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The French revolution and religion to 1794
Abstract
In its impact on France and on Europe, the French Revolution stands as one of the pivotal moments in the recent history of Christianity. It led not only to a decade-long schism within the Catholic Church, but also, for a time, to a state-sponsored assault on Christianity itself unlike anything in the European experience since the early Roman Empire. In its later stages it produced the first full separation of church and state in modern times. Although some of these conflicts were attenuated under the Napoleonic regime, the memory of the Revolution continued to exercise a powerful influence on anticlerical and antireligious movements and on the church itself well into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Religion in France on the eve of the Revolution The strength of religion and the church in France on the eve of the Revolution has been much debated by specialists in the field. For Michel Vovelle and a number of French historians, the Catholic Church was already in full decline at the end of the ancien régime and the term “de-Christianization’ might well be used for describing certain trends among the laity. In the view of John McManners, by contrast, the period constituted a “golden age of the French Church’. “Never’, he argues, “had there been … so many laymen living lives of well-informed belief and pious practice’. In fact, as we shall argue here, there are elements of truth in both interpretations, depending on the period, the region, and the social group under consideration.
This paper outlines a strain of French Spiritualism, a philosophical tradition extending from Maine de Biran, Félix Ravaisson, and Jules Lachelier to their reception in the work of Maurice Blondel and his protégé Henry Duméry. In receiving and transforming this tradition, Blondel and Duméry have helped to provide a distinct philosophical paradigm in philosophy of religion, capable of providing insight into the spiritual nature of the human being, both in how spirituality relates to the advanced stages of religious culture in addition to its primitive presence in spontaneous action. As a tradition consecrated to the study of human consciousness, and the operations of the mind [l’esprit], the French spiritualist tradition provides a rich conceptual matrix for analyzing the nature of human thinking and its relationship to action. In such an analysis of human thought, Maurice Blondel set up a moral psychology and metaphysical anthropology, highlighting how the consciousness of the human being is linked to the objective order of existence, both in its material form and in the intelligible realities behind the nature of existence. This philosophical matrix helps to show how religious practices, through embodied engagement with the material world, are effective at generating a consciousness of metaphysical or transcendent realities. As such, this philosophical paradigm provides the means for constructing a theory of ritual, where ritual acts with symbols and signs may be rendered intelligible as the sensible means for the cognitive expression of spiritual activity.
In the Cause of Humanity is a major new history of the emergence of the theory and practice of humanitarian intervention during the nineteenth century when the question of whether, when and how the international community should react to violations of humanitarian norms and humanitarian crises first emerged as a key topic of controversy and debate. Fabian Klose investigates the emergence of legal debates on the protection of humanitarian norms by violent means, revealing how military intervention under the banner of humanitarianism became closely intertwined with imperial and colonial projects. Through case studies including the international fight against the slave trade, the military interventions under the banner of humanitarian aid for Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire, and the intervention of the United States in the Cuban War of Independence, he shows how the idea of humanitarian intervention established itself as a recognized instrument in international politics and international law.
This book provides a new and wide-ranging interpretation of political thought in France from the eighteenth century to the present day. At its heart are the dramatic and violent events associated with the French Revolution of 1789 and the birth of the First Republic in 1792. For the next two centuries writers in France struggled to make sense of these and subsequent events in French revolutionary history, producing a rich and perceptive analysis of the nature of republican government and of the concepts of liberty, equality and rights. But, as the book shows, these important debates were not limited to the narrow discussions of representation and sovereignty. Such was their significance that they occupied a central place in discussions about religion, science, philosophy, commerce and the writing of history. They also shaped arguments about the character of France and the French nation as well as polemics about the role of intellectuals in French society. Moreover, they continue to be of importance in France today as the country faces the challenges posed by globalisation, multiculturalism and the reform of the welfare state.
Recent developments in endogenous growth theory suggest fertility decline in the context of the demographic transition was crucial for achieving long-term growth, and that it was triggered by forces eminently economic in nature. It is then somewhat puzzling that France, which was not as industrialised as other parts of Europe, lead that decline. Taking advantage of the considerable internal heterogeneity, this paper looks within France for some answers. Using département level data for the last quarter of the nineteenth century, it studies the correlates of fertility estimating a 2SLS fixed-effects model. Results confirm the importance of some of the forces suggested by standard fertility choice models. Nevertheless, certain non-economic factors (such as secularisation) –for which I provide new measurements– also explain part of the variation. Spatial dependence turns out as well to be significant in all specifications of the model, suggesting some sort of diffusion was indeed taking place.
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