The Politics of Priestly Celibacy and Marriage, 1720-1815

UNNA URAL RENCHMEN 

UNNA URAL RENCHMEN  The Politics of Priestly Celibacy and Marriage, 1720-1815

E. Claire Cage

university of virginia press charlottesville and london University of Virginia Press © 2015 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper

First published 

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Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Cage, E. Claire, 1982– Unnatural Frenchmen : the politics of priestly celibacy and marriage, 1720–1815 / E. Claire Cage. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978- 0- 8139- 3712- 0 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978- 0- 8139- 3713- 7 (e- book) 1. Celibacy—Catholic Church—History— 18th century. 2. Celibacy— Catholic Church—History— 19th century. 3. Catholic Church—Clergy— History—18th century. 4. Catholic Church—Clergy—History—19th century. 5. Catholic Church—France—Influence. I. Title. bx1912.85.c34 2015 253'.252094409033—dc23 2014042620

All illustrations courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris To my parents

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix introduction 1 one: Clerical Celibacy from Early Christianity to the Ancien Régime 11 two: An Unnatural State: The Clerical Celibacy Controversy in Enlightenment France 29 three: Priests into Citizens: Clerical Marriage during the French Revolution, 1789–1793 61 four: A Social Crime: Clerical Celibacy from the Terror to Napoleon 92 five: Married Priests in the Napoleonic Era 130 epilogue 167

Notes 175 Bibliography 195 Index 227

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is a great pleasure to thank the many colleagues, friends, and institutions whose generous intellectual, financial, and moral support made this book possible. First and foremost, I am deeply indebted to David Bell for his invaluable criticism, guidance, and support. He has been an exemplary advisor, thoroughly dedicated to his students and remarkably generous with his time and advice. Other outstanding mentors and the vibrant intellectual community at Johns Hopkins were also crucial to this project and to my development as a scholar. In researching and writing this book, I have incurred many other debts. For their insights and comments on my work, I would like to thank Kaitlin Bell Barnett, Joseph Byrnes, Toby Ditz, Mary Fissell, Michael Fried, Frye Gaillard, Julie Hardwick, Jennifer Heuer, Gary Kates, Eddie Kolla, Antoine Lilti, Xavier Maréchaux, John Mar- shall, Mary Ashburn Miller, Mollie Nouwen, Jennifer Popiel, Elena Russo, Mary Ryan, Timothy Tackett, Judith Walkowitz, and Da- vid Woodworth. Khalid Kurji deserves special thanks for tirelessly reading and commenting on various drafts of this manuscript; he has been a constant source of ideas, support, encouragement, and friendship. I am also grateful for the excellent feedback from my dear friends and colleagues in the Johns Hopkins gender workshop. My work has also benefited from my French history colleagues’ comments and questions at the meetings of the Western Society for French History and the Society for French Historical Studies. x acknowledgments The Fulbright Commission, a Bourse Chateaubriand, and the Camargo Foundation made possible my two years of research and writing in France. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies also provided generous funding for this project. I am grateful for additional financial support from the University of South Alabama and for the moral support of my colleagues there, especially Clarence Mohr. I would also like to express my appreciation to the staffs at the Archives nationales, the Bibliothèque nationale, and the Bibliothèque de la Société de Port- Royal. It has been a pleasure to work with the University of Virginia Press. I thank its editors and staff, especially Angie Hogan, Morgan Myers, and Ellen Satrom. I am also deeply grateful for the insight- ful feedback from the two anonymous readers. Sharon Cage has graciously read successive drafts of this work and has been a tremendous help. I want to thank her and the rest of my family, especially Roy Cage, Courtney Monk, and Earl Mc- Callon. Their love and support mean more to me than I could possibly express. INTRODUCTION

In 1805 Jacques- Maurice Gaudin, a seventy- year- old librarian and judge in La Rochelle, published a treatise designed to educate and advise his son. Fearing that he would not live long enough to see the seven- year- old into adulthood, Gaudin laid out an educational program designed to ensure that the boy would be well equipped to fulfill his duties both to God and to the patrie, or fatherland. While Gaudin’s publication followed the conventional norms of fatherly advice, his background was anything but conventional. He had married and become a father late in life after renouncing his vows of priestly celibacy and marrying his housekeeper in 1793 at the height of the French Revolution.1Unnatural Frenchmen Gaudin had in fact been a strong advocate for the abolition of clerical celibacy before revolutionaries legalized the marriage of priests. A vicar in Corsica in the 1770s and later in the Vendée region of western France, Gaudin anonymously published in 1781 a lengthy treatise attacking the practice. The Disadvantages of Priestly Celibacy, Proven by Historical Research criticized celibacy as a “useless,” “unnatural,” and “immoral” institution. Gaudin argued that it was harmful both to society and to the well- being of priests themselves. He urged the French state and the papacy to permit priests to marry so there would no longer be such a sharp contradiction between their priestly duties and their natural inclinations. He implored the pope “to release to the patrie and to humanity these millions of unfortunate souls groaning under the weight of their chains.” Gaudin believed that marriage and family life would more closely tie priests, 2 unnatural frenchmen their wives, and their children to the patrie. “The paterfamilias, who is tied to society by a multitude of bonds, is more concerned with treating its members with care and respect,” Gaudin asserted, “than the celibate who only has concern for himself alone.” He argued that a priest who was both a spiritual and a biological father was immeasurably more useful to society than a celibate priest.2 Although banned, the book sold rapidly. An Italian translation soon appeared, and a second French version was printed under a different title in 1783. The printing of a new French edition in 1790 spurred the French jurist and theologian Gabriel- Nicolas Maultrot to publish a tract refuting Gaudin’s claims and defending the theological and historical foundations of clerical celibacy.3 To Maultrot’s dismay, Gaudin was nonetheless elected in September 1791 as a deputy to the revolutionary Legislative Assembly, on the day after the government lifted legal restrictions on the marriage of ecclesiastics. Gaudin later became one of the approximately six thousand priests who married during the French Revolution. Clerical celibacy had been a controversial issue in eighteenth- century France long before Gaudin stepped into the fray. Starting in the 1720s, a burgeoning literature argued that the marriage of priests was essential to promoting population growth and prosperity, to combating sexual depravity and disease, and to making better priests and citizens. Over the course of the century, proliferating and increasingly urgent appeals for the abolition of clerical celibacy appeared, which were primarily couched in the language of nature, social utility, citizenship, and patrie. Debates between critics and advocates of clerical celibacy came to involve a diverse group of commentators: theologians, jurists, medical authorities, political economists, legislators, journalists, playwrights, pornographers, prelates, and ordinary men and women. The most influential figures in eighteenth- and early- nineteenth- century France weighed in on the issue, including Montesquieu, Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Jean- Jacques Rousseau, Maximilien Robespierre, Charles- Maurice de Talleyrand, François- René de Chateaubriand, and Napoleon Bonaparte. But most of the interlocutors in the debates were little known, and many of the most significant were priests themselves. introduction 3 After the abolition of vows of celibacy and the legalization of clerical marriage during the Revolution, the movement against celibacy became a campaign to make priests fulfill their patriotic duties of marriage and procreation. During the Terror (1793–94), radical revolutionaries treated celibacy as a “crime” and a threat to the moral, political, and social order. Some aggressively promoted clerical marriage by threatening unmarried priests with deportation, arrest, imprisonment, and even death. A priest from the department of Vienne, for example, claimed that “asleep in his bed at night, he was taken by force by revolutionary brigands . . . [with] a pike and bayonet to his stomach” to the town hall where he married in “a moment when fear had stripped him of any kind of judgment or reflection.”4 Many priests indeed married under duress. Others, such as Gaudin, married with great enthusiasm and revolutionary fervor. Most Enlightenment and revolutionary attacks on celibacy specifically targeted celibate priests; some extended the critiques to all unmarried persons, but nearly all limited them to men. Ascribing women little agency, eighteenth- century writers tended to assume that women failed to marry because they were not asked, in contrast to bachelors (célibataires), who were seen as enjoying sexual activity without the responsibilities of marital and family life.5 Critiques of bachelorhood overlapped with those of clerical celibacy. But the celibate priest was no ordinary bachelor, and he remained the principal focus of attacks. Detractors of celibacy focused their vitriol on the figure of the celibate priest, decrying his loyalty to the pope, his abuses of power, his hypocrisy, his selfishness, and his sexual depravity. Debates about priestly celibacy were embroiled in heated disputes over the role of the clergy and the church in French society. Accordingly, the stakes of the debates over clerical celibacy and marriage were higher than those of the debates over lay bachelorhood, and denunciations of clerical celibacy were more multifaceted and vitriolic than criticisms of bachelorhood. These debates were often further complicated by ambiguous usage of key terms in the clerical celibacy controversy, which included celibacy (célibat), continence (continence), and chastity (chasteté). Derived from the Latin caelebs, meaning “alone or single,” the term 4 unnatural frenchmen célibat first appeared in the French language during the sixteenth century, and célibataire appeared during the early eighteenth century. In its most general sense, the term célibataire or “celibate” refers to an unmarried person, including a lay bachelor or celibate cleric. “Continent” means sexually abstinent, whereas “chaste” implies a moral commitment to sexual purity, by either engaging exclusively in reproductive sex within marriage or abstaining from sexual activity of any kind. The Roman Catholic Church requires priests to be celibate—in other words, unmarried—and Christian sexual ethics, which proscribes sexual activity outside of marriage, requires him to be also chaste and continent. Critics of clerical celibacy have perennially observed that clergymen may be celibate but neither chaste nor continent. Critics in eighteenth- and nineteenth- century France claimed that the continence of some priests and the illicit sexual activity of others caused a host of problems.6 The eighteenth- and early-nineteenth- century discourse on celibacy at times elided or obscured the differences between continence and celibacy, the secular and regular clergy, and male and female celibacy, and at other times put them in relief. This study attends to these differences but takes as its subject the celibacy of priests and focuses on secular clergymen. Unlike the secular clergy, who are not monastics or members of a religious order, the regular clergy live according to a set of guidelines called a rule and take solemn vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. All of these clerics in the Roman Catholic Church are bound to celibacy. Although the history of male celibacy and that of female celibacy are closely intertwined, I have restricted the scope of my study to the former. The meanings of the practices and representations of clerical life, celibacy, and marriage were significantly different, particularly in their social and political dimensions, for early modern men and women. It was common for elite families to exert particular pressure on daughters to enter convents for financial reasons, since the modest cost of placing a daughter into a convent was often much lower than a marriage dowry. Some upper- class families sought to preserve their wealth in the marriage market by sending one or multiple daughters to a convent while arranging for introduction 5 others to make advantageous marriage alliances. For some women, the convent represented an attractive alternative to marriage and subjugation to male authority within the patriarchal household. The religious vocation had particular importance and appeal for early modern women, since their conventional destinies were limited either to marriage or to the cloister. Even in the clergy, women’s options were far more limited than those of men, who could pursue various political, administrative, military, or ecclesiastical careers after having entered the holy orders. Nonetheless, women entered religious orders due not only to their narrower range of alternatives to the religious profession but also to their sense of religious vocation. Gendered power relations and gender inequality in marriage partially account for the reasons why religious celibacy had a different significance and often more appeal for nuns, “brides of Christ,” than for male clerics. Eighteenth- and nineteenth- century French men and women were concerned to a much greater extent with the issue of priestly celibacy and marriage than with female celibacy and the small number of nuns who married during the course of the Revolution. The eighteenth- century French public considered celibate priests more threatening than celibate nuns, who were often depicted as victims of parental authority, clerical despotism, and the cloister.7 The male “eunuch” seemed more of an unnatural figure than the female one. Furthermore, the centrality of sexual activity in constructions of manhood and masculinity complicated constructions of clerical masculinity.8 In the early modern period, the dominant model of manhood was associated with the capacity for self-control, the establishment of an independent household, marriage, and fatherhood. The celibate priest in some respects exemplified masculine virtue, through self- discipline and controlling his passions, and in other respects deviated from normative early modern manhood, which was tied to virility, marriage, fatherhood, and the role of the paterfamilias, the male head of the household who exercised authority over his wife and children.9 The construction of modern gender and sexual identities is in many respects indebted to the understandings of nature and the natural 6 unnatural frenchmen that animated the controversy over clerical celibacy in eighteenth- century France. Many scholars have pointed to the eighteenth century as a crucial, transitional period in understandings of gender and sexuality. The “naturalization” of gender was at the heart of the transition to modern gender and sexual identities. Ideas about so-called “natural” sexual difference and sexual desire stressed the role of nature or biology in determining gender roles and sexual behavior. The naturalization of gender categories shaped normative constructions of gender and sexuality as well as changing conceptions of men and women’s sexual desire. Although women had been viewed as the more lustful and libidinous sex throughout premodern history, a shift was underway in the eighteenth century. Women were increasingly seen as chaste, passionless, and sexually passive, while men had become the more aggressive, libidinous, and lascivious sex.10 New ideas about women’s lack of strong sexual desire and men’s lustfulness made celibacy seem all the more unnatural for men. This study demonstrates the significance of debates about priestly celibacy and marriage to understandings of manhood and the gendered politics of citizenship. Perceiving the family as the foundation of the social and political order, revolutionaries associated men’s identities as fathers and heads of the household with civic virtue and citizenship. As Jennifer Heuer explains, “From an ambiguous and multivalent model of ‘French citizenship,’ which implied that both men and women were part of the sovereign nation, legislators would progressively identify the citizen explicitly with the paterfamilias and limit not only the application of measures on political rights, but also those affecting women’s legal mem- bership in the nation.”11 The père de famille was not only a father but also the head of the household, with weighty responsibilities and authority that was at once religious, economic, social, and political. As political rights and good citizenship or civisme became increasingly associated with the paterfamilias or père de famille, the celibate priest’s place in the French nation became contested and precarious. The campaign against clerical celibacy sought not only to incorporate priests into the nation through marriage but also to transform priests, whose deviant and unnatural celibacy had introduction 7 flagrantly violated sexual, gender, and social norms, into ideal pères de famille and paragons of public and private virtue. Indeed, one of the most striking aspects of the discourse on celibacy in eighteenth- century France was its emphasis on fatherhood. Critics of celibacy and married priests themselves generally privileged the priest’s paternal role over his spousal role. But fatherhood and masculinity are underdeveloped areas of historical study in comparison to motherhood and women’s history, especially in early modern France. While Lynn Hunt has emphasized the absence of the father in revolutionary political culture, I contend that the Revolution did not do away with but rather revivified the ideal of the good father. Tied to understandings of citizenship and manhood, fatherhood became seen as an emotionally fulfilling source of personal virtue, public utility, and patriotism. Some Jacobins saw it as a political imperative and civic duty. In tracing the rise and fall of the figure of the “good father” in eighteenth- century France, Hunt has also argued that the French Revolution brought about a shift from paternal patriarchy to republican fraternity, a shift that relegated women to the realm of domesticity.12 Rather than framing the history of gender in eighteenth- century France in terms of women’s exclusion from full citizenship and the masculine public sphere, I explore how debates about clerical celibacy and marriage blurred rather than sharpened the distinction between public and private and brought into relief the importance of the family as the foundation of the nation, as Suzanne Desan and Jennifer Heuer’s works on revolutionary debates and legislation on family and citizenship have shown.13 My research adds another dimension to these historiographical debates by foregrounding religion and masculinity, particularly the tensions between religious practices and the emerging equation of a good citizen and a père de famille. Debates about priestly celibacy shaped and were shaped by the mutually constructed meanings of manhood and womanhood as well as the gendered meanings of citizenship. Revolutionaries conceived of companionate marriage based on heterosexual love and gender complementarity as an obligation to the nation and as the crucible of citizenship. Invoking 8 unnatural frenchmen the power of conjugal and parental love to cultivate civic virtue and love of the patrie, many Jacobins believed that marriage, even if foisted upon priests, would make them into citizens. The controversy over priestly celibacy and marriage stemmed from eighteenth- century constructions of gender and sexuality, the cult of nature, and the valorization of the everyday sphere of family and work, termed by the philosopher Charles Taylor as the “affir- mation of ordinary life.”14 In eighteenth- century France, there was lessening emphasis on the otherworldly and salvation, and there was greater attention to the natural sphere and temporal concerns, particularly finding fulfillment and personal happiness through the new ideal of a companionate marriage based on love and affection. The celebration of the pursuit of happiness, pleasure, and perfectibility through marriage and reproductive heterosexuality was tied to a vilification of clerical celibacy as an unnatural perversion. As sexuality became seen as the essence of a person (as Michel Foucault has shown),15 sexual renunciation became deeply troubling to those who viewed celibacy as a renunciation of one’s humanity. The figure of the celibate priest became a source of profound sexual anxieties and a kind of deviant in the eyes of some, as sexual deviance, perversion, and pathology were defined in opposition to normative conjugal heterosexuality and the so- called “natural.” The supposed “unnaturalness” of clerical celibacy, according to its critics, made celibate priests a threat to and enemies of the nation. Arguments about the unnaturalness and foreignness of celibate priests were not radical innovations of the eighteenth century.16 These polemics were deeply indebted to earlier iterations of the same controversy, especially those of the Reformation era, but took a radical direction in eighteenth- and early- nineteenth- century France. A significant transformation in Western culture in understandings of sexuality, nature, religion, and citizenship that occurred elsewhere in a slow, hesitant manner coalesced in France in the most dramatic way possible, producing tensions that helped tear the country apart. The attack on clerical celibacy made for one of the most significant religious controversies that shaped ideas, culture, and politics in eighteenth- century France and contributed to the explosive introduction 9 conflict between the Revolution and the Catholic Church. Many scholars have attributed the ultimate break between the Revolu- tion and the church to the unintended consequences of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, a package of extensive reforms to the Catholic Church in France passed by the revolutionary legislature in 1790.17 In this book, I argue that the fissures were deeper and more durable than this interpretation would suggest. Accelerating hostility and violence of revolutionaries toward the clergy owed a great deal to the notion of celibate priests as unnatural, alien presences in the nation, rather than to any resistance to the Revolution and to revolutionary religious policies. This view of celibate priests significantly contributed to the anticlerical and iconoclastic de- Christianization campaign peaking during the Terror. The attack on celibacy and the marriage of priests during the Revolution is often attributed to de- Christianization, but they were productive of and not mere products of de-Christianization. While persecution from de-Christianizers played a role in some priests and their wives’ decision to marry, it did not in others. Moreover, it was rarely the sole determining factor. Priests and their wives married for a variety of complex social and personal reasons, including love, economic support, companionship, and social pressure. However, most clerical wives remain largely silent in historical records, and many revolutionaries did not dwell on them. Although Jacobins charged women with the weighty task of regenerating men and transforming denatured priests into patriotic citizens, they concentrated almost all of their efforts to promote priestly marriage on the priests themselves rather than on the women who might marry them. Women, particularly those who were widowed or divorced with children, were under considerable pressure to marry, but not to marry a priest specifically. Clerical status was a significant factor in some women’s decision to marry a priest but not in others. It was particularly important in cases in which a woman, often a nun, pious woman, housekeeper, or relative, married in hopes of shielding a priest from persecution. The following chapters of this book examine both ideological struggles and lived experiences, the polemical as well as the 10 unnatural frenchmen intensely personal. In order to assess the significance of the attack on clerical celibacy during the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, the first chapter presents an overview of the history of celibacy in the Christian West and of the state of the clergy in eighteenth- century France. Chapter 2 analyzes the explosion of anti- celibacy literature in France from the 1720s to the 1780s and the theological, moral, social, and physiological debates about the practice that ensued. In chapter 3, I consider the politicization of debates about clerical celibacy during the Revolution between the years 1789 and 1793. I argue that the notion of celibacy as an “unnatural” state led revolutionaries to question whether celibate priests could be at all integrated into the ranks of citizens. Chap- ter 4 examines the politics of clerical marriage during the height of the radical revolution, when celibate clerics were denounced as enemies of the state and of humanity, and after the Terror, as revolutionaries attempted to reestablish political and social order. The final chapter analyzes how political and religious authorities responded to the vexing problem of reconciling the existence of several thousand married French priests with the formal reestablish- ment of Roman Catholicism and clerical celibacy. It also considers how married priests negotiated the changing political and religious landscape of post- revolutionary France. Throughout the Enlightenment, revolutionary, and post- revolutionary eras, the issue of clerical celibacy was a point of uncompromising conflict, since a priest could not be “partly celibate.” As long as the church held onto the ideal of clerical celibacy—and arguably the church was driven to defend the practice even more strongly as a result of Enlightenment and revolutionary attacks— there could be no common ground with those who saw celibacy as entirely abnormal, corrupting, and dangerous. These polemics over clerical celibacy played an integral role in shaping attitudes toward gender, religion, and citizenship that were crucial to the making of modern France. ONE Clerical Celibacy from Early Christianity to the ncien Régime 

