maybe such declarations of support were only to be expected from an especially fervent diocese where the church in 1940 educated more than 40 per cent of the total population in local elementary schools;30 yet this letter was held out as an example for other teachers to follow.31 Few, however, could surpass the Petainist sympathies of one particular institutrice libre who on 21 June 1941 published an article in La croix entitled, 'Je n'ai pas vu le Marechal'. This recounted a recent visit to Vichy where the teacher-turned-tourist had hoped to catch a glimpse of the chef de I'etat, her hopes sustained by the comments of locals who described to her how the marshal liked to walk among the people. In the event, she was disappointed not to have seen the old man but returned home spiritually refreshed and confident in the knowledge that Petain was committed to building a Christian France. Thus it appears that in 1940 Catholic teachers were broadly sympathetic to the aspirations of the new regime. Yet in pledging this commitment to the revolution nationale they wanted something in return. Most importantly they sought higher wages. Poor pay had long been a part of their existence, restricting training and social status. It was no surprise that in September 1940 much of the conference of the FNDSEL was devoted to the material position of its members.32 Elements within the hierarchy also lent their support to teachers' demands. In July Cardinal Gerlier of Lyon, acutely aware of the hardship of instituteurs libres in his own diocese, demanded that the government resolve the schools problem by granting subsidies to private schools.33 What, then, was the extent of the problem and how did the regime respond? At the beginning of the Occupation the pro-clerical press was awash with stories recounting the past penury of Catholic teachers. For its part, La Croix of 19 October 1940 cited the example of institutrices in the Catholic heartlands of western France — teachers so poor that they had been unable to leave their parishes to attend the regular reunions pedagogiques organised in their dioceses. La croix du Cantal of 27 July 1941 evoked the image of the local parish priest blushing a bright red as he handed over the meagre pay packet to his local teacher. Later that year on 18 November Paris-Midi treated its readers to a description of one Catholic teacher who for the last six years had survived on an unappetising menu of water and vegetables. In October 1942 La semaine religieuse de Paris recalled many of these earlier observations: a la veille de la presente guerre, il etait devenu impossible d'offrir a nos maitres catholiques un traitement suffisant non pas meme pour reconnaitre dignement 30

Figures from Halls, The Youth of Vichy France, p. 409. La semaine religieuse du Puy-en-Velay, no. 16, 17 January 1941, pp. 168-69. 32 La croix, 19 September 1940. 33 Speech of Gerlier of July 1940 quoted ibid., 18 July 1940. 31

172

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

leur savoir et leurs merites, mais seulement pour mettre a leur disposition le minimum d'emoluments indispensables pour soutenir leur existence, leur permettre de fonder un foyer et de n'etre pas completement desempares quand surviendraient la maladie et la vieillesse.34 Because of the decentralised nature of Catholic education, it is extremely difficult to construct an accurate picture of how badly the church remunerated its staff. However, it is known that in 1941 the average annual wage of an instituteur public was approximately 16,500 francs.35 In some departments the church came close to matching that figure. In the Loire Inferieure the average pay of an instituteur libre was 13,800 francs; in the Meuse, 15,500 francs; in the Loiret, 16,340 francs; and in the Sarthe, 12,375 francs.36 Yet the overwhelming impression is that most dioceses struggled to award employees more than half the average salary of a state teacher. Institutrices libres appear to have been especially poorly paid in some of the more isolated rural areas of western France. To make matters worse, Catholic teachers enjoyed little job security and were often dependent on their school recruiting enough pupils to make it financially viable. If they were laid off, few received pension benefits. Small wonder, therefore, that the church encountered difficulties in hiring staff. Several dioceses were forced to recruit far and wide. Such was the case in Cambrai, even though salaries here were higher than elsewhere. In 1910 Catholic teachers in the Nord originated from thirty-six areas of France, some as distant as Corsica and the Pyrenees.37 Admittedly the years immediately after the expulsion of the religious orders were a difficult time for the church as it adjusted to the employment of civilian personnel. Nonetheless, it is clear that the problem of recruitment was ever-present. Throughout the interwar years there was more than a touch of desperation in the hierarchy's appeals to young people to choose teaching as a profession. As La Revue religieuse de Rodez reflected in November 1940, the critical problem for the ecole chretienne had always been the recruitment of staff.38 The reasons for these meagre salaries were manifold. First, it needs to be remembered that primary school teaching had always been a low-paid profession in both the public and private sectors. Although Catholic teachers often compared their lot to that of their state counterparts, it could hardly be maintained that state employees were well paid.39 Secondly, the religious orders which had manned Catholic schools before 34

La semaine religieuse de Paris, 24 October 1942, no. 4622, p. 479. AN, F17 13365, 'Note sur les subventions aux ecoles privees', no date (late summer 1942?). 36 Ibid. 37 Lanfrey, Les Catholiques franqais et I'ecole, ii, p. 657. ™ La revue religieuse de Rodez, 8 November 1940, no. 45, p. 422. 39 On state teachers see R. Martin, Les instituteurs de Ventre-deux-guerres (Lyon, 1982). 35

