8/10/2019 Dale Van Kley Religious Origins of French Revolution

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8/10/2019 Dale Van Kley Religious Origins of French Revolution

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! desacralization of clergy and King brought about by religious controversy andpolitical retribution lead to anti-clerical sentiment that will be so pronounced during the

Revolution.

The Maupeou coup (1771) and subsequent polarization over it lined the positions in

religious debate up along clearly political lines. The Kings Chancellor, Ren-Nicolas-Charles-Augustin de Maupeou, attempted to dissolve the Parlement of Paris as theculmination of a power play on the part of the monarchy. The conflict surrounded the

Edict of December, which sought to reaffirm the kings undivided and divinely ordainedsovereignty against his disobedient magistrates (247).

: The coup focused attention on the existence and nature of Frances constitution,displacing discussions about the constitution Unigenitus (252) [in the sense that the

bull inspired debate over absolutism]

The key element is the association between Jansenism broadly defined and the patriotpamphlet literaure of the 1770s, which sought to place the roots of the Parlement deep

in French history, in the Merovingian Court and the General Assemblies of Frankishwarriors. Patriot literature situated sovereignty in the individual mesand consciences of

all the social constitutents much as Jansenism emphasized individual conscience; Patriotliterature emphasized deep past of French monarchy much as Jansenism emphasized deep

Patristic past.

Moving into the 1780s, religious issues fall definitively into the background. However,elements of the religious debates of the eighteenth century, while fragmented, still had an

influence, as even fragemented inheritances can give direction and set limits to politicalaction of the inheritors, conditioning if not detemrining it in ways apart from the

conscious intention of the actors (305).

Central elements of the Revolution-- notably the dechristianization campaign and theTerror-- harken back to elemnts of the Refomation and Wars of Religion:

dechristianization led to the destruction of religious symbols and the forced marriages ofpriests, moves that mainly mimed the iconoclastic gestures of sixteenth-century

Calvinists while the mass slaughter of the Terror resembled the Saint Barthlemys Daymassacre.

Reviewers Critiques:

While Jansenism was clearly important, Van Kley may end up overstating theimportance of religious controversy in the complex unfolding of political events in the

eighteenth century. Van Kley focuses on high thought, perhaps not focusing enough on how regular people

interpreted high-level ecclesiastic debates. The issue of a descralization of the monarchy during the eighteenth century is

problematic. Timothy Tackett points out that mcuh the same kinds of hostilitycan befound in Paris in continuity from at least the mid-seventeenth century (The Journal of

Modern History 70(3), 1998, 697-699).Hannah Callaway