In the past few decades, clerical celibacy has been hotly debated. Should priests be allowed to marry? Would marriage compromise priests’ ability to perform their pastoral duties? Is celibacy even natural? Does that matter? Although recently resurgent, the debate over clerical celibacy has a rich and long history. In the age of Enlightenment, new and pressing concerns about celibacy emerged, and ensuing contests over clerical celibacy played out in a spectacular fashion. Both sides of the clerical celibacy controversy in eighteenth- century France were deeply influenced by perennial questions about the practice’s origins and merits. Many of the most prominent and pervasive arguments articulated for and against celibacy in eighteenth- century France concerned the history of the church. These debates pitted opponents of celibacy, who argued that it was a point of discipline relatively recently introduced by self- interested popes, against supporters who insisted that celibacy was a divinely inspired state that was chosen by Christ, the apostles who practiced sexual abstinence, and priests acting in persona Christi. While debates over clerical celibacy are centuries old, the particular preoccupations and concerns of each generation have shaped the contours and implications of these debates and the history of clerical celibacy in distinctive ways. The significance of recent as well aseighteenth- century debates cannot be properly understood without considering the history of celibacy in the Western Christian world over the longue durée. For 12 unnatural frenchmen over a century, the dominant account of the history of clerical celibacy was Henry Charles Lea’s An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church (1867). Although Lea assured readers that his sweeping account of the theology and practice of clerical celibacy was distinctively non-polemical, the Protestant historian nonetheless denounced the celibate priesthood as a harmful and “dangerous” presence in society, the state, and the church.1 Indeed, much of the historical scholarship on clerical celibacy is highly polemical. In recent years, scholars have departed from an older historiographical tradition shaped by the sectarian divide between Catholics and Protestants. In addition to Peter Brown’s rich and nu- anced study of sexual renunciation in late antiquity, James Brund- age has situated debates over celibacy within the broader context of religious doctrine, law, and clerical status in European society during the medieval period. The following account of the history of clerical celibacy is indebted to their research as well as to Helen Parish’s recent work on the celibate priesthood in the medieval and early modern Christian West, which stresses the continuities in contestations over clerical celibacy.2 The ideal and practice of clerical continence emerged in the first centuries of the church, but the creation of a Catholic celibate priesthood was a long process. The discipline of clerical celibacy evolved alongside changes in the role of the priest and the structure of the church. Clerical celibacy proved to be a source of tension and division in Christianity, first between the Eastern and West- ern Churches and later between Catholicism and Protestantism during the age of Reformation. Enforcement of clerical celibacy proved difficult but was most effective in the post- Reformation period. Celibacy was central and integral to the identity of priests and the Catholic Church in Old Regime France, but shifting attitudes toward clerical celibacy over the course of the eighteenth century engendered new conflicts. Debates about clerical celibacy in eighteenth-century France were heavily indebted to earlier iterations of the same controversy and were also shaped by contemporary religious and political conflicts, which doctrinal and institutional divisions within the ancien régime church intensified. clerical celibacy 13