Catholic Schoolteachers in Vichy France

173

1904 had bequeathed an unfortunate legacy to their secular replacements. Because many religious had sworn vows of poverty, they asked little in the way of financial reward. Likewise, those secularised orders which continued to operate after 1904 worked for an absolute pittance. Thus for some priests the impoverishment of teachers was evidence of commitment and piety.40 Thirdly, wages remained low because of the weak bargaining position of teachers themselves. After the banishment of the religious orders, several instituteurs libres had formed syndicats. Organised at a diocesan level, in 1945 these organisations boasted a membership of 27,000 and were federated into a national body, the FNDSEL.41 Yet they possessed little real power. The episcopate had feared that such associations would dilute clerical control; thus it was quick to bring them to heel. This was achieved in 1910-11 as part of a general overhaul of Catholic education. In future, the newly-formed directions diocesains were to look after such matters as the day-to-day running of schools and teachers' salaries. The role of the syndicats was merely to tend to the religious welfare of their members. While they protested that this had always been their original intention, the impression is that they submitted to episcopal control.42 Even if teachers had possessed more industrial muscle, it is doubtful whether they could have effected change in face of a fourth factor holding down wages: the general impoverishment of Catholic education. Since the secular laws of the Third Republic, the financing of Catholic education had been placed in jeopardy. No longer able to milk state resources, enseignement prive had become increasingly reliant on fund-raising events, private donations, tuition fees and the willingness of its teachers to accept low salaries.43 In 1940, however, the austerity of wartime threatened even these traditional sources of income; many schools remained open only because their teachers went without wages. This was the case in northern France where disruption was especially severe. By the spring of 1940, teachers' salaries in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais were already in arrears.44 This prompted Cardinal Lienart, bishop of Lille, to request emergency assistance. Although the government was unable to help, in June 1940 40 Under Vichy this attitude was criticised in some of the more liberal sections of the Catholic press. As La seinahie Catlwlique de Saint-Flour commented in 1942: 'S'il est normal que des religieux ou des religieuses, qui ont fait voeu de pauvrete et qui, de par ailleurs, savent qu'ils appartiennent pour la vie a une famille ou leur vieillesse sera a I'abri du besoin, trouvent dans leur coeur une raison forte de consacrer sans retribution a 1'enseignement libre, il ne Test pas que des la'iques, obliges de se suffire a eux-memes et parfois de subvenir aux besoins d'une famille, se resignent par avance a une vie toute de sacrifices et s'abandonent sans reserves a 1'incertitude complete du lendemain.' La semaine catholique de Saint-Flour, 24 September 1940, no. 39, p. 310. 41 AN, 71 AJ 66, Dossier Andre Philip. 42 See Lanfrey, Les Catholiques franqais et I'ecole, ii, pp. 616-45. 43 N. Atkin, Church and Schools in Vichy France, 1940-1944 (New York, 1991), pp. 155-56. 44 Deroo, Lepiscopat fran^nis, p. 105.

174

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

the prefect of the Nord forwarded a loan of 1,000,000 francs to meet wage bills.45 In the southern zone, Gerlier was just as active in demanding aid. He warned that, unless the state provided financial support, several schools in his diocese would be forced to close; their pupils would then have to be accommodated in state establishments which were already at bursting point. Perhaps because of his proximity to Vichy and because of his good personal relationship with Petain, the government was quick to respond to his appeals; in early 1941 it issued the cardinal with a cheque for 100,000 francs to help pay Catholic teachers in the Rhone.46 Ironically the material crisis confronting private education in 1940 strengthened Catholic claims for state subsidies. Traditionally the church had invoked the rights of the family to demand government aid. Universal free schooling provided by the state was held to discriminate against parents who, in the interwar years, sent over a million pupils a year to Catholic primary schools. Not only did these families have to find the fees for the ecole privee, they also had to pay taxes to the ecole publique. As the church pointed out, many parents - especially those from poorer rural areas - were unable to shoulder this burden and were forced to take advantage of the gratuite of the state school. In 1940, however, the church employed Gerlier's argument: should private schools go under, the state system would be flooded with additional pupils. Viewed from this angle, Catholics saw subsidies as an economy measure and inundated Vichy with schemes for state assistance.47 Interestingly most of these proposals emanated from high-ranking figures within the hierarchy or the laity. Teachers themselves do not appear to have made any direct representations to Vichy, perhaps an indication of the hold which bishops enjoyed over the syndicats. Vichy itself was known to sympathise with clerical requests. Petain himself was deeply impressed by Catholic arguments and took a personal interest in the light of Catholic teachers who had fallen on hard times: the institutrice libre from the Seine Inferieure whose salary in 1942 had been insufficient to look after her elderly mother;48 the female professeur from Nice whom, after some twenty years teaching, only received a 1040 francs a month; 49 and the fifty-eight-year-old professeur from Lyon whose monthly salary of 1840 francs was unable to cover the cost of his seven children.50 Although not as personally involved in such cases as the marshal, several « AN, F17 13390, letter of Pierre Cathala to Petain, 1 June 1942, gives details of the prefect's initiative. Also see Halls, The Youth of Vichy France, p. 81. 46 AN, 2 AG 493 CC74 B, letter of Gerlier to Petain, 7 February 1941. 47 On these proposals see Atkin, Church and Schools in Vichy France, pp. 155-79. 48 AN, 2 AG 496 CC78 A, letter of Lavagne, Petain's chef du cabinet, to the prefect of the Seine-Inferieure, May 1943, gives details of this case. 49 AN, 2 AG 496 CC78 A, letter of the secretaire d'etat au travail to Petain, 5 January 1943, provides information on this case. 50 AN, F17 13341, letter of the Lyon professeur to Bonnard, 10 June 1943.