Sexual Ethics in Early Christianity The first generations of followers of Jesus Christ adopted distinctive attitudes toward marriage, sex, and the body that elevated continence as an ideal and holy way of life. Influenced by classical thought on austerity and apocalyptic expectations, early Christian thinkers urged followers of Christ to pursue the ideal of sexual renunciation in preparation for the kingdom of God. Many church fathers exhorted all persons who could lead continent lives to do so. Over time, continence became associated with the priesthood; however, most clerics in late antiquity were married. Church leaders attempted to establish the moral and spiritual superiority of its clerical leaders over the laity by demanding first continence and then celibacy of its ministers of the altar. Since the canonical Gospels had relatively little to say about Jesus Christ’s attitudes toward sex, the apostle Paul, whose letters directly took up the issue, emerged as the leading authority on sex and marriage in early Christianity. In his first letter to the Corin- thians, Paul affirmed that celibacy was a holier Christian state than marriage. Anticipating the imminent coming of the kingdom of God, Paul recommended celibacy for Christians who could wait and marriage for those who could not. For those who lacked God’s call to continence and might not be able to control their sexual passions, he advised, “It is better to marry than to burn” (1 Cor. 7:9).3 The eschatological expectations of early Christians contributed to the valorization of sexual renunciation in preparation for the coming of the kingdom of God. Rather than an expression of sexual revulsion and loathing of the flesh, the Pauline letters were an urgent call to lead a pure, holy life in full devotion and service to the Lord and to prepare for the end of time. According to early Christian ascetic thought, marriage and sexual relationships dis- tracted Christians from a single- minded focus on readiness for the imminent end of this world and for the world to come. Groups of early Christian ascetics distinguished themselves by their dedication to abstinence, which they linked with a return to paradise and a life in the spirit.4 14 unnatural frenchmen Christians in late antiquity defined themselves and their sexual ethics against their pagan and Jewish contemporaries who did not encourage celibacy. Although some members of ancient Jewish ascetic and communal movements, notably the Essenes, were celibate, celibacy was generally scorned among Jews. Marriage and reproduction were seen as duties in both ancient Judaism and classical antiquity. In ancient Greece and Rome, life-long celibacy was deemed an aberrant practice and subject to legal penalties, with the exception of the Vestal Virgins. Nonetheless, the strong ascetic tendencies in Christianity were influenced by Greco- Roman thought, particularly Stoicism’s emphasis on self-mastery, rational self- control, and the suppression of irrational passions, including sexual pleasure, desire, and lust. However, Stoic moral philosophy did not promote celibacy; rather, it advocated sexual intercourse in moderation and within marriage for the purposes of procreation, although not for mere pleasure.5 Many early church fathers championed continence as the highest expression of Christian life. Drawing on the notion of the body as a holy temple, church fathers often exalted continence as a means of transforming the self into a purer, more appropriate vessel of the Holy Spirit and divine inspiration. Tertullian of Carthage viewed sexual activity, even within marriage, as an obstacle to spiritual development. In his Exhortation to Chastity, Tertullian urged Christians to abstain from sex: “Renounce we things carnal, that we may at length bear fruits spiritual.”6 Origen, the great exegete and Christian Platonist who voluntarily castrated himself, believed that virginity represented the prelapsarian purity of the body and of the spiritual world as well as a privileged link between heaven and earth. Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea and an admirer of Origen, claimed that celibacy is a quasi- celestial state, “above nature and beyond common human living.”7 The writings of Gregory of Nyssa also presented continence as a heavenly, godly state that gives a person “wings with which to rise to . . . the things of heaven” and thus becomes “the linking- force that assures the intimacy of human beings with God.”8 Although the church fathers’ pronouncements on continence were not directed toward priests specifically, the issue of priestly clerical celibacy 15 continence received increasing attention in the fourth century. The Christian church made its first institutional efforts to impose celibacy on clerics at the Spanish Council of Elvira (c. 305), sixteen years before Constantine came to power and legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire. The canons of the Council of Elvira instructed clerics to separate from their wives and abstain from sexual intercourse. During the following decades, ecclesiastical authorities at other local and regional synods and councils began in earnest to encourage clerics not to marry or, if already married, to abstain from sex with their wives, but no early conciliar legislation imposed celibacy upon the clergy as a whole.9 The Elvira canons and subsequent decrees on celibacy were attempts to develop a strict code of Christian sexual ethics that would both distinguish Christians from other communities and differentiate the moral and spiritual superiority of its clerical leaders from its lay followers. In 385 Pope Siricius issued the first papal decree on clerical continence in response to a letter from a Spanish bishop requesting help in dealing with married clergy who were having children with their wives. Siricius called for clerics to renounce sexual relations and to stop cohabitating with their wives. The underlying assumption behind these directives was that sexual relations created a ritual impurity, a kind of spiritual pollution and contamination that defiled priests and the sacred rites they performed. However, papal decrees and early conciliar legislation to impose clerical sexual continence seemed to have been unen- forceable and met with little success.10 Siricius also became embroiled in the escalating patristic polemics over continence that centered on the figure of the Roman monk Jovinian. Concerned about the growth of sexual asceticism and the divisions engendered in the Roman Church, Jovinian challenged the widely held notion of the spiritual superiority of continence over marriage. He argued that marriage was spiritually equal to celibacy. Siricius denounced Jovinian as a heretic and excommunicated him and his followers at a local synod. Jovinian fled to Milan, where Ambrose, bishop of Milan, assembled another synod and also condemned him. In contrast to Jovinian, Ambrose saw Christian virtue 16 unnatural frenchmen as measured by the extent of one’s commitment to the Lord and renunciation of a life “in the world,” specifically the renunciation of sexual activity. Jerome, the great biblical scholar and primary translator of the Latin Vulgate, shared Ambrose’s views and championed strict asceticism. Jerome believed in the vast superiority of celibacy over marriage and stridently denounced Jovinian. Jerome’s work Against Jovinian primarily praised female virginity, but it also condemned clerical marriage and incontinence. Jerome insisted that priests, even if married at the time of their ordination, must commit themselves to continence.11 Augustine of Hippo adopted a mediating position between Jerome’s denigration of marriage and Jovinian’s notion of the equality of celibacy and marriage. In his treatises On the Good of Marriage and On Holy Virginity, Augustine maintained that celibacy was spiritually superior to married life, but he defended the goodness of marriage. Augustine espoused the influential belief in the three- fold “goods” of marriage: reproduction, fidelity, and the sacramental bond. Augustine condoned sex within marriage for the purpose of procreation, although he considered sexual abstinence ideal. According to Augustine, sex was tainted with concupiscence or lust as a result of the fall of Adam and original sin. Augustine’s Confessions reveals his preoccupation with concupiscence and his personal struggles for continence. Subsequent generations of Christians came to selectively draw on Augustine’s writings about sex, marriage, and the relationship of human sexuality to the Fall. Consequently, Augustine’s views on sexuality, marriage, and faith profoundly shaped sexual attitudes in Western Christianity in lasting ways.12 Augustine and other church fathers extolled the virtues of continence; however, they also realistically expected most Christians to marry, have sex, and procreate. Expectations were higher for the clergy, who were held to the ideal of continence. A strict code of Christian sexual ethics emerged, which differentiated followers of Christ from their pagan contemporaries and separated the clergy from the laity. The rise of monasticism only heightened the association between sexual asceticism and a spiritual elite. clerical celibacy 17

Clerical Celibacy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe Those who believed that sexual purity was an essential attribute of the priesthood initially focused on having priests abstain from sex with their wives and later turned their attention to clerical marriage. Christians in the East and West adopted different stances on the issues of clerical celibacy and marriage. The Roman Catholic Church’s requirement of celibacy for all its clerics met with strong and persistent resistance. Even after the legal prohibition of clerical marriage in the twelfth century, problems of enforcement plagued church officials. Differences between precepts and practice were often stark. Effective enforcement did not come until the age of Reformation, at which point clerical celibacy became a defining confessional difference between Catholics and Protestants. The issue of clerical celibacy had long divided Eastern and Western Christendom, even centuries before the final separation between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy with the Great Schism of 1054. The councils of the Eastern Church and the Latin rite diverged on matters of clerical discipline. The most significant council in the history of clerical celibacy in the East was the Council of Trullo, convened in Constantinople in 691. In accordance with the canons of Trullo, the Eastern Church required celibacy of bishops and monastics while sanctioning married clergy in the lower orders. Priests could marry before ordination but not afterward, and they could continue to live and have sexual relations with their wives. The Eastern church’s acceptance of married secular clergymen without a promise of continence differed from the West’s requirement that all clerics live in perpetual continence after ordination.13 Papal rulings, regional councils, and diocesan synods continually reaffirmed the Latin church’s commitment to clerical continence during the medieval period. However, clerical marriage, concubinage, and incontinence were common. Ecclesiastical leaders called for reform of the clergy. They were guided by a commitment to ecclesiastical discipline and ritual purity for the spiritual elite. Many believed that the celebration of the Eucharist, Mass, and other holy 18 unnatural frenchmen sacraments necessitated a sacerdotal purity that would be contam- inated by incontinence. Polemicists debated whether sacraments administered by an impure cleric had valid spiritual benefits. In additional to these doctrinal concerns, church leaders also recognized the practical benefits of an unmarried clergy. Many feared that married clergymen would expropriate the wealth of the church to support their own families and would also treat their ecclesiastical offices as hereditary family property and create clerical dynasties.14 Efforts to reform the clergy intensified in the eleventh century. During this period, the reforming monk Peter Damian was the most strident opponent of clerical incontinence and marriage, or “nicolaitism.” Peter considered married priests heretics and per- petrators of spiritual incest, bringing damnation upon themselves and threatening the salvation of the faithful. Many ecclesiastical leaders shared Peter’s concerns. Over the course of the eleventh century, a series of conciliar decrees and papal rulings addressed the problem of married and incontinent priests. In 1059 Nicholas II prohibited the laity from attending the masses of incontinent priests. Gregory VII in 1074 declared that married clergymen would be deprived of their benefices if they did not separate immediately from their wives. The Gregorian reforms and efforts to separate priests from their wives and concubines occasionally met with resistance and even violence. In late-eleventh- century France, a group of clergymen burned alive a proponent of clerical celibacy in Cambrai, and clergymen stoned Archbishop John of Rouen after he ordered them to leave their concubines.15 Nonetheless, the ecclesiastical leaders’ campaign against clerical marriage and concubinage gained momentum during the twelfth century. In 1123 the First Lateran Council prohibited clerics in the Western church from living with wives or concubines. However, the marriages of priests, even if forbidden and illicit, were legally valid unions until 1139, when the Second Lateran Council made ordination to the holy orders a diriment impediment, a legal obstacle that invalidates and nullifies a marriage. The council thus prevented priests from marrying and declared marriages of priests null and void. It ordered all married clerics to separate from their partners clerical celibacy 19 and to do penance. The marriage of priests came to an end, and clerical celibacy was firmly established as the norm in the West.16 Nonetheless, contestations over obligatory clerical celibacy continued in the late medieval church. Some priests resisted separating from their wives or concubines and children. While some bishops turned a blind eye to priests who lived discreetly with a female companion, others rigorously enforced legislation concerning celibacy and punished clerical incontinence. Critics of celibacy such as the fifteenth- century French canon lawyer Guillaume Saignet called for its abolition. Saignet maintained that celibacy violated the sacred rights of nature and God’s injunction to be fruitful and multiply. Jean Gerson, the chancellor of the University of Paris, objected to Saignet’s claims that celibacy was too great a burden; rather, he insisted that celibacy was a kind of liberation, which freed priests of the difficulties and financial hardships involved in marriage, child rearing, and running a household. Without these distractions, priests could devote themselves fully to God and to their vocation. Although Gerson rejected the argument that the widespread disregard of the rule of clerical celibacy was grounds for its abrogation, others found it compelling. Pre-Reformation critics of clerical celibacy argued that its imposition encouraged fornication, adultery, and even sodomy. John Wycliffe and Jan Hus both criticized clerical celibacy as a source of sexual immorality and evil.17 Sixteenth- century reformers argued that celibacy contradicted scripture and human nature and that priests should have recourse to marriage, a “natural” and divinely sanctioned remedy for a host of sexual sins. Martin Luther, who renounced his vows of celibacy and wed Katharina von Bora after she had fled her convent, insisted that monks, priests, nuns, and all persons should marry and procreate. He condemned clerical celibacy, which he attributed to perverse papal tyranny and the “wanton wickedness” of the Holy See. In Wittenberg, the evangelical theologian Andreas Karlstadt also identified the pope’s desire to increase church wealth and to control the clergy as the reason for clerical celibacy. He argued that the unbearable burden of celibacy encouraged masturbation, 20 unnatural frenchmen fornication, and sodomy and that this sexual immorality undermined clerical authority. Other reformers and early Protestants also advanced arguments about the “extreme dangers” and disadvantages of obligatory clerical celibacy. While loyal to the Catholic Church, Desiderius Erasmus nonetheless shared Luther and Karlstadt’s dis- taste for clerical celibacy. Erasmus, the great Dutch humanist, was an ordained priest and also the son of a priest. Attributing clerical immorality to the rule of celibacy, Erasmus argued that there was no reason to prohibit clerical marriage, “especially when there is such a horde of priests among whom chastity is rare.”18 Protestant clergymen rallied around the cause of clerical marriage by attacking Catholic doctrine, morality, and ecclesiology. Extolling the virtues and goodness of marriage and family life both for priests and for the laity, evangelicals argued that Chris- tian perfection lay in the exercise of these virtues within the home rather than in the pursuit of spiritual perfection and purity through celibacy. While Catholics insisted that celibacy was a divine law upheld by centuries of tradition originating in the early church, reformers argued that neither scripture nor ancient practice supported mandatory clerical celibacy and that it was a tyrannical papal innovation of the medieval church.19 Protestant reformers asserted that members of the clergy should fulfill all civic and familial duties and abide by the same sexual and moral codes of the laity. Reformers also argued that marriage would bring happiness to clerics and would benefit parishioners to whom they would more ably give marital advice and guidance. The family and household of Protestant clergymen would provide a model for the orderly government of the local church, state, and broader community. Calvin maintained that celibate clerics, “ignorant of ordinary life,” should not govern the church. He declared that married priests, who knew how to rule a family, were more qualified and better prepared for governing the church. Furthermore, Calvin denounced celibate clerics who repudiated ordinary life, consisting of marriage and the family, as “destitute of humanity.” He and other Protestants scorned the celibate Catholic priesthood.20 clerical celibacy 21 In response to challenges presented by the spread of Protestant- ism, the Catholic Church convened the Council of Trent (1545–63). The council reasserted Catholic doctrine and reaffirmed the Catho- lic Church’s policy of mandatory celibacy. Church leaders declared that married clergymen were guilty of apostasy and subject to excommunication. They were deprived of their benefices and ordered to separate from their wives, who were concubines in the eyes of the church. However, some delegates at the Council of Trent expressed doubts about the church’s stance on clerical celibacy and noted that priests commonly kept concubines and fathered children. Urging other members of the council to reevaluate the policy of mandatory celibacy, the representative of the duke of Bavaria reported that a recent visitation had shown that at least ninety- six out of one hundred Bavarian priests had concubines. He also suggested that if these clergymen had a choice between ecclesiastical benefices and marriage, they would choose the latter. Nonetheless, the Council of Trent upheld clerical celibacy and reasserted the superiority of celibacy to marriage. It pronounced anathema on anyone who claimed that clerics could marry or “that it is not better and godlier to live in virginity or in the unmarried state than to marry.” Through a process of clerical reform and education, the Roman Catholic Church sought to secure the general observance of clerical celibacy, which had assumed greater urgency as clerical marriage had become a defining characteristic of Protestantism.21 While the Catholic Church officially did not tolerate any form of sexual activity among the clergy or any form of nonmarital sexual activity among the laity, Tridentine decrees and teachings promoted a slightly more positive view of sex within marriage for lay men and women. The Catholic Church also upheld the sacramental and indissoluble character of marriage, which Protes- tants rejected. Catholic moral theology and sexual ethics gradually shifted away from a focus on procreation and the avoidance of fornication as the primary purpose and justification for marriage. Rather, post- Tridentine interpretations of the primary “goods” of marriage emphasized companionship, mutual help, and affection. Theologians and clerics advocated moderation in attitudes toward 22 unnatural frenchmen sexuality and defended the legitimacy of sexual pleasure in marriage, while strictly prohibiting sexual activity within the clergy.22 The Roman Catholic Church’s stance on clerical celibacy was unequivocal, and it became a divisive issue first with the Orthodox Church and then with Protestant reformers. Protestants were extremely critical of the practice, which they viewed as responsible for the sexual immorality of the clergy. The Catholic Church was engaged in a long process of regulating and seeking to eliminate clerical sexual activity. Catholic leaders maintained that celibacy was a higher vocation than marriage. They defended the special ontological status of a priest and his calling to celibacy, which enabled him to devote himself fully to the responsibilities of the priesthood. The Church and the Clergy in the Old Regime The Catholic Church and its clergy enjoyed special status and privileges in Old Regime France. Following the Council of Trent, the French church renewed its commitment to improving the qual- ity of its clergy and ensuring that priests would lead exemplary, sexually continent lives. By building seminaries and establishing a regular schedule of pastoral visits, bishops devoted their attention to improving the moral, intellectual, and spiritual character of the clergy. Episcopal concern for matters of clerical conduct, morality, and discipline played an important role in ensuring conformity to the rule of clerical celibacy and in shaping the post- Tridentine French church more broadly. That said, the church and its clergy at this time were divided along theological as well as socioeconomic lines. By the second half of the eighteenth century, the issue of clerical celibacy had become another source of division. The clerical celibacy controversy in eighteenth- century France emerged at the peak of clerical discipline and during a period of politicized religious controversy. The Catholic Church in France exerted a far-reaching influence on all aspects of the Old Regime. France was officially a Catho- lic kingdom, long considered to be “the eldest daughter of the Church.” For centuries the French monarch held the title of “most clerical celibacy 23 Christian king” granted by the pope. The king ruled according to the doctrine of the divine right of kings and was believed to possess a natural, mortal body with thaumaturgical powers, able to cure subjects of various diseases and afflictions such as scrofula by means of the “royal touch.”23 The kingdom of France was guided by the principle of “one faith, one king, one law,” but the emergence of a Calvinist, or Huguenot, minority and the French wars of religion during the second half of the sixteenth century threatened religious unity. At the conclusion of these wars, the Edict of Nantes granted toleration of Huguenots in 1598 until its revocation under Louis XIV in 1685. For the following century, Catholicism was the only officially recognized religion in France. The French church had a long tradition of autonomy from the pope and independence from Rome, a tradition known as galli- canism. Although the Gallican Church and the French crown never officially adopted the Tridentine decrees, which were perceived as a threat to Gallican independence, it followed the Council of Trent’s precepts and later incorporated many of the council’s decisions into French law. In 1615 the Gallican Church declared its submission to its canons and adopted reforms, many of which depended on reform of its clergy. Tridentine prescriptions and reforms concerning the education, selection, and supervision of priests effectively promoted the observance of celibacy among the French clergy. These changes in clerical discipline and education significantly shaped ecclesiastical life in post- Tridentine France. Consequently, the eighteenth- century clergy as a whole was better trained and disciplined than their predecessors.24 As a result of the Catholic Reformation, the Gallican Church sought to improve the pastoral and spiritual caliber of its clergy through seminary education that provided the intellectual and moral formation of the post-Reformation Catholic clergy. Prior to the Tridentine reforms, there had been no special training for the priesthood in France. After the Council of Trent legislated that bishops of large dioceses establish seminaries and strictly supervise the training of aspirants for the priesthood, the numbers of seminaries in seventeenth- century France slowly swelled. The 24 unnatural frenchmen leadership of both the church and the state became invested in the expansion of these institutions. In 1698 Louis XIV ordered “all the archbishops and bishops of our kingdom immediately to establish seminaries in those dioceses where there are none.” By around 1760, there were over 150 seminaries in France. The seminary system of clerical education removed aspirants for the priesthood from contact with the secular world, prepared them for the holy orders, inculcated reverence for the virtue of celibacy, and weeded out those averse to leading a celibate life. Seminaries created an élite of educated clergy, and dedicated parish priests strove to fulfill the roles of benefactors of the parish and humanity.25 Like diocesan seminaries, pastoral visitations of parishes by bishops served as a mechanism to produce disciplined, knowl- edgeable, and virtuous clergymen. Reaching its peak during the eighteenth century, the system of extensive, regular episcopal visitations of parishes reinforced the moral education of the clergy and ensured strict enforcement of clerical celibacy and discipline.26 Some bishops perceived a dire need for improvement, such as the bishop of Autun, who lamented the pervasiveness of clerical concubinage in a report from 1652:

Concubinage here is extremely common, and priests have no fear of maintaining in their quarters immodest women and the children they have with them. They nourish and raise these children, train them to serve at the altar, marry them, and dower them all, as if they were legitimate. Parishioners are so accustomed to these practices that when interrogated about the morals and deportment of the clerics who keep these immodest women, they respond that these clerics live justly. . . . They see no evil, being so used to seeing their priests live with women that they assume it is acceptable.27

Bishops and other ecclesiastical authorities combated clerical concubinage and its tolerance, which compromised the dignity of the priesthood. They were also concerned with the solicitation and seduction of female penitents in the confessional.28 Some offenses and persecution of clerical seduction, fornication, and concubinage were well documented; however, some accusations and reports were clerical celibacy 25 merely unfounded rumors launched by parishioners hostile to their parish priests and seeking to discredit them. At the same time, many sexual offenses went undetected. Despite these problems of historical evidence and interpretation, clerical sexual offenses seemed to have declined considerably over the course of the eighteenth century due largely to episcopal concern for matters of clerical conduct, morality, and discipline.29 Many ecclesiastical leaders’ greater concerns involved internal divisions within the church, particularly the conflicts between the Jesuits and the Jansenists. The members of the Jesuit religious order, which was founded in the sixteenth century, had especially close ties to the pope, to whom they took a special oath of obedience; they also played influential roles as educators and royal confessors. The Jesuits were opposed by the Jansenists, who adhered to a current of Catholic thought that had taken shape during the seventeenth century in reaction to certain theological tendencies of the Counter- Reformation. Attacking what they perceived as laxity in Jesuits’ moral teachings and confessional practices, Jansenists advocated rigorous austerity, endorsing Augustine’s views on sin as well as his teachings on grace and predestination. During the eighteenth century, quarrels between Jansenists and Jesuits became intensely politicized. The spread of Jansenism met with papal and royal opposition. In 1713 Louis XIV obtained from the pope a condemnation of Jansenism in the form of the papal bull Unigenitus. The most prominent defenders of Jansenists were the noble magistrates of the putatively sovereign law courts, or parlements, especially the Parlement of Paris. Decades of religious as well as political controversy surrounding Jansenism culminated in the explosive conflicts during the 1750s when the archbishop of Paris, with the backing of Louis XV, instructed priests to refuse the sacraments to anyone lacking a billet de confession, a certificate from an approved confessor proving his disavowal of Jansenism and acceptance of the Unigenitus. Outraged magistrates of the Parlement of Paris rallied in support of the Jansenists’ cause in the name of Gallican liberties and in opposition to the king, insisting that he compel the archbishop of Paris to allow dying Jansenists to receive 26 unnatural frenchmen the sacraments. Jansenism became a focal point of opposition to absolutism that contributed to the “desacralization” of the French monarchy. Conflicts over Jansenism were part of a series of political struggles over religious matters, including the expulsion of the Jesuits in the 1760s, which raised questions about the nature of the relationship between church and state.30 Jansenism influenced eighteenth- century debates on clerical celibacy in complex ways. Both critics and defenders of celibacy mo- bilized and appropriated various aspects of Jansenist thought to support their claims. On the one hand, the Augustinian austerity and rigorist morality of Jansenism lent itself to defenses of celibacy. Some defenders of celibacy drew on Augustinian ideas about human nature and sexuality to insist that clergymen should embrace the spiritually evaluated state of celibacy and fight vigorously against the weakness of the flesh. On the other hand, critics of celibacy used Augustinian ideas about human depravity to argue that obligatory celibacy was an impossible burden, and they also advanced the notion of celibacy as a tool of ultramontane despotism and an infringement on priests’ rights and independence. Jansenists were divided on questions about the nature and origins of clerical celibacy, especially concerning the extent to which the practice was rooted in either scriptural, apostolic, or papal authority. Jansenist thought influenced both sides of the clerical controversy. The clerical celibacy controversy also cut across lines between the upper and the lower clergy and between the regular and the secular clergy, generating new tensions and divisions within these groups. In pre- Revolutionary France, there were roughly 170,000 ecclesiastics. Approximately 90,000 were secular clergymen, including 60,000 parish clergy (40,000 curés and 20,000 vicaires). There were around 80,000 members of the regular clergy, including 25,000 monks and 55,000 nuns.31 Significant income disparities generated tensions and unrest within the clergy, particularly between the upper and lower secular clergy. Bishops, who generally had never been either a parish priest or a member of the regular clergy, were aristocrats who had been nominated by the king. Bishops enjoyed an income of at least 10,000 livres, in some cases even more than clerical celibacy 27 200,000 livres, and were exempt from direct taxation.32 In contrast to clerical elites, parish priests earned less than 1,000 livres (the portion congrue, the stipend paid by the tithe owner to the parish priest, was fixed at 500 livres in 1768 and raised to 700 livres in 1786) and had proportionately greater financial obligations than the upper clergy. Generally, a substantial portion of a parish priest’s income went to the décime, a tax on ecclesiastic offices, and to poor relief in his parish. The primary sources of parish priests’ income were from the tithe and fees for church services. The typical priest was the son of a merchant, notary, lawyer, manufacturer, or more affluent artisan. Poor peasants were generally excluded from priesthood, because the church required every ordinand to prove that he had 100 livres of independent income to support himself. The social and economic disparities within the clerical estate divided the wealthy, aristocratic upper clergy from the relatively poor parish priests.33 The clergy was central in the post-Tridentine moral order as both an object and an agent of reform. Political and religious authorities in Old Regime France insisted that the reformed priest had to be pure in mind and body in order to be an effective agent of moral and sexual discipline. Clergymen, parish priests in particular, had a far- reaching influence in Old Regime France. Not only responsible for the spiritual well- being of his parishioners, the parish priest also played an important role in local administration by registering every birth, marriage, and death in his parish and by supervising poor relief. Both the secular and the regular clergy were involved in social welfare and charity. The clergy’s social responsibilities also included teaching in schools and universities. Although the French public generally viewed female charitable, nursing, and teaching orders in a positive light, clergymen became increasingly subject to the scrutiny and even scorn of their Enlightenment critics who challenged their utility. Over the course of the eighteenth century, increasing numbers of French men and women argued that the celibate priesthood undermined, rather than maintained, the social, political, and sexual order. Clerical celibacy became a source of conflict that embroiled the leading political and religious thinkers in Old Regime France. The 28 unnatural frenchmen explosion of critical commentary on celibacy in eighteenth-century France reflected many of the preoccupations of earlier periods, particularly those of the Reformation era. Many themes were re- current, particularly those concerning scripture and the historical development of clerical celibacy. Some were absent: eschatological concerns largely disappeared. Some arguments were less weighty during the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, such as those concerning the sinfulness of sex, the desire to separate out those marked as holy, the question of the sacramental efficacy of sexually active priests, and the possibility of a hereditary priesthood. In contrast, many arguments that gained strength during this period were tied to ideas about the naturalness of celibacy, demographic concerns, priests’ allegiance to a foreign power, the social utility of priests, political virtue, and duty. Enlightenment and Rev- olutionary critiques of clerical celibacy, which insisted that priests had a moral duty to marry and to procreate, pushed the issue of clerical celibacy and marriage in new, radical directions. In contrast to some other periods of intense scrutiny of clerical celibacy, the eighteenth- century celibacy controversy was not precipitated by a crisis of clerical discipline. Rather, the church during this period of intellectual ferment and new religious thought faced another kind of crisis, a “crisis of European consciousness” that inaugurated the age of the Enlightenment and a new worldview that called the merits of clerical celibacy into question.34 TWO n Unnatural State  The Clerical Celibacy Controversy in Enlightenment France