Catholic Schoolteachers in Vichy France

175

other ministers shared his concern. After all, during the initial months of the Occupation, the regime was overwhelmingly Catholic in complexion. Nonetheless, the government still retained doubts about assisting church schools. Not only was it hard pressed for cash, it was also worried about provoking anticlericalism especially on the part of instituteurs publiques whose loyalty was regarded as axiomatic to the success of the revolution nationale. Ultimately, sustained Catholic pressure forced Vichy to look into the financial problems confronting enseignement prive. Legislation of 2 November 1941 entitled private elementary education to state funds which were later established to be worth up to 75 per cent of an individual school's running costs.51 Convinced as it was that it was dealing with a temporary problem, and concerned not to give vent to anticlericalism, Vichy described aid as a temporary measure. Only schools already in existence and conforming to the law of 30 October 1886 were eligible. Even then they had to give evidence of financial hardship and prove that they had a sufficient number of pupils on their books. Moreover, in granting assistance, the state made a number of demands of a quid pro quo nature. Schools assisted were to be subject to inspection, although this was largely to be confined to the quality of teaching; they still had the right to organise their own timetables and curriculum. They could not, however, use textbooks banned in the ecole publique and from now on their pupils were to sit the certificat d'etudes primaries (CEP), the school-leaving certificate recently made compulsory for all state pupils. To ensure that Catholic teachers were up to preparing their students for this test and in an attempt to bring their training into line with that of state instituteurs, it was stipulated that from 1 October 1947 all new Catholic teachers were to be in possession of the baccalaureat.52 Later a circular of 26 February 1942 entitled dioceses to an additional 10 per cent to cover administrative costs and the training of new staff. Clerical reaction to the above measures was mixed. Militants among the ranks of the lower clergy and the parents' organisation, the Association des Parents d'Eleves de 1'Enseignement Libre, were disappointed that Vichy had not introduced a definitive statute for enseignement libre. Likewise the hierarchy regarded the November legislation as a modus vivendi and not the statut definitif.53 Nevertheless, the episcopate was quick to see the advantages of aid and expressed its thanks to Petain. Several bishops stressed the material benefits which would now be enjoyed by employees of enseignement libre. Yet if teachers were really to benefit from the November legislation, much would depend on the way in which the scheme operated in practice. 51 Full details of this legislation given in Atkin, Church and Schools in Vichy France, pp. 175-76. 52 In 1940 Vichy had required all future state instituteurs to take the baccaulaureat. See Halls, The Youth of Vichy France, pp. 110-11. 53 Mgr Beaussart, auxiliary bishop of Paris, quoted in La croix, 10 November 1941.

176

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

To judge from their official declarations, teachers themselves were overwhelmingly grateful for government assistance. At the conference of the Syndicat des Maitres de 1'Enseignement Libre de la Loire, held in early November 1941, Mgr Bornet thanked Vichy for recognising the services which Catholic education had long since performed for France.54 After the first round of subsidies had been completed, the presidents of Catholic teacher organisations for the Rhone, wrote to Petain to express the gratitude of their members: Les instituteurs et institutrices vous remercient, Monsieur le Marechal, de Pamelioration de leur situation materielle qui a etc le premier but et qui est la principale consequence de cette loi . . . . Leur meilleur remerciement, ils le savent bien, ce sera d'apporter encore plus d'ardeur et de devouement a leur belle tache d'educateurs de la jeunesse et de contribuer de toutes leurs forces, en faisant de leurs eleves de bons Chretiens et de bons frangais, a la grande oeuvre de redressement national a laquelle vous conviez toutes les bonnes volontes.55 This letter provoked a warm response from the marshal's office which claimed that the old soldier had been extremely moved, 'de la reconnaissance et du devouement patriotique des instituteurs libres'.56 Although other fervent dioceses also expressed their thanks to Petain, it remains doubtful whether teachers were genuinely indebted to Vichy for its generosity. Teachers' concerns are not difficult to fathom. To begin with, they were troubled by the price which they had to pay for state monies: the academic inspection of their schools. It will be recalled that this had been one of the quid pro quo measures insisted upon by the government. If private schools were to be assisted, then it was imperative that the quality of teaching within them was comparable to that dispensed by their state counterparts. Yet many teachers - for example, those belonging to the syndicat for Viviers - were fearful that inspection and the introduction of the new examination, the CEP, would undermine their independence and water down the Christian purpose of Catholic education.57 In the event, these fears were not realised. A government report of 3 May 1944 on the general situation in enseignement prive noted: 'Le controle de cet enseignement, n'est pas organise, aucun inspecteur general n'a inspecte les ecoles prives.'58 In large measure, the absence of academic inspection

54

Bornet quoted in La croix, 20 November 1941. Letter of the presidents of Catholic teacher organisations for the Rhone contained in La semaine religieuse de Lyon, 2 October 1942, no. 45, pp. 454-55. 56 AN, 2 AG 459 CC34 B, letter from the secretaire general du chef de I'etat, 22 September 1942. 57 Many of these concerns were expressed in Bulletin des ecoles libres du diocese de Viviers, February 1942. 58 AN, F17 13390, 'Rapport a M. le ministre sur 1'enseignement prive', May 1944. 55

Catholic Schoolteachers in Vichy France

177

may be put down to Vichy's failure to issue adequaste guidelines for such visits. This might also explain why the church made little attempt to ensure that new staff were in possession of the baccalaureat. Although evidence remains impressionistic, it seems that the church did not take advantage of the 10 per cent administrative costs (allocated by the circular of 26 February) to improve training. It was the well-founded suspicion of many departmental commissions (in charge of administering aid) that this money was being used instead for the building of new primary schools, something which the November legislation had expressly forbidden.39 Most teachers, however, were concerned less with inspection than with the impact of state aid on their salaries. On a superficial level it seems that many teachers earned more money as a result of subsidies than Vichy had originally intended. On 7 January 1942 the departmental commissions had been instructed to ensure that the average wage of an instituteur libre did not exceed 60 per cent of the salary of an instituteur public, which then stood at 16,500 francs.60 Thus it was anticipated the majority of Catholic teachers would be receiving an annual salary of around 9,900 francs. Yet it will be recalled that in some areas they were already being paid more than this. Unperturbed, most bishops still claimed the full 75 per cent of subsidies which their schools were entitled to, further evidence perhaps that the church was not being entirely honest in its submissions to the departmental commissions. Accordingly, in October 1942 several dioceses were able to publish new salary scales which far exceeded the 9,900 francs average. In Valence and Viviers, instituteurs libres were now to be paid on a basic scale of 12,000-17,000 francs and institutrices libres on one of 10,500-15,000 francs.61 In Puy-en-Velay, men were placed on a bareme of 12,000-16,000 francs and their female colleagues on one of 11,500-15,500 francs.62 More elaborate were the scales for the diocese of Lyon which provided additional allowances for teachers with large families living in urban areas.63 Nevertheless, there is considerable doubt whether teachers really benefited from such increases. Although one government report of 17 October 1942 commented that virtually every diocese had raised wages to comply with the 60 per cent average,64 a further report of 3 May 1944 remarked: 'Le

59

AN, F17 13365, 'Subventions aux ecoles privees, 17 October 1942. See also Atkin, Church and Schools in Vichy France, pp. 182-88. 60 Details of the decree of 7 January 1942 to be found in Journal officiel, 11 January 1942. 61 La semaine religieuse de Valence, 26 September 1942, nos 38-39, p. 315 and La semain religieuse de Viviers, 18 September 1942, no. 38, p. 304. 62 La semaine religieuse du Puy-en-Velay, 2 October 1942, no. 1, p. 11. 63 AN, F17 13365, 'Diocese de Lyon: bareme diocesain de traitements pour les maitres des ecoles libres subventionnes', September 1942. 64 AN, F17 13365, 'Subventions aux ecoles privees', 17 October 1942.

178

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

ecoles libres continuent a donner a leur personnel des remunerations insuffisantes.'65 Why was this? Firstly, there were constant hold-ups in administering aid. The November legislation did not operate at all smoothly and often broke down due to bureaucratic muddle. In June 1942 Gerlier wrote to Vichy to explain that the tardiness in issuing subsidies had meant that several teachers in the Rhone were going hungry and would soon be applying for new jobs. Unless subventions were forwarded quickly, he warned, the regime would lose the support of many Catholics in the region.66 Such protests produced few results. In April 1943 the government was again inundated with complaints; many dioceses reported that teachers' pay remained months in arrears.67 This appears to have been the case in Nimes. In November 1942 the Semaine religieuse for the region announced that the delays in receiving subsidies had meant that several teachers were being underpaid.68 To try and overcome this difficulty, cures were urged to find additional monies by holding fund-raising events. As in the period before the war, the instituteur libre was dependent on the generosity of local parishioners. Secondly, it is questionable whether the church paid teachers the increases to which they were entitled. It was one thing to publish new salary scales; it was another thing to meet them. As already remarked, it appears that in many dioceses the church was deliberately circumventing the provisions of the November legislation. Instead of employing subventions to pay and train teachers, it was using them to set up new schools instead. Unfortunately the vagueness of Catholic accounting makes it difficult to assess the extent of this problem. Yet the suspicion that the church was using subsidies to establish new schools is reflected in the growth of Catholic education during the Occupation. Between 1939 and 1940 and 1943 and 1944 the proportion of children in private elementary education rose from 17.7 per cent to 22.6 per cent.69 In the Catholic heartlands of western France, the rate of increase was even more dramatic, giving rise to fears that by the turn of the century the state school would have disappeared in these departments altogether. Clearly this increase had significant implications for Catholic teachers, yet the absence of primary sources precludes this line of enquiry for the moment. Given past concerns, it seems likely that teachers remained troubled about being overworked and underpaid. These anxieties about the future suggest a third worry which teachers had about the November legislation: the temporary nature of subsidies. 65

AN, F17 13390, 'Rapport a M. le ministre sur 1'enseignement prive', 3 May 1944. AN, F17 13365, report to Bonnard, 18 June 1942. Cf. Atkin, Church and Schools in Vichy France, p. 181. 67 AN, 2 AG 496 CC78 A, letter of Jardel to Bonnard, 17 April 1943. 68 La seniaine religieuse de Nimes, 22 November 1942, no. 45, pp. 425-26. 69 On this increase see Atkin, Church and Schools in Vichy France, pp. 184-95 and Halls, The Youth of Vichy France, pp. 94-96. (i(i

Catholic Schoolteachers in Vichy France

179

Because aid was designed as an emergency expedient, it was widely recognised that it had not dealt with many of the deep-seated material problems confronting enseignement libre. Pensions were a case in point. Although certain dioceses attempted to assist retired staff, this was not always possible, a matter which teachers themselves were keen to bring to Vichy's attention. On 8 January 1944 the president of the Mutuelle Union des Instituteurs et Institutrices de Vaucluse wrote to Bonnard, the then minister of education, noted for his fascist sympathies, to thank Vichy for past support.70 He continued: 'II y a cependant une lacune et un point noir sur lequel je me permets, Monsieur le Ministre, d'attirer toute votre attention. II s'agit des vieux maitres qui ont passe toute leur existence a se devouer a 1'enseignement chretien. De ceux-la il n'en est nullement question dans la repartition des secours alloues aux ecoles libres.' When this particular issue was investigated, the Direction Diocesain claimed that the archbishop was indeed interested in the fate of retired teachers and added that the government could help further by providing greater financial assistance.71 Whether the archbishop was really so concerned remains doubtful. Also in January 1944 Vichy intercepted a letter from a teacher in Avignon writing to the president of the FNSDEL temporarily based in Rouen.72 In response to a federation enquiry into the circumstances of retired personnel, the disgruntled instituteur remarked: Quant a la retraite des vieux maitres, ici, en Vaucluse, c'est lamentable. Nous avons 3 ou 4 maitres et maitresses qui ont 'blanchi sous le harnais', qui sont incapables de tout travail et qui attendent toujours un morceau de pain pour leurs vieux jours et ne voient rien venir. Que repond 1'Archeveche? — Oh! cette retraite ne sera possible, pour les jeunes d'aujourd'hui, que quand ils auront permis par un sacrifice mensuel d'un dixieme du traitement, la constitution d'une caisse de retraite. Quant aux vieux, ils ne comptent pas. On croirait rever et je suis franchement a me demander si le bon Marechal est au courant d'une telle situation.