An Unnatural State

In 1770 the abbé Desforges constructed a pair of wings and attached them to a peasant. Covering the peasant from head to toe in feathers, Desforges led him to the top of a belfry. The feathered peasant, however, refused to follow Desforges’s orders to leap off the belfry, flap his wings, and take flight. Two years later, Desforges made -an other widely publicized attempt at flight, this time in an elaborate flying gondola with moveable wings and a parasol. In front of a large crowd, Desforges launched his aerial chariot over the edge of the top of the Tour Guinette at Etampes, where he served as canon. The machine plummeted to the ground, leaving Desforges injured and dejected.1 The unlikely origin of these unsuccessful attempts at aviation can be traced to Desforges’s opposition to clerical celibacy. With the publication of his two-volume treatise The Advantages of Marriage and How Necessary and Beneficial It Is for Priests and Bishops of the Present Day to Marry a Christian Girl in 1758, Desforges had become one of the first Catholic clergymen to advocate clerical marriage in eighteenth- century France. He saw marriage as compatible with the priesthood and as a remedy for his and other clerics’ agonizing struggles against the “burning desires that torment us without any fruit.”2 His book outraged religious and secular authorities. The Parlement of Paris charged Desforges with publishing a work containing “erroneous maxims; explanations of the Holy Scripture contrary to the unanimous interpretation of the Church; a scandalous critique and derision of the doctrine of the apostles, the holy fathers, and the constant discipline of the Catholic Church; and 30 unnatural frenchmen insulting characterizations of religious ministers and of the power [of] the pope.” The Parlement of Paris suppressed the printing and distribution of the treatise, ordering all copies—more than two thousand—to be shredded and burned. After Desforges served nearly a year in the Bastille, the police released him to the seminary in Sens. During these two periods of confinement, Desforges had ample time for reflection and began studying the mating habits of swallows and swifts, which can copulate in midair. Subsequently, Desforges developed an interest in the mechanics of flight.3 Desforges’s belief both in the possibility of human flight and in the importance of priestly marriage stemmed from his confidence in the progress and perfectibility of man. Through studying the natural world, Desforges sought not only to understand the laws of nature but also to use these laws for mankind’s betterment. He came to the conclusion that obligatory clerical celibacy was an unnatural obstacle to human perfectibility, progress, and happiness. Desforges’s appeal for the marriage of priests was part of an explosion of anti-celibacy literature from the 1720s to the 1780s, which included tracts on political economy, philosophic treatises, pornographic works, and novels. The practice of clerical celibacy drew the attention and ire of the most prominent Enlightenment thinkers, including Montesquieu, Jean- Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, and Denis Diderot as well as scores of lesser- known critics. Re- shaping and reappropriating older critiques of clerical celibacy, Enlightenment texts grounded arguments against celibacy in scripture, ecclesiastical history, and, most important, the authority of Nature. In Enlightenment France, a significant contingent of the intellectual elite came to think of clerical celibacy as fundamentally “unnatural.” While some of the most influential eighteenth- century intellectuals viewed clerical marriage as a much- needed reform, the idea of clerical marriage scandalized and outraged many French men and women, as well as the leadership of the Catholic Church. As clerical celibacy came under attack, many Catholic intellectuals rallied around the practice. Stressing celibate priests’ utility and contributions to the political, social, moral, and spiritual realms, an unnatural state 31 supporters of clerical celibacy turned the philosophes’ arguments on their head. Although the two sides of the clerical celibacy controversy often talked past each other, they generally spoke the same language and debated the merits of the practice in the same terms. Nonetheless, irreconcilable conflicts stemmed from differing ideas about the relative importance of spiritual versus temporal concerns and the question of whether marriage or celibacy constituted the path to social progress and moral and spiritual elevation. Thus, clerical celibacy became a deeply divisive issue in France during the age of Enlightenment. While critics argued that this purportedly unnatural state posed grave dangers for priests, the French nation, and even humanity as a whole, champions of clerical celibacy firmly defended what they saw as its laudable and essential role in the natural, social, and divine orders. These two positions reflected the dynamic relationship between different strands of Enlightenment and Counter- Enlightenment thought.4 While Counter- Enlightenment thinkers or the anti- philosophes more or less agreed upon the merits of celibacy, Enlightenment thinkers were divided over the matter of priestly celibacy. Many opponents of celibacy came from within the ranks of the “moderate” deist Enlightenment, as well as from the “radical” Enlightenment that was associated with atheism and pantheism, whereas most of the leading figures of the Catholic Enlightenment defended the practice. Clergymen intervened on both sides of the clerical celibacy debates. Although the attack on clerical celibacy was in some respects part of a more general assault on the role of the church in French society, the Enlightenment- era controversy over clerical celibacy was not simply a product of philosophes’ anticlericalism and hatred of the church. Rather, changing attitudes toward clerical celibacy were tied more broadly to shifting ideas about the relationship between God and humanity. Gradual transformations in religious belief entailed the rise of interiorized religious piety, a perception that God refrained from active involvement in the world, and a concomitant emphasis on the autonomy of man and nature. The historical process of secularization and “the disenchantment of the world” gave rise to a sacralization of nature and ordinary 32 unnatural frenchmen life. In conceiving of the world in human and natural terms rather than celestial ones, Enlightenment thinkers emphasized the importance of personal happiness and the satisfaction of so-called natural desires. The quest for worldly happiness became closely associated with a loving and fulfilling family life and companionate marriage. As many eighteenth- century men and women placed ordinary life—concerned with production, reproduction, and the family—on a higher plane than a life of contemplative devotion and sexual renunciation, they grew increasingly skeptical about the merits of sexual austerity, specifically priests’ sacrifice of the “natural” pleasures of sex, marriage, and family life.5 Changing attitudes toward religion, sex, and the family in eighteenth-century France were rooted in a belief in “nature” as the guiding principle of social and moral order.6 Clerical celibacy came under attack as contrary to nature. Its detractors exhorted priests to listen to the voice of nature and pursue their “natural inclinations.” In Enlightenment France, understandings of what was “natural” gave rise to the highly contested notion that abolishing clerical celibacy was essential to making better people and pastors, to population growth and prosperity, to physical and psychological health, and to sexual morality. Marriage, Fatherhood, and the Bon Curé The question of what constituted a good clergyman was central to the debates about clerical celibacy in eighteenth- century France. Some eighteenth-century writers argued that what made a good man—being a good husband, father, and citizen—would make a good clergyman. Champions of clerical marriage insisted that the dignity and joys of marriage and fatherhood were not at odds with a priest’s pastoral duties but rather made him a better priest. A new cultural emphasis on the figures of thebon curé, the good parish priest, and the père de famille, the good father, shaped changing attitudes toward priestly celibacy and marriage, giving rise to the ideal of a married “citizen-priest” who was more concerned with the public good in the here and now than with salvation in the hereafter. an unnatural state 33 The debates about clerical celibacy were tied to competing models of the priesthood during this time. The model of the “Tri- dentine priest” emphasized the spiritual functions of the priest as well as his position within the ecclesiastical hierarchy. In contrast, the model of the “citizen-priest” privileged a priest’s civic and social roles and his position as a teacher of Christian ethics and a servant of humanity. The “citizen- priest” was closely aligned with the figure of the “good priest” who was valorized for his generosity and moral teachings rather than for his theological learnedness.7 With these values in mind, a growing contingent of thinkers came to envision a good priest as a married priest. During the 1730s, Charles- Irénée de Castel de Saint-Pierre became one of the first Catholic writers ineighteenth- century France to assert publicly that married priests would make for better spiritual and moral guides than celibate ones. Believing that enlightened reason would bring about infinite gains in human progress and happiness, the abbé Saint- Pierre authored numerous reform projects to promote public welfare, including his plan for perpetual peace and his proposal to abolish clerical celibacy. Valorizing ordinary life and the priest’s role as a servant of the public good, the philosophe observed, “The principal duty of a parish priest is to give, by his conduct, good examples to his parishioners on the points which are the major and most ordinary ones of life.” Believing that no role could be more honorable and important than that of “an excellent père de famille,” Saint- Pierre insisted that priests’ experiences as virtuous husbands and fathers would enable them to give better pastoral guidance than if they were to remain celibate. Parishioners could model themselves after the edifying examples of a père de famille–priest, his virtuous clerical wife, and their well- ordered, ecclesiastical household, whereas the model of celibacy did not serve as a practical guide for parishioners’ lives. A priest with a family would best serve the parish and the greater good.8 Reform- minded Gallican clergymen, anticlerical philosophes, and other detractors of celibacy advanced similar arguments about the benefits of a marriedcitizen- priest. The abbé Jacques- Maurice Gaudin’s moral, social, and theological objections to clerical celibacy 34 unnatural frenchmen included his contention that married priests would be not only “more compassionate, more human” than celibate priests but also more useful to their country and compatriots as model husbands and fathers with virtuous wives and well-raised, educated children. Gaudin insisted that marriage and fatherhood would tie priests more closely to their parishioners and patrie, whereas celibacy dis- tanced them from both and rendered them dependent on a “foreign despot.”9 Many philosophes characterized celibate clerics as victims of a religious obligation that separated them from their parishioners and their nation. Voltaire referred to celibate priests and monks as “the victims of popes who wanted to have in [priests] slaves [and] soldiers without families and without fatherland, living solely for the Church.”10 Voltaire and other critics of celibacy argued that celibate priests tended to serve the papacy rather than the public good, often suggesting an opposition or incompatibility between the two. In his influential treatise on the theory of natural rights, Emmerich de Vattel insisted that a celibate priest was tied neither to civil society nor to the patrie but only to the church and to Rome. Vattel went on to declare emphatically that celibacy was “contrary to Nature and pernicious to society.”11 Enlightenment thinkers of various religious sensibilities also drew attention to what they suggested were the internal contradic- tions in Catholic thought on marriage. In his Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire examined the contractual and sacramental meanings of marriage in Old Regime France and objected to the practice of depriving clerics of the civil effects and spiritual graces of marriage.12 The radical materialist Paul- Henri Thiry, baron d’Holbach, asked, If marriage was a holy institution and a sacrament, why was it unworthy of the priesthood?13 Desforges also challenged the notion that the sacred institutions of marriage and the holy orders were incompatible. He maintained, “Marriage diminishes neither the sanctity nor the dignity of the priesthood.”14 These and other writers balked at what they viewed to be the inconsistencies in the sexual ethics of the Catholic Church. The anti- celibacy literature circulating in Enlightenment France also claimed that marriage would improve the lives of priests as an unnatural state 35 well as parishioners, who would obey the same “natural” sexual and moral codes. Challenging the vision of the celibate priest as a holy and otherworldly intermediary between God and mankind, critics of celibacy emphasized the common humanity of “citizen- priests” and their parishioners. They argued that the Catholic Church’s narrow, restrictive thinking on continence placed priests in a perilous position by refusing to recognize their human weaknesses and holding them to impossibly lofty ideals of unblemished purity and virtue, from which they could only fall woefully short. To understand the essence of human nature, Enlightenment thinkers such as Diderot looked to an idealized “natural man,” free from the vices of civilized society. Diderot’s Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville (1772) featured a dialogue between a Tahitian and a European chaplain concerning the irrationality and unnaturalness of Christian sexual mores and clerical celibacy. The Tahitian sage explained that the “innocent” and “happy” people of Tahiti followed “the pure instincts of nature” and viewed sex as the “noblest urge of nature.” Urging the chaplain to pursue sexual pleasure and passion, he declared, “Your first duty is to be a man.” Diderot considered sex essential to the human condition and suggested that clerical celibacy deprived men of their humanity and masculinity.15 For critics of celibacy, being a man also meant being a husband and a father, and they envisioned priests conforming to the new ideals of companionate marriage and affectionate fatherhood. These models prescribed marriages based on love and mutual respect as well as gentler methods of child rearing with greater emphasis on feeling and sentiment. Enlightenment thinkers critiqued the cold, authoritarian father of the Old Regime and advanced a new ideal of the père de famille that celebrated paternal tenderness, affection, and devotion. The literature, art, and culture of this period promoted images of the benevolent, doting husband and father who put the happiness of wife and children first. This new bourgeois paternal ideal found expression in numerous plays, novels, and paintings, from Diderot’s Père de famille to Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s A Father Reading the Bible to His Children. The patriarchal cult of the family in eighteenth- century France inspired literary and artistic 36 unnatural frenchmen productions that celebrated virtuous fathers and attacked “unnatural” fathers, as well as the practice of clerical celibacy for preventing priests from becoming fathers. Eighteenth- century French culture represented companionate marriage, fatherhood, and family life as an emotionally fulfilling source of happiness, personal virtue, and public utility.16 Critics of celibacy argued that marriage and fatherhood cultivated virtues that were essential to the ministry and mission of the citizen- priest. In 1770 d’Holbach proclaimed that marriage and fatherhood would make priests better citizens.17 In 1785 Jérome Pétion de Villeneuve, a lawyer from Chartres who would become a revolutionary deputy, affirmed, “What could be more venerable than a père de famille surrounded by his wife [and] his children, fulfilling with fervor the sacred duties of citizen, father, and spouse! Would the ministry of the Lord be degraded by the greatest titles that can ennoble man?” Pétion insisted that God, nature, and the patrie called all to procreate and to produce “useful subjects” for the state. He condemned those who ignored this call and denounced every celibate as “an enemy of society who conspires for its destruction.”18 Pétion published these statements in his Essay on Marriage after the academy of Châlons-sur- Marne rejected his submission to their essay competition on the means of facilitating and encouraging marriage. The academy cited Pétion’s “dangerous” statements concerning celibacy as the reason for his rejection.19 Indeed, Pétion’s attack on celibate clerics signaled a central shift that was beginning to take place in the anti-celibacy discourse during the 1780s: a shift from valorizing clerical marriage to vilifying celibate priests. During the following revolutionary decade, the anti-celibacy discourse tended to depict celibate priests less as hapless victims of a senseless, repressive discipline and more as pernicious threats to the French nation. These attacks on clerical celibacy met with mounting resistance from Catholic Enlightenment and Counter- Enlightenment thinkers who insisted that celibacy served both the spiritual and temporal interests of the church, the nation, and mankind. Anti- philosophe an unnatural state 37 writers who systematically challenged every one of their opponents’ arguments stridently attacked detractors of celibacy. Rejecting Voltaire and other philosophes’ claims that clerical celibacy was impossible for a man to uphold and was beyond his forces, Louis Mayeul Chaudon suggested that self- discipline distinguishes man from beast. His Anti- philosophical Dictionary (1767) declared that men possess noble and elevated souls capable of greatness, enlightenment, and virtue, a belief shared by the philosophes that undermined their arguments against celibacy.20 Apologists also refuted arguments that attributed clerical celibacy to papal machinations and depicted Catholic sexual ethics as unnatural, offensive to God, and irrational. Nicolas- Sylvestre Bergier, who had been a parish priest in the diocese of Besançon and became one of the leading figures of the Catholic Enlightenment, insisted that clerical celibacy was founded on the teachings of Jesus Christ, the apostles, and the church fathers. It was also based on the sanctity of an ecclesiastic’s duties. Bergier maintained that the teachings of the Catholic Church did not denigrate marriage as an impure state but merely recognized continence as a more perfect state for those whom God called to practice it.21 Defenders of celibacy assessed the adverse consequences that would result from the marriage of priests by examining the ways that a married clergy would be a drain on French society. Many observed that few priests received salaries large enough to support a family and that most rural parishes could barely support the parish priest alone. Furthermore, they argued that a priest’s wife and children would be in dire straits upon his death, since his non- hereditary benefice would not pass onto them. These authors cited the example of the misery of ministers’ orphans in England and other Protestant countries, where they claimed that the widows and daughters of Protestant ministers were forced into prostitution.22 One of the most widely expressed concerns in the celibacy controversy in eighteenth- century France was that