In fact 'le bon marechal' was aware of many of these problems. On several occasions he had asked the secretary of state for labour to look into the matter. While sympathetic to the plight of individual teachers, the minister had played for time arguing that the problem needed to be studied on a national scale.73 The November legislation thus fell far short of teachers' expectations. Wages remained low and were quickly consumed by rising inflation. In 70

AN, F17 13390, letter of president of the Mutuelle Union des Instituteurs et Institutrices de Vaucluse to Bonnard, 8 January 1944. 71 AN, F17 13390, letter from direction diocesain of Avignon to Mgr Aubry, 4 April 1944. 72 AN, F17 13365, letter from teacher in Avignon to the president of the FNSDEL, 9 January 1944. This letter was intercepted on 10 January 1944. 73 AN, 2 AG 496 CC78 A, letter from secretaire d'etat au travail to Petain, 20 March 1943.

180

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

this situation, some teachers looked enviously at their state colleagues even though they too were struggling to make ends meet. Much of this discontent was expressed by one institutrice libre who at the start of 1944 sent the following anonymous note to the anticlerical Bonnard: LES INSTITUTEURS LIBRES SONT DANS LA MISERE

Pourquoi? apres 18 ans de service Institutrice libre: 18,000 par an Institutrice laique: 42,000 par an — alors que la France a a sa tete des grands catholiques comme vous?74

To remedy such inequalities, teachers wanted nothing less than a statute for enseignement libre. This was made clear in the intercepted letter to the FNSDEL from a teacher in Avignon.75 Reflecting on the opinion of his colleagues, he remarked, 'Nous sommes plusieurs a penser que si 1'Enseignement libre ne profile pas du Gouvernment Petain pour obtenir un statut, il y a fort a parier qu'il obtienne jamais. II faudrait done frapper le fer tant qu'il est chaud . . .' To be fair, Vichy was looking into the issue. Even in 1943-4 - after the occupation of all of France and the appointment of several fascist ministers - the marshal ensured that the regime still included a number of Catholic sympathisers. One such was Dr Grasset, who held the post of minister for health and the family. In November 1942 and July 1943 he devised two versions of a statute for enseignement libre.,76 The latter of these recalled the past hardships of Catholic teachers and acknowledged that 'le professeur de 1'enseignement prive ne voit 1'exercice de sa profession garanti par aucun statut legal, par aucune charte corporative'. To put matters right, Grasset devised an ambitious charter which federated each branch of Catholic education into corporations which would then look after such things as salaries, redundancy pay and pensions. This scheme was then dispatched for comment to Mgr Aubry of the Comite de 1'Enseignement Libre.77 While grateful for the government's efforts, he replied that the plan was unworkable. Clearly ignorant of the structure of the church, Grasset had been wrong to assume that headteachers in Catholic schools

74

AN, F17 13390, 'Fait envoi a M. le secretaire general de 1'instruction publique', 17 February 1944. The figures quoted in this note take into account the increases which Vichy had awarded teachers since 1941. These rises were designed to combat inflation and win over the support of state teachers. 75 AN, F17 13365, letter from teacher in Avignon to president of FNSDEL, 9 January 1944. 76 AN, 2 AG 609 CM25 B, 'Statut de 1'enseignement libre', August 1943. 77 AN, 2 AG 609 CM25 B, letter of Mgr Aubry to Petain's cabinet militaire, 21 October 1943. Also see Halls, The Youth of Vichy France, p. 90.

Catholic Schoolteachers in Vichy France

181

had any real autonomy. As Aubry pointed out, the dioceses did not merely overlook the moral and doctrinal aspects of education; they also oversaw the day-to-day running of schools and would not relinquish this authority. Thus the church devised its own Statut du personnel de Venseignement libre which was submitted in February 1944.78 This reaffirmed diocesan control and made a number of detailed proposals on how to improve conditions for teachers. Although Petain himself took an interest in the matter, the request had come too late in the day. Within a matter of months, Vichy was gone and Catholic schools were soon facing similar material problems to those which they had confronted during the fighting of May-June 1940. The failure to grant a definitive statute to enseignement libre came as a bitter disappointment to Catholic teachers and undermined further their faith in the revolution nationale. Rather than being enthusiastic supporters of the Vichy regime, they quickly became disenchanted with the etat fran^ais. In large measure, this disillusionment may be put down to the failure of government to improve their material well-being. Meagre salaries had always been the most depressing aspect of their existence. Under the Third Republic the precarious financing of Catholic primary schools had offered little prospect of higher wages yet Vichy fuelled fresh hope. Here at last was a regime which seemed ready to listen to the voice of clerics. It was though a government which remained exceedingly cautious about helping the church. Accordingly the November legislation, granting subsidies to private elementary schools, was designed as a compromise and fell far short of teachers' expectations. Rather than providing a charter which would guarantee such things as minimum salaries and pension rights, it augured state intervention into training and the curriculum. In the event, few teachers had to fear the visit of the academy inspector and, as a whole, church schools clearly benefited from state aid. Nevertheless, teachers considered themselves hard done by. Soaring inflation, bureaucratic delay, the siphoning off of funds for the building of new schools, and the temporary nature of subsidies ensured that their wages remained low. As well as being disgruntled with Vichy, it also appears that teachers steadily lost faith in the church hierarchy. Sensitive to past republican jibes about the quality of enseignement libre, in 1940 the episcopate had been quick to present an idealised image of the instituteurs and institutrices libres. This picture was of a dedicated and devout band of men and women who had dutifully served their country. Teachers, in turn, were grateful that their services were being celebrated by their employers; yet remained suspicious about whether their bosses really had their best interests at heart. In the handling of state subsidies, it seemed that many bishops regarded poverty as an accepted way of life for the personnel of private schools. 78