marriage and progeny would compromise a priest’s pastoral functions, the respect of his parishioners, and his ability to support a family. Defenders of celibacy contended that a married priest’s inability to fulfill his pastoral 38 unnatural frenchmen duties and care for his children would render him an object of hu- miliation and scorn. Supporters of celibacy maintained that a true bon curé was a celibate priest who possessed a single- minded devotion to his “spiritual family.” As Bergier noted, “[The priest] is the father of the poor, widows, orphans, [and] abandoned children; his flock is his family.”23 Supporters of celibacy argued that introducing clerical marriage would lead priests to neglect their parishioners, their own families, or both. Some feared that a married priest would redirect his energy and resources away from aiding the poor of his parish toward the support of his family. Others warned of a married priest neglecting his spiritual children and kin. While apologists emphasized the contributions that celibate priests made to the French nation, they also invoked otherworldly concerns. Chaudon, for one, warned against the anti- celibacy campaign’s exclusive focus on the “terrestrial citizen,” which might be appropriate in a “pagan republic” but not in an enlightened nation like France.24 Apologists argued that celibacy made the ideal citizen- priest who served God, his country, and, in the words of Franciscan Counter- Enlightenment writer Elie Harel, the “celestial patrie.”25 Supporters of clerical celibacy who championed the model of the citizen-priest forcefully argued that priests best served their parishes and their patrie through celibacy, not marriage. Defenders of celibacy, like its detractors, emphasized the significance of a priest’s civil and social roles, but they insisted that marriage would compromise these roles rather than complementing or enhancing them. Bergier observed, “The duties of an ecclesiastic, above all a pastor, are not confined to prayer and to altars of worship.” A priest administers the sacraments, teaches by word and by example, cares for the sick, and distributes charity, among other duties. Ber- gier concluded that the “burdensome and difficult functions [of a priest] is incompatible with the care, inconveniences, and troubles of the state of marriage.” Carrying out the responsibilities of a good husband and father would, therefore, preclude a priest from devoting himself fully to his ministry.26 Many French men and women considered celibate priests truly virtuous citizens who heroically sacrificed sex, marriage, and family an unnatural state 39 life. In 1776 the future revolutionary politician Jean-Nicolas Démeu- nier observed that the virtue of celibacy consisted of “sacrificing one’s pleasure for the well-being of others.”27 It was through these sacrifices, Démeunier and allies argued, that priests could be most useful to the nation. In 1761 Marc- Albert de Villiers published a ref- utation of Desforges’s anti-celibacy treatise in which he insisted that “ecclesiastics and other Christian celibates are truly useful . . . not only to Christian society but to political [and] civil society.” Villiers heralded celibate clerics’ social utility, citing their contributions to medicine, charity, the arts, the sciences, and education.28 Proponents of celibacy warned that priestly marriage would diminish priests’ ability to continue to serve God, society, and humanity. The Politics of Population Enlightenment- era debates about whether clerical celibacy or marriage contributed most to the happiness and productivity of society also had a political- economic dimension. The dominant political and economic thought of the period linked robust population growth to national prosperity. Some eighteenth- century French thinkers began to identify clerical celibacy as a severe impediment to population growth and made alarmist claims about its role in depopulating France, while others exposed the lack of demographic decline and discredited the depopulationist argument. Between 1760 and 1789, an estimated 1,900 works pertaining to population and political economy were published in France. The cultural, intellectual, and political conditions that gave rise to the discourse on depopulation also profoundly shaped the clerical celibacy controversy. The campaign against clerical celibacy gained momentum as critics of celibacy capitalized on the widely believed yet false idea that the country’s population was declining. Although France’s population grew dramatically during this period, popular perceptions of depopulation exerted a powerful influence on political and social thought. “Populationist” political and economic tracts that called for pronatalist reforms, including the abolition of clerical celibacy, began to appear in the 1720s and achieved greatest prominence around mid- century.29 40 unnatural frenchmen Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1721) was the seminal text purveying the misconception about French depopulation. This satirical and influential work suggested that Catholicism’s restrictions on marriage and rules on clerical celibacy were responsible for the depletion of France’s population. In Montesquieu’s work, the fictional traveling Persian Uzbek asserted that clerical continence “has destroyed more men than the bloodiest plagues and wars.” Observing the “prodi- gious number” of men and women bound to religious celibacy in France and other Catholic nations, Uzbek warned, “The Catholic religion cannot possibly last more than five hundred years. . . . Every day Protestants will become richer and more powerful, and Catholics weaker.” In order to counteract these shifts in the balance of power, Uzbek recommended abolishing clerical celibacy. He suggested that his reform would remedy France’s depopulation problem and would augment agriculture, industry, and commerce. Montesquieu later revisited the issue in his massively popular and influentialTh e Spirit of the Laws (1748). Here, Montesquieu criticized obligatory clerical celibacy but did not outright advocate its abolition.30 Contemporary writers, such as the abbé Saint-Pierre and Lau- rent Angliviel de La Beaumelle, pushed the populationist critique of celibacy further. The philosophe Saint-Pierre claimed that clerical celibacy had cost France four million citizens, to the detriment of French culture and arts, manufacturing, commerce, and military prowess. Among the litany of justifications that Saint- Pierre cited for clerical marriage, he identified population growth as one of the primary advantages that would result from abolishing celibacy. He postulated that if forty thousand virtuous curés had eighty thousand well- raised children, “it is clear not only that the state would be richer and more powerful but also that believers themselves would be more edified.”31 The Huguenot political writer La Beaumelle stridently attacked celibacy’s depopulating effects in a tract that he completed in 1750 and later anonymously published. Identifying priestly celibacy as a strain on population, La Beaumelle lamented that over the past two centuries the practice had annihilated in- numerable future generations and “deprived the world of as many millions of inhabitants as those living in the world [at the time].”32 an unnatural state 41 But not all adherents of the depopulation thesis faulted clerical celibacy. The most influential advocate of the thesis in the 1750s, Victor Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau, identified luxury and over- consumption, not celibacy, as the true causes of depopulation. In his treatise L’ami des hommes (1756), which appeared in twenty editions within the first three years of its initial publication, Mira- beau described himself as an “apologist for monastic institutions.” Mirabeau suggested that without religious celibacy, many men and women would not find spouses and would be a drain on the state’s resources. Mirabeau also contended that if celibates actually produced more than they consumed, they effectively fostered population growth. Despite Mirabeau’s caution in attributing depopulation to celibacy, other “populationists” and political economic writers’ assault on clerical celibacy gained momentum in the 1750s.33 During this period, the emergence of a new school of economic thought known as physiocracy, which saw land as the source of all wealth, galvanized the debates on population and celibacy. But the physiocrats’ attitudes toward clerical celibacy were ambiguous. Priests’ place in society did not fit neatly within the physiocrats’ schema of productive and sterile work: the former performed by agricultural laborers and farmers, and the latter by artisans, mer- chants, and other non-agricultural laborers. Within and beyond physiocratic circles, there was widespread dissention concerning the utility of secular and regular clergy. Some accused clerics of idleness and insufficient practical knowledge, while others exalted the figure of the bon curé for his social utility. Some physiocrats, who insisted that the dictates of nature should determine human behavior, believed that marriage was a more natural and useful state than celibacy. Nonetheless, physiocrats were preoccupied more with increasing agricultural productivity than with the clerical celibacy controversy.34 One of the clearest and strongest influences on eighteenth- century political economists’ thought on celibacy was France’s long-standing rivalry and enmity with England. France performed disappointingly in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48), and French ani- mosity toward England only intensified during the Seven Years War 42 unnatural frenchmen (1756–63), in which France endured territorial and financial losses. Comparisons with England loomed large in the writings of the period. Comparative analyses of France and Britain led some to con- clude that clerical marriage and the suppression of monasteries in Anglican England fostered not only population growth but also commerce, industry, and agriculture. Dozens of French publications of the period, many of whose authors were clergymen, associated population growth with prosperity and made dramatic claims about Brit- ain’s robust population, economy, and military threatening France’s dwindling population and power. Alarmist warnings about Prot- estantism “devouring” the Roman Catholic Church and about the impending “total extinction” of Catholicism resulting from its rule of celibacy gave the campaign for its abolition a sense of urgency.35 Although many French critics of clerical celibacy invoked the example of England’s and other Protestant countries’ prosperity, most were Catholics who firmly resolved that France remain a Catholic nation. Their willingness to recommend reducing the numbers of celibate ecclesiastics, suppressing monasticism, or abolishing celibacy outright should hardly be interpreted as an endorse- ment of Protestantism. Although Anglican England was a central referent in the celibacy and population debates, a spirit of rivalry and competition—rather than admiration or advocacy—animated French writers’ discussions of the benefits of clerical marriage across the Channel. Critics of clerical celibacy simply wished for France to reap the benefits of clerical marriage that England and other Protestant countries were already enjoying. Some advocates of clerical marriage pointed to the English and Dutch’s veneration for their virtuous married pastors and bishops who raised well- educated, righteous children.36 Others observed that Protestants rarely confronted the sexual scandals that so frequently dishonored the Roman Catholic Church. Advocates of clerical marriage insisted that eliminating clerical celibacy would not only ensure the honor and integrity of Catholicism but also, most important, prevent its oblivion. For these and other reasons, “populationist” authors proposed financial penalties for celibacy and advocated other reforms designed an unnatural state 43 to mitigate or eliminate clerical celibacy’s drain on the French population. In the 1750s, both Louis- Joseph Plumard de Dangeul and Ange Goudar suggested that the wasteful wealth of a surplus clergy could be redirected to provide dowries that would enable poor, young men and women in the countryside to marry.37 Others proposed replacing monasteries and nunneries with rural retreats, which one could enter without religious vows and with the freedom to return to the secular world.38 A number of writers advocated instating pecuniary penalties against celibates. The prolific writer and satirist François-Antoine Chevrier proposed taxing celibate ecclesiastics at a rate based upon the age when they took religious orders.39 Even non-“populationists,” such as the journalist and future Girondin Jacques- Pierre Brissot, proposed pecuniary and other punitive measures against celibacy.40 The abbé Thomas- Jean Pichon, who defended the spiritual virtues of clerical celibacy, nonetheless proposed a graduated “tolerance tax” on celibates whose proceeds could be used to aid pères de familles and to raise abandoned children.41 Whereas some proposed fiscal measures that made no distinction between clerics and unmarried laypersons, others excluded religious men and women. Still others explicitly or even exclusively targeted religious celibacy, suggesting that it was part of a larger problem of the church draining resources from society. The financial crisis of the 1770s and 1780s only heightened concerns about the need for the French state to recoup financial losses that allegedly resulted from the practice of clerical celibacy. Ani- mated by eighteenth- century quantitative impulses, some writers attempted to calculate precise losses in population and revenue for the state. The philosophe Jean- Baptiste Robinet contended that every priest, monk, and nun living in celibacy represented gains for the papacy and losses for the state in terms of its population, consumption, commercial activity, and civil society; he assigned a value of three thousand livres to every celibate nun.42 Goudar similarly argued, “In the destruction of subjects through celibacy, the clergy gains all that the political state loses” and vice versa. Gou- dar viewed celibacy as a zero-sum game that pitted the excessively 44 unnatural frenchmen wealthy church against the state. Numerous philosophes and political economists argued that clerical marriage served not only the economic and political interests of the Gallican Church but also its spiritual interests. The French naturalist Henri- Paul- Irénée Re- boul attacked celibacy for “depopulating the earth for the greater glory of God.”43 A number of publications in the 1770s invoked the writings of the abbé Saint- Pierre to support their claims that an abundant population, particularly a Catholic one, conformed to God’s wishes.44 Anti- celibacy populationist tracts also advanced the argument that in fulfilling God’s injunction to be fruitful and multiply, Frenchmen were also fulfilling their duties to the state by giving it new citizens. In the last decades of the eighteenth century, a number of political economists called for reevaluating the scope of the problem that clerical celibacy supposedly posed for population growth. On the one hand, the abbé Pierre Jaubert identified monasteries as a source of depopulation; on the other hand, he argued that a married clergy would have a negligible effect on population growth.45 Furthermore, the very notion that France faced a crisis of depopulation came under attack. In his Research and Considerations on the Population of France (1778), Jean- Baptiste Moheau challenged claims about France’s depopulation and clerical celibacy’s role in the alleged problem. Moheau observed, “Prejudice and hatred have always exaggerated the anticipated destruction of humanity resulting from vows of sacerdotal celibacy.” Furthermore, Moheau insisted that the emphasis on procreation within Christian sexual ethics overwhelmingly favored population growth, thereby more than compensating for the negligible proportion of religious celibates.46 Moheau was certainly not the first to advance this position, but his “political arithmetic” lent new force to the argument that clerical celibacy was not a significant source of depopulation. But not all populationist arguments about clerical celibacy were grounded in political arithmetic. Some Enlightenment thinkers opposed clerical celibacy on the grounds that it was simply at odds with nature. Reproduction was considered “natural” and beneficial to the state. Diderot’s Supplement to Bougainville’s Voyage observed that an unnatural state 45 religion should not prohibit man from “enjoying an innocent pleasure to which Nature, that sovereign mistress, invites us all: that is, of bringing into the world one of your own kind . . . and enriching a nation by adding one more subject to it.”47 In his Theory of Criminal Laws (1780), Brissot described celibacy as “doubly criminal,” a crime against both nature and society, and “a more enormous crime than suicide since it destroys not a sole being . . . [but] an infinity.”48 Apologists’ interventions in the debates about reproduction and population discredited notions about France’s perceived demographic decline and its relationship to clerical celibacy. Bergier correctly dismissed France’s population decline as “imaginary.”49 He and others refuted the assertion that Protestant territories were more heavily populated than Catholic ones. Bergier noted that some areas of Europe where Protestantism had made dramatic inroads against Catholicism in the sixteenth century, such as Sweden, had actually been more populous before becoming Protestant. Bergier argued that that population growth had little to do with the negligible effects of clerical celibacy and almost everything to do with the fertility of land, topography, and governments.50 Denying any causation or correlation between Catholicism and population decline, the Benedictine monk Christophe- Léon Féroux noted that some of the most populated provinces in France possessed the most abbeys and monasteries.51 Furthermore, supporters of celibacy challenged the hypocrisy of philosophes who were preoccupied with population growth yet were themselves unmarried. The Benedictine abbé Benoît Gouget observed, “Hardly any [of these philosophes] were engaged in marital ties, the only legitimate means of giving subjects to the state.”52 Criticizing philosophes for spurning marriage and living licentiously, Bergier urged them to marry rather than to attack celibate ecclesiastics. He observed that in large cities, there were more “libertine bachelors” than priests and monks, and the numbers of prostitutes far exceeded that of nuns.53 Defenses of celibacy insisted on recognizing and respecting the distinction between those whom God destined to populate the earth and those destined to sanctify it.54 These works noted that the Catholic Church promoted marriage and procreation for the 46 unnatural frenchmen vast majority of the populace, thus stimulating population growth on the whole. Clerical celibacy was essential to familial strategies in which a younger son’s entry into the holy orders would leave his siblings with greater financial resources and larger inheritances, and thus the means to marry and support their own families.55 Some even argued that celibacy served an important purpose by regulating population, which nature could not support unchecked. The abbé François- André- Adrien Pluquet, for example, argued in his Dictionary of Heresies (1762) that the discipline of clerical celibacy was a far superior and more benevolent means of regulating population than other population checks, such as famines.56 Supporters of clerical celibacy defended Catholic sexual ethics and its salutary effects on population growth. They rejected philosophes’ allegations that clerical celibacy violated God’s “command- ment” to be fruitful and multiply by insisting that God provided a benediction or a blessing of fecundity for Adam and Eve, not a