AN, 2 AG 609 CM25 B, 'Statut du personnel de 1'enseignement libre', 9 February 1944.

182

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

This essay has thus underscored the fragmentation of Catholic opinion under the Occupation. Yet much work remains to be done on the position of Catholic teachers during the war years. Only when diocesan archives are fully open will it be possible to study such things as their relationship with the religious orders, the role of their syndicats and their reaction to the wider developments of the war. This research may well throw greater light on the general standing of Catholic teachers in the twentieth century, a subject which also deserves greater attention. Viewed from this broad chronological perspective, it seems likely that historians will discover a teaching body whose concerns and outlook closely mirrored those of the state instituteurs.

Index

Abyssinia, 31, 77 Act of Supremacy (1559), xi Act of Uniformity (1559), xi Action Catholique, 165 Action Catholique de la France, 161; see also, La France Catholique Action Francaise, xiv, 35, 132, 159–160; see also, Charles Maurras Alacoque, Sainte Marguerite-Marie d', 22 America, 33 Angelique, Sainte, 125 Angers, 8 anticatholicism, xvi–xvii, xxi, 6, 9, 27, 67–83 anticlericalism, xi, xiv, xvi, 7, 103, 105, 111, 152, 157, 160, 163, 166, 175, 180 antisemitism, xv, 35, 163 Arc, Sainte Jeanne d', see Joan of Arc Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops (ARC), 165 Augustinians, 3, 4–5 Austria, 28, 34 Balfour Act of 1902, 48 Ballanche, Pierre-Simon, 148–49 Barnes, John Strachey, 27 Barruel, abbe Augustin de, xiii, 137, 143, 149 Beales, A.C.F., 29, 33, 43, 45 Bedoyere, Michael de la, 33, 34 Begg, James, 68 Belgium, 151, 160 Benedictines, 3-4, 6, 10, 47 Bernadette, Sainte, 19 Birmingham, 17 Bloc National, 153 Boniface, Saint, 5 Bonnard, Abel, 179–80 Bristol, 8–9 Bristol Mirror, 9 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 29, 76 British Reformation Society, 72, 79; see also, Protestant Reformation Society Brompton Oratory, 23

Bruges, 4-5 Brussels, 4 Bucard, Marcel, 160 Burnham-on-Sea, 9 Cambrai, 4, 10 Carron, abbe Guy, 7 Cartel des Gaudies, xiv, 152, 153, 154 Carter, W. Horsfall, 31–34 Castelnau, Noel-Marie-Joseph-Edouard, general, 153–58, 160–62 Catholic Action, 161 Catholic Directory, 17, 187 Catholic Education Council, 53–55, 64 Catholic Emancipation, xii, xiv, xvi–xvii, 68, 69, 71; see also, Emancipation Act (1829) Catholic Herald, 33–34 Catholic Renewal Movement, 52 Catholic Social Guild (CSG), 30, 32, 37, 40, 41 Catholic Worker, 28 Catholic Workers' College, 30 Challoner, Richard, bishop, 16, 18, 21–24 Chelmsford, 6 Christian Democrat, 32, 37 Christian Democrats/Democracy, xv–xvi, 27–28, 32, 36–37, 40–41, 151, 155, 159, 162 Church Association, 72, 74–75 Church Times, 31 Church Society, 72, 75 Cistercians, 3 Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 88, 99 Clement XIV, 148 Clifford, William, bishop, 10 Clifton, 8–10 Combes, Emile, xvii, 153 Concordat (1801), xi congregations, xvii-xviii, 3, 6–8, 10, 126, 153; see also nuns; religious orders Cornwall, 8 Corporation Act, xiv Council for Investigation of Vatican Influence and Censorship (CIVIC), 27

184

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

counter-revolution, xvii, xx, 87–104, 128–29, 135, 137, 141, 145, 148–49 Cranmer, Thomas, archbishop, 73 Crawford, Virginia, 37, 38 Credo, 155-56, 162 Cretineau-Joly, Jacques, 138 Cullen, Paul, 15 Cunningham, Richard F., 54–55 Dawson, Christopher, 29–31, 33, 35, 38–39, 41 dechristianisation, 169 Deschamps, Nicolas, 138 Desgranges, abbe, 157–59, 162 Devon, 8 Diocletian, emperor, xix, 115–16, 118, 125 Dollfuss, Engelbert, 28 Dominicans, 118, 155 Dorset, 8 Doubs, 89–104 Dreyfus Affair, 132 Droits des Religieux Anciens Combattants (DRAC), 155 Dublin Review, 38 Dubouche, Theodelinde, 115–16, 126, 130, 132, 134 Dupont, Aurore, see Sand, George Echo de Pans, 153–55, 162 Economist, 29 Educateur chretien, 166 education, xvii–xix, xxi, 4, 6–10, 43–65, 109, 161, 165–82 Education Act (1944), 46, 49, 50, 55, 56, 64 Education Reform Act (1988), 56, 58, 59 Education (Scotland) Act (1918), 45 Emancipation Act (1829), 14 emigres, 87, 90, 96 Esprit, 151 Ethiopia, 162 Evangelical Alliance, 72 Faber, Frederick William, 23 Faisceau, 160 Faithful Companions of Jesus (FJC), 6–7 fascism/fascists, xv, 27–33, 35, 37–38, 40, 155, 159, 179–80 Federation Nationale Catholique (FNC), xiv, xvi, xviii, 151–63 Federation Nationale des Syndicats Diocesains d'Enseignement Libre (FNSDEL), 166, 170–71, 173, 179–80 Ferry, Jules, 7 First Empire, 147 First World War, xv, xx, 8, 10, 13, 18, 27, 75, 76, 118, 131, 133, 153, 159; see also, Union Sacree