law or an order for every person on earth to procreate. Supporters of clerical celibacy dismissed populationist concerns that the human race would perish if everyone were celibate. Populationists, they argued, should be more concerned with the consequences of overpopulation and widespread subsistence crises if everyone married and procreated.57 By the 1780s, such arguments had diminished the influence of the populationist stance against clerical celibacy, yet it continued to be a source of controversy throughout the pre- revolutionary, revolutionary, and post- revolutionary eras. “The Deadly Art of Stifling Nature”: The Physiology of Celibacy and the Celebration of Conjugal Pleasure While political economists warned of a depopulation crisis precipitated by clerical celibacy, medical authorities began to express concerns that celibacy was also responsible for disease and even death among clergymen. Medical writings on clerical celibacy focused on the harmful effects of the retention of seminal fluid. These writings generally stressed the physiological ills that resulted from defying nature by abstaining from sexual activity. In so doing, this literature presented sex as a bodily need and legitimated an unnatural state 47 the pursuit of sexual pleasure, particularly within the confines of marriage. A 1723 publication authored by Michel- Louis Reneaulme de Lagaranne provided an account of the physiological dangers of celibacy. Reneaulme de Lagaranne, a professor of medicine at the University of Paris, argued that the retention of seminal fluid wreaked havoc on the body and was a root cause of several diseases. The work explained that prolonged retention caused seminal fluid to warm and bubble, creating swelling within the testicles and seminal vesicles. It likened the fluid in this state to a poison and a burning fire. Without release, it would eventually cool, thicken, deteriorate, and become more acrid.58 In 1749 the naturalist Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, observed that as a result of dis- use, men’s procreative organs, “in a state of weakness and languor, make only little or no secretion of seminal fluid.” Buffon lamented that, as a result, there were many men who “cease being men, or at least who cease having faculties of them, before the age of thirty years!”59 A 1768 surgical treatise explained that, by contravening the “order of nature,” a continent priest might suffer from testicular inflammation and risk losing a testicle, or perhaps even his own life during a surgery to remove it.60 Other Enlightenment texts on medicine and natural history contended that the prolonged retention of seminal fluid could also result in genital deformities, priapism, sterility, and even cancer.61 Since regular ejaculation was believed to help maintain the balance of humors within the body, retaining semen—or releas- ing too much of it—was believed, in turn, to produce humoral imbalance, disrupting the body’s natural equilibrium and causing disease. Jean- Joseph Ménuret de Chambaud, a physician and con- tributor to Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, explained in his article on marriage, “Any secretion seems, in the order of nature, to require . . . the excretion of a separate humor; thus the excretion of semen becomes, following these laws, a need, and its retention [becomes] a state against nature, often causing disease.” Ménuret, as well as other philosophes and medical authorities who shared his concerns about the deleterious physical consequences of sexual 48 unnatural frenchmen continence, saw conjugal sex as conducive to humoral and psychological equilibrium.62 In many ways, the anti- celibacy discourse was strikingly similar to anti- masturbation rhetoric. The medical and moral campaign against masturbation took shape in the early eighteenth century, with the publication of the anonymous pamphlet Onania. A half- decade later, the distinguished Swiss physician Samuel- Auguste- André- David Tissot published the most influential and widely read work on masturbation in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Tissot’s Onanism: or, A Treatise upon the Disorders Produced by Masturba- tion maintained that the practice of masturbation caused the de- terioration of mental and physical faculties. Masturbation, like celibacy, was deemed even more pernicious than excessive sexual intercourse.63 Medical writings stressed that both the retention of seminal fluid through sexual abstinence and the loss of semen through masturbation could result in the degeneration and decay of body and mind. Learned and popular medical texts claimed that continence, like masturbation, was an antisocial, unnatural perversion that produced wide- ranging afflictions, including loss of appetite and sleep, convulsions, paralysis, priapism, tumors, numbness, insomnia, hemorrhoids, impotence, madness, and even death in rare cases.64 The physiological effects of the deprivation of sex were considered particularly pernicious for ecclesiastics of certain temperaments. This notion stemmed from early modern understandings of medicine and the body that were informed by Galenic humoral theory, according to which an individual’s temperament—either melancholic, sanguine, choleric, or phlegmatic—depended on his dominant humor. “For persons whom nature had particularly formed for marriage,” Robinet’s Universal Dictionary observed that sexual abstinence was “often a fertile source of ills.”65 Louis François Luc de Lignac, a medical doctor and clergyman who authored a physiological treatise on marriage, concurred with Robinet that there were simply certain “ungovernable” temperaments that were incompatible with celibacy. Lignac cautioned that cholerics and melancholics might seem suited for a life of religious seclusion, an unnatural state 49 yet “their dispositions, and often irresistible penchant for women, would render solitude grievous and prove the source of various maladies.”66 Other Enlightenment writers also noted that sanguine, choleric, and melancholic temperaments were appropriate for marriage; phlegmatics were deemed suited for celibacy yet generally the least spiritual.67 Reporting that ecclesiastics suffered disproportionately from madness, many eighteenth- century works identified melancholy as a by- product of celibacy and the religious vocation more broadly. Associated with scholarly solitude, melancholy was viewed as an occupational disease of not only secular scholars but also clergymen, especially monks.68 Although most critical commentaries on celibacy stressed the links between melancholy and the cloister rather than melancholy and the parish, Jean Saury, a philosophe, clergyman, and doctor from Montpellier, observed that solitude was a feature not only of monastic life but also of the life of a parish priest. In a 1778 anti- celibacy publication, Saury stressed the prevalence of melancholy among parish priests: “Above all those who live alone like parish priests, being continually with themselves or with a vulgar domestic servant, fall so easily into melancholy; the effects of which are so disastrous.”69 Invoking the medical authorities Galen, Hippocrates, Boerhaave, and Tissot as well as citing morality tables and calculations, Saury claimed that celibates were more vulnerable than married persons to melancholy, disease, and shorter life spans.70 Both Saury and Lignac maintained, however, that afflictions associated with celibacy could be largely avoided. Lignac advocated that physicians screen potential monks, nuns, and priests to assess whether their constitutions were suited for a celibate life. He argued that a physician should discern an individual’s suitability for celibacy before sanctioning entry into a religious life, in order to prevent the kind of physical and psychological torments and “fatal maladies” that resulted from leading a life at odds with one’s innate temperament.71 Saury insisted that clerical celibacy, which gave rise to “the most horrible ills that afflict humanity,” needed to be abolished entirely. He assured his readers that the “natural” bonds 50 unnatural frenchmen of marriage constituted a remedy to all of the ills stemming from the celibate priesthood, including disease, moral dissolution, sexual scandal, and population decline. Saury stressed that ecclesiastics were not angels but “men subject to human weaknesses, exposed to the same diseases, and in need of the same remedy”: sex within marriage.72 Other authors also identified celibacy as a medical problem that could be cured by sex, preferably conjugal sex. They pointed to the futility of other remedies for the afflictions that stemmed from celibacy and observed that ecclesiastics’ penitential practices, mortification of the flesh, and attempts to suppress sexual urges only intensified these afflictions. Critics of clerical celibacy prescribed conjugal sex as “the remedy of nature” for the ills that resulted from sexual abstinence. They warned that celibacy would give rise either to illness or to illicit sex. Condemning the church for depriving clerics of marriage, these writers drew upon a long tradition of Christian, specifically Pauline, sexual ethics that conceived of marriage as a remedy to moral dangers of concupiscence. They also presented marriage as a remedy to the physiological dangers of continence. Marriage was the antidote to the “poison” of celibacy.73 Many philosophes condemned clerical celibacy for making inhuman demands of man’s nature. Brissot viewed sex and love as physical needs, like rest. He argued that those without recourse to sex and marriage were unable simply to repress or extinguish their natural sexual desires, which he likened to “a torrent whose artificial dike sometimes stops the impetuosity, but which soon overflows in the countryside.” Brissot criticized celibacy and other attempts “to stifle the cry of nature and to degrade the purest pleasure of humanity.”74 Diderot concurred. In a letter to his mistress Sophie Volland, Diderot observed that what Christians “call evangelical perfection is nothing but the deadly art of stifling nature.”75 D’Holbach also decried the unnatural suppression of priests’ sexual drive. He declared, “Most of the precepts which religion, or its fanatical and supernatural ethics, prescribe to man are as ridiculous as they are impossible to practice. To prohibit men their passions an unnatural state 51 is to forbid them to be men.” He and other philosophes saw only futility and pointlessness in the plight of the celibate priest.76 Critics of celibacy promoted the marriage of priests as a means of satisfying and moderating sexual passions, while legitimately channeling them for procreative purposes. They presented the relationship between sexual pleasure and reproduction as a product of divine design. Procreation itself depended on sexual pleasure according to early modern understandings of the body. Conception was made possible only by mutual orgasms (the mechanism through which male and female “seed” was released). Pleasure was thus vital to the physiology of reproduction and to the propagation of the species.77 Advocates of clerical marriage argued that the propagation of the species is pleasing to God and that the individual pursuit of pleasure through sex and marriage serves God as well as the greater good. Critics of celibacy like Reneaulme de Lagaranne pointed to the pleasure that one feels in sex and in love as “proof of its utility” and a sign of its natural goodness.78 Many Enlightenment writers rejected clerical celibacy and championed the pursuit of pleasure through sex and marriage. Their ideas on marriage, reproduction, sex, and celibacy formed part of a broad cultural shift toward legitimizing the pursuit of sexual pleasure in marriage. Sexual passion and romantic love in marriage were increasingly prominent themes in eighteenth- century prescriptive literature, including theological writings such as those of Alphon- sus Liguori, who not only defended but also extolled pleasure in marital sex. There was greater emphasis on sexual attraction and satisfaction in marriage, particularly ones based on the romantic companionate ideal that the Enlightenment anti-celibacy literature advanced. Emotional intimacy and compatibility were crucial features of companionate marriage. Physical intimacy and sexual gratification were championed as a means of bringing spouses even closer together. Sexual desire and pleasure increased affection between a husband and wife and cemented marital bonds. Marital sexual pleasure was no longer seen as sinful or impure but as a good in itself.79 Critics of clerical celibacy highlighted the emotional and physical benefits of a loving and sexually fulfilling marriage. 52 unnatural frenchmen Depriving priests of the benefits of marriage outraged critics of celibacy who deemed the practice an unnatural violation of the will of God. Refuting these claims, defenders of ecclesiastical celibacy challenged the notion of the “unnaturalness” of celibacy and argued that abolishing celibacy would offend God and nature. They reminded faithful Catholics that celibacy was an important part of God’s design; God destined some men for the priesthood and bestowed them with the divine gift of continence. These Catholics framed their exaltation of celibacy not as a denigration of marriage but as a means of reaffirming it. In 1760 the journal La religion vengée, the periodical principally edited by the Franciscan monk Jean- Nicolas- Hubert Hayer, observed that the meanings of celibacy and marriage were mutually constitutive, and thus the sanctity of marriage and celibacy depended on each other. Although the majority of people were “naturally inclined” to marriage, advocates of clerical celibacy were quick to point out that others possessed a “natural inclination” for a celibate religious life. François- Xavier Feller railed against the “injustice” and “inhumanity” of “refusing a person born with this inclination the freedom to follow it.”80 Other Catholic thinkers, however, called into question the morality of following one’s natural inclinations. Hayer criticized philosophes for calling all people to follow blindly their natural desires. He argued that some men had depraved, sinful inclinations and passions, which he described as “diseases of the soul . . . and of the body.” Hayer insisted that renouncing sex was a worthy and godly endeavor that liberated clerics from such afflictions.81 Other writers also warned of the moral implications of anti- celibacy arguments; Bergier suggested that if continence was indeed so harmful and deadly, then we should condone adultery when a spouse is away or ill and condone fornication for those who have difficulty marrying.82 Some proponents of celibacy maintained that the practice was beneficial not only to spiritual well-being but also to physical health. Feller invoked medical authorities and naturalists to support his contention that celibate men usually lived longer than an unnatural state 53 married men. He cited the example of a parish priest of Liège who lived to the age of 125, and attributed his longevity to continence. Feller insisted that celibacy was advantageous for people of certain temperaments, even if it might be harmful to others. He also contrasted the health benefits of celibacy with the physiological dangers of philosophes’ sexual excesses and debauchery.83 Many Counter- Enlightenment writers argued that the philosophes’ pursuit of sensual pleasure, pushed to excess, posed its own serious health risks and threatened moeurs. The Sex Lives of the Clergy In the eighteenth century, as today, critics claimed that clerical celibacy produced sexual scandal, as clergymen fell short of the Catholic Church’s otherworldly standards into degeneracy. For celibacy’s detractors during the Enlightenment, permanent sexual continence seemed an impossible standard to live up to, particularly for men. During the eighteenth century it was assumed that men had more difficulty controlling their strong sexual desires than the more chaste and virtuous female sex, a reversal of previous assumptions that women were more lustful than men. Viewing celibacy as contrary to man’s nature, critics suggested that sexual vice and social disorder were the inevitable consequences of the rule of clerical celibacy. Anti-celibacy and anticlerical texts graphically and imaginatively represented priests’ sexual perversion and immorality. They relied on the trope of the licentious cleric, a staple of a long and rich anticlerical literary tradition. The idea of celibacy as an unnatural state of sexual repression was indebted to this classic trope of the lecherous priest, a figure that took on new meanings in eighteenth- century French culture. The image of the lascivious priest was moved in new directions by the flourishing popular “underground” literature of eighteenth- century France that has been famously studied by Robert Darn- ton. Representations of clerical sexual deviance in some libertine and pornographic works served as implicit or explicit critiques of despotism within the church and the Old Regime monarchy. Mita Choudhury has demonstrated how sensational and libertine 54 unnatural frenchmen accounts of the dangers of monastic despotism expressed anxieties about clerical authority and female sexuality. In these erotic, pornographic, philosophic, and libertine works, monasteries and particularly convents served as sites of sadomasochism, seduction, corruption, debauchery, and even alleged infanticide. Sexual fantasies about nuns in particular figured prominently in the burgeoning erotic literature that represented the convent as a “school of vice” and a site of sexual deviance. Numerous popular erotic and pornographic works, including Diderot’s The Nun, which was written in 1760 but not published until 1796, eroticized the cloister by luridly depicting “unnatural” sexual practices that resulted from claustration, including sodomy, masturbation, and a host of illicit sexual transgressions.84 The production and distribution of these salacious publications often involved networks of men and women that included members of the clergy. Charles Nourry, a tonsured cleric, enjoyed a large personal collection of illegal books, and his involvement in the distribution of the pornographic History of Dom Bougre, Porter of the Carthusians (1741) resulted in his imprisonment in the Bas- tille. The publishing activities and reading practices of ecclesiastics like Nourry demonstrate the existence of an “ecclesiastical underground” whose importance, as Darnton suggests, has gone largely unrecognized.85 Critiques of the Catholic Church’s stance on clerical celibacy found expression in erotic and pornographic writings that some clergymen wrote, peddled, or purchased. One of the most popular of the “forbidden best-sellers” of the eighteenth century, the pornographic novel Thérèse philosophe, was based on a contemporary cause célèbre that involved the trial of a Jesuit priest, Jean-Baptiste Girard. Catherine Cadière, a devout young woman under Girard’s spiritual direction in Toulon, accused him of sorcery, seduction, and spiritual incest. Spiritual incest was a serious offense involving sexual relations between those connected through a spiritual association, such as that between a priest and a penitent or parishioner, since a priest’s parishioners and penitents were considered to be his spiritual “children.” In the notorious trial of 1731, the Parlement of Aix narrowly and hesitantly acquitted an unnatural state 55 Girard. The case inflamed tensions between the Jesuits and their Jansenist enemies, and it inspired dozens of publications, including sensational pamphlets, legal briefs, and even popular songs, as well as the erotic novel Thérèse philosophe.86 The novel provides a lurid account of the “Dirrag affair” through the eyes of its heroine, Thérèse, as revealed in its subtitle, Memoirs about the Affair of Father Dirrag and Mademoiselle Eradice. (Dirrag and Eradice are anagrams of Girard and Cadière.) In the first section of the novel, Thérèse