Forster Act of 1870, 48 Franco, Francisco, general, 28 Franco-Prussian War, 75, 153 Gaulle, Charles de, general, 77 Germany, 153, 162 Gravelines, 4 Gregory XVI, pope, 119 Good Shepherds, 8, 10 Grasset, Dr, 180 Gueranger, Prosper, abbot, 10 Hammersmith, 6 Harari, Manya, 29 Henry VIII, 3 Henriot, Philippe, 155 Herriot, Edouard, xiv, 152, 154, 158, 160 hierarchy, restoration of, xi, xv, 8, 13-14 Higginson, Teresa Helena, 19 Hinsley, Arthur, cardinal, xvi, 28–29, 31–32, 34–35, 41, 77 Hitler, Adolf, 31, 162 Hollis, Christopher, 32 Holy Sepulchre, canonesses of, 6 Holywell (Wales), 18 Houet, Bonnault d', 6–7 Hugel, Friedrich von, 17 Hume, Basil, cardinal, 57–59 Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 5 Ireland, 34, 44, 74, 76–77, 79, 81–82; anticatholicism in, xvi; devotion in, 15; fear of civil war in, xv; immigrants from, xii, xv, 14–15, 23-24, 44, 46–47, 64, 78; politics in, 68; religious from, xvii, 7–8, 10; 'Troubles' in, 69 Irish, forms of Catholicism, 19–20; Nationalists, xii Irish Church Missions to Roman Catholics, 73 Islam, xix; and education, 63 Italy, xvi, 31, 77, 121, 142, 151, 162 Jannet, Claudio, xiii, 136, 138 Janvier, R.P., 155 Jaures, Jean, 87 Jerrold, Douglas, 27 Jesuit(s), xvii, 5, 10, 21, 28, 46, 63, 136–38, 142, 145, 148, 153 Jeunesses Patriotes, 160 Joan of Arc, St, xx, 118, 124, 131–33, 152–53 John Paul II, 67, 69 July Monarchy, 131 Lacroix, 167–71, 175–76 La France Catholique, 161–62

Index Lamennais, Jean-Marie Felicite Robert de, 150 La Retraite, 9–10 La Salette, 16, 124 Lateran Treaty of 1929, xv Latimer, Hugh, bishop, 73 Laval, Pierre, 167 Law of Associations (1901), 8, 10 Law of Separation (1905), xi, 153, 156, 162 Lefebvre, Georges, 87 Legion, 160 Legitimism, 152 Le nouveau siecle, 160 Leo XIII, pope, 21, 48, 123, 131, 156 Le Play, Frederic, xiii Ligue des Patriotes, 132 Little Sisters of the Poor, 9–10 Liverpool, 7, 18, 51, 70–71, 78, 80 London, 5, 18, 46, 67, 70, 77 Louis XIV, 97 Louis XV, 147 Louis XVI, 130, 144, 146–48, 160 Louis Philippe, 126 Lourdes, 18, 20, 108, 124 Louvain, 4 Low Countries, 43 Lux in tenebris lucet, 39 Maistre, Count Joseph de, xiii, 139, 143–46, 148 Maritain, Jacques, 35–40 Manning, Henry Edward, cardinal, xiii, xv, 7, 9, 17 Maria Monk, 9 Mathiez, Albert, 87 Maurras, Charles, xiv, 35, 132, 160; see also Action Francaise McNeile, Hugh, 68, 71, 75 Merry del Val, Rafael, cardinal, xv Millet, Jean Francois, 23 Milner, John, bishop, 22 Morris, John Brande, 23 Mounier, Emmanuel, 36 Mouvement Republicain Populaire, 151 Mun, Albert de, count, 161 Mussolini, Benito, xv, 28, 160, 162 Napoleon I, 148 Napoleon I I I , 107 nation/nationalism, xiii–xiv, xvi, 78–79, 132, 151–63, 167 National Club, 72 National Curriculum, xix National Church League, 72, 74–75, 77 Nerinckx, abbe Jean, 7 Netherlands, 4–6; see also, Low Countries Neu Statesman and Nation, 31–33, 38 Newman, John Henry, cardinal, xii–xiii, 14/16–17

185

Nonconformists, xii, xiv–xv Norfolk, duke of, xii nuns, xvii, 3, 4, 6–10, 105, 116, 126, 130; see also, congregations; religious orders Occupation, xviii, 160, 165–66, 169–71, 175, 178, 180, 182 Orange Order, 72 Oratorians, 17 Osservatore Romano, 31 O'Sullivan, Mortimer, 68 Oxford, 30 Oxford Movement, xii, 14 Painleve, Paul, 160 Paisley, Ian, 67–68, 70–72, 82 papacy (pope), xiii, xv, 21, 39, 142, 159 Paray-le-Monial, 22 Paris, 4, 94, 119, 123, 133, 153–55 Parnell, Charles Stuart, xii Parti Democrate Populaire, 151, 162 Passionists, 21–22 Paul VI, pope, 67 Pax, 28 Pelletier, Sainte Rose Virginie, 8 People and Freedom organisation, xv, 28, 30, 32, 37–38, 40–41 Perigueux, xviii, 105–13, 123 Petain, Philippe, marshal, xiv, xviii, 31, 33–34, 163, 165–68, 170–71, 174–76, 179–81 Petite Vendee, xx, 87, 89, 91, 95–96, 104 Pezet, Ernest, 155, 162 Philomene, Sainte, xix, xx, 115–34 Pius VI, pope, 141, 148 Pius IX, pope, 21, 68, 82, 119, 136, 139, 141 Pius X, pope, 35, 154, 156 Pius XI, pope, 48, 77, 82, 161–62 Pius XII, pope, 39 Plater Club, 30 Plymouth, 8–9 Poincare, Raymond, 153 Poor Clares, 4 Popular Front, 157 Portugal, 28 Pretres Anciens Combattants (PAC), 155 Protestants/Protestantism, xiii, 67–68, 70–73, 125, 152 Protestant Action Society, 72 Protestant Alliance, 9, 72 Protestant Association, 72–73 Protestant Evangelical Mission, 72 Protestant Reformation Society, 72–76, 79–80 Protestant Truth Society, 72, 74, 76–77 Proyart, abbe L-B., 147–48 Prussia/Prussians, xiv, 33–34, 90, 92, 96, 167; see also, Franco-Prussian War

186

Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789

Quadragesima anno, 28, 48 Ralliement, xiv, 132, 163 Ramsey, Michael, archbishop, 67, 75 Reformation, xi, xvi, xviii, 3, 10, 44, 67, 71, 75, 125, 135 religious orders, xiv, xvii–xviii, 3, 47, 105–13, 161, 166–67, 169, 173, 182; see also, congregations; nuns Republicans/Republicanism, xvi, 109, 126, 152–53, 162, 167–68, 181 Rerum novarum, 48 Restoration, 122, 148, 150 Revolution, French, xi, xiii–xiv, xvi–xvii, xx, 5–6, 10, 43, 87–89, 91–94, 96, 98, 105, 107, 116–117, 122, 124, 127–29, 133, 135–39, 141–44, 146–50, 152 revolutionary saints, 127–29 revolutions of 1848, 75, 136 Ridley, Nicholas, bishop, 73 Rome, xv–xvi, 8, 10, 16–18, 20–21, 25, 27, 48, 67, 73–77, 79–82, 124, 153, 162 Rousseau, Rene, 157 Runcie, Robert, archbishop, 67, 75 Russia, 33–34 Sacred Heart, 10 Saint-Omer, 5 Salazar, Dr Oliveira, 28 Sand, George, 5 Scilly, Isles of, 8 Scotland, xv, 44–45, 69, 74–76, 78–80 Scottish Protestant League, 72 Scottish Reformation Society, 72–73, 75, 77, 79, 81–82 Second World War, 27, 48, 67, 74–75, 77, 151, 160 secularisation, xiii, 105, 152, 160 secularism, 78, 150, 157, 163, 166 science, xiii Sheed, Frank, 38 Sisters of Mercy, 10 Social Catholicism, xvii, 9, 30 Socialism/Socialists, 34, 145, 167 Soeurs de Sainte Marthe, 105–13 Southwark, 18 Spain, xv, 28, 31, 151 Strange, Augustin de la, abbot, 6 Sturzo, Don Luigi, 28, 38, 40 Supreme Being, 143 Switzerland, 89–91, 96–98 Sword of the Spirit (SOS), xvi, 29, 32, 34–35, 38, 41, 77 Syllabus of Errors, 16, 19 Syndicat National des Instituteurs, 166

Tablet, 27, 31, 34, 39, 41, 48, 54, 57, 59, 61-64 Taittinger, Pierre, 160 Taxil, Leo, 140 Teresa of Lisieux, see Therese de Lisieux Test Act, xiv Theodosie, Sainte, 124 Therese de Lisieux, Sainte, xx, 118, 131–33 Third Republic, xi–xvii, 105, 132, 160, 163, 169, 173, 181 Thurston, Hubert, 21 Times, The, 58 Trappistines, 6 Tyrell, George, xiii, 17 Ullathorne, William Bernard, bishop, 14, 16 ultramontanism, xiv–xv, 16–22, 25, 121–24, 132 Union Same, xiv, 158 United Protestant Council, 74 United States of America (USA), 34, 36, 38, 52–53 Ursulines, 8, 105–13, 115 Vallat, Xavier, 154–57, 159, 163, 170 Valois, George, 160 Vatican Council, first (1869–70), 16, 19–20; second (1962–65), xi, 43, 46, 49–51, 54, 58, 64, 81–83 Vendee, 87–89 Venice, 142 Veuillot, Louis, 140, 145–47 Viance, Georges, 157 Vianney, Jean-Marie-Baptiste, cure of Ars, 121–23 Vichy regime, xiv, xviii, 31, 33–34, 37, 160, 163, 165–82 Visitation Order (Visitandines), 105–13 Wales, xix, 44–49, 56, 61, 64, 74 Ward, Barbara, 29, 32–34, 38–39, 41 Ward, Mary, 5–6 Westminster, 7, 18 Williams, Isaac, 23 Wiseman, Nicholas Patrick Stephen, cardinal, xv, 21, 69 Woodruff, Douglas, 34 York, 5–6 Zeeland, Paul van, 38 Zentrum, 151