Engraving of Father Dirrag flagellating Eradice as Thérèse watches in hiding. Thérèse philosophe, ou Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du P. Dirrag et de Mademoiselle Eradice, 2 vols., n.p., n.d. 56 unnatural frenchmen witnesses Dirrag’s seduction of Mlle Eradice, the first stage of her “metaphysical- sexual education,” as Darnton has shown. Thérèse secretly observes her friend Eradice’s spiritual and sexual seduction and ecstasy, as Eradice’s libidinous confessor trains her in “spiritual exercises” involving flagellating and penetrating her from behind with what he describes as the holy relic of the “cord of Saint Fran- cis,” a hardened piece of the original cord that Saint Francis wore around his habit. The erotic novel portrayed clerics as seducers and Christianity itself as a perverted form of seduction.87 Thérèse philosophe was one of many sensationalized or fictionalized accounts of priests seducing female penitents. In 1724 a Parisian ecclesiastical tribunal charged the abbé Claude Nicholas Des Rues with debauchery and the seduction of a twenty- year- old woman, Jeanneton le Fort. Like the Cadière affair and other eighteenth- century causes célèbres, the printed mémoires judiciaires or legal briefs from the case circulated widely in France and appeared in translated English editions. One English printer’s account of the Des Rues affair alleged that the clergyman had seduced “no less than 133 Virgins.”88 Not every allegation of clerical sexual immorality became highly sensationalized and publicized, but both ecclesiastical and secular authorities took these allegations very seriously and aggressively prosecuted and punished offenders. For example, in 1727 the vicaire perpétuel of La Coste in Provence was sentenced to hanging for seducing a female penitent.89 Narratives of sexual danger in the confession proliferated in a diverse body of works that included not only underground literature and mémoires judiciaries, which was one the most important and popular forms of ephemeral literature in eighteenth- century France, but also medical texts, philosophical treatises, political tracts, pamphlets, and prescriptive literature. These writings demonstrate the important place that the confessional occupied in the Enlightenment sexual imagination. A staple of Protestant and anticlerical polemics, representations of the confessional as an instrument of seduction tapped into the cultural fascination with and anxiety about clerical sexuality. Depictions of seduction, solicitation, or rape in the confessional played on popular fears of an unnatural state 57 priests’ privileged access to women. Lignac suggested that the sexual and moral dangers inherent to confessional practices were strongest for innocent young women, being most at risk of being seduced, ravaged, and defiled by “a decrepit and revolting confessor.”90 In 1763 the defrocked priest, novelist, and pornographer Henri-Joseph Dulaurens pointed to the inherent danger of beautiful women re- counting their sexual sins, thus stirring their confessors’ unnaturally suppressed passions. Insisting that priests were not insensitive to these accounts and were not “made of marble,” Dulaurens suggested that it was essential for the Catholic Church to recognize priests’ humanity and human weaknesses in order to curb sexual immorality.91 Anti- celibacy literature suggested that if priests could marry and have sex with their wives, they would be less likely to resort to seduction in the confessional. Such accounts of priests’ sexual lives—written by authors ranging from little- known writers to the most widely read writer of the time, Jean- Jacques Rousseau—fascinated eighteenth- century readers. In his wildly popular Emile, Rousseau advocated abolishing clerical celibacy as a remedy to the fate that befell his virtuous Savoyard vicar, whose struggle with sexual abstinence resulted in his disgrace and arrest. In his Confessions, Rousseau explained that his beloved former tutor, a young priest named Gâtier, who served as an inspiration and model for the Savoyard vicar, had been imprisoned, slandered, and expelled from his parish after falling deeply in love with and impregnating a young woman. Lamenting Gâtier’s fate, Rousseau wryly observed, “Priests ought never to have children— except with married women.”92 Rousseau reminded the readers of his 1761 epistolary novel Julie, or the New Heloise, the greatest literary success of eighteenth- century France, that “imposing celibacy on a body as numerous as the clergy of the Roman Church is not as much forbidding them to take wives as ordering them to make do with the wives of others.”93 Writers commonly depicted priests “making do” with other men’s wives and daughters but not with husbands and sons. The literary underground gratified the public’s salacious and pruri- ent interests in the sex lives of clerics, including homosexual acts 58 unnatural frenchmen among nuns. But the figure of the sodomizing priest was much less prevalent in this literature. Nonetheless, some representations of priestly sodomy appeared in a handful of the “forbidden best- sellers” of pre-revolutionary France and the pornographic novels of Honoré- Gabriel de Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau. This future revolutionary leader and son of the famous physiocrat related stories about sex among nuns and priestly pederasty, including a Jesuit’s seduction of a fourteen- year- old boy in his story Hic- et- Haec.94 In addition to depictions in a few pornographic works, priestly sodomy appeared in police and legal records from the period. Sec- ular and religious authorities took severe measures to combat the “perversions” and crimes of priestly sodomy and pederasty. From the 1720s to the Revolution, the police of Paris vigorously patrolled and employed undercover agents to discover and arrest sodomites. The records of René de Voyer d’Argenson, the lieutenant- general of police of Paris in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, and those of Pierre Louis Foucault, a commissioner of police of Paris in the 1780s, contain numerous reports of clergymen seducing, exploiting, and having sexual relations with young men and boys.95 When such cases appeared before the court, convicted offenders faced severe punishment. In 1757 the sovereign court of Lorraine condemned a parish priest to be burned for sodomy.96 In 1783 Jacques François Pascal, a defrocked Capuchin monk and priest who had sexually assaulted a fourteen- year- old errand boy and stabbed him seventeen times, was broken on the wheel and burned alive in the Place de Grève in Paris before a large crowd.97 Nonetheless, the issue of homosexuality and pederasty among clergymen rarely entered the public discussion about clerical celibacy in eighteenth- century France. Anti-celibacy literature generally maintained a telling silence on the issue of male homosexuality. D’Holbach’s Christianity Exposed and Voltaire’s Questions on the Ency- clopédie were notable exceptions. In the latter, Voltaire cited monks’ predilections toward pederasty as “a necessary result of the celibacy to which these poor people are condemned.” Nonetheless, most philosophes rarely discussed sodomy in a serious or systematic fashion.98 While debates about clerical celibacy and sex were part an unnatural state 59 of the proliferation of discourses about sex in the eighteenth century, sodomy surprisingly remained the “unmentionable vice,” still shrouded in secrecy, circumlocution, and silence in discussions of sexual behavior as well as in the polemics over clerical celibacy. Sod- omy had long been considered an unnatural, aberrant perversion, and celibacy became identified by some Enlightenment thinkers as the same. Although allegations concerning the “unnaturalness” of celibacy and clerical sexual licentiousness were common, they were also fiercely contested. Supporters of celibacy deemed these charges of clerical sexual immorality to be baseless and blasphemous. In the relatively rare cases of real-life clerical sexual transgressions, they contended that the offenders were not devoted ministers whom God called to the priesthood but persons whose families forced their entry into the church, a practice that the Catholic Church and its apologists abhorred.99 Anti-philosophes also argued that sexual depravity and debauchery were the purview of libertine philosophes rather than clergymen. Many writers denounced the “libertine celibacy” of the philosophes and other Frenchmen who refused to marry in the interest of pursuing wealth or sensual pleasure.100 Gouget attacked philosophes for spurning marriage yet embracing libertinage: “The majority of them, far from living in an honest marriage, are apologists of the most licentious life.”101 Defending the merits of clerical celibacy while attacking the sexual immorality and hypocrisy of the philosophes, the theologian Bergier argued that ecclesiastical celibacy is “praiseworthy and useful,” whereas the sexual license of unmarried, libertine men is “pernicious and worthy of the serious attention of the police.”102 Arguably the most significant Catholic apologist of his time and a lasting influence on generations of reactionary French Catholics, Augustin Barruel explicitly linked philosophie to the vices of greed, luxury, slavery, prostitution, and selfishness.103 Many apologists of clerical celibacy argued that the problems in French society that had been attributed to priests were actually the product of anticlerical philosophes. The abbé Harel asserted, “The lessons of our philosophes have multiplied corruption 60 unnatural frenchmen and corrupters; they have caused more harm to the state than war, plague, and famine.” Harel lauded the virtues of ecclesiastical celibacy while denouncing the political, moral, and social vices of philosophie.104 According to this perspective, the religious vocation provided a bulwark against the vice and depravity that stemmed from the libertinage and immorality in Enlightenment France.

Celibate clerics became polarizing figures in pre-revolutionary France. The polemics over clerical celibacy resulted from divergent eighteenth- century views about religion, sexuality, and the priesthood. Although these conflicts were largely restricted to the realm of ideas in Enlightenment France, the marriage of French priests would become a reality during the Revolution. Thousands of clergymen would marry during the course of the Revolution, but the abbé Desforges, the avid aviator, would not enter their ranks. He died shortly after the French government granted priests the liberty to marry—without ever having taken flight or taken a wife. THREE riests into Citizens  Clerical Marriage during the French Revolution, 1789–1793

Priests into Citizens

In 1790 François- Etienne Bernet de Boislorette, a Catholic priest and chaplain of the Parisian National Guard, publicly proclaimed his love for a Protestant English widow. He did so in a subsequently published letter to Jean- Paul Rabaut Saint- Etienne, president of the National Assembly, demanding the legalization of the marriage of priests. Presuming that as a Protestant pastor Rabaut would be sympathetic to this cause, the abbé Bernet de Boislor- ette expressed indignation over the National Assembly’s failure to abolish clerical celibacy, “which contradicts nature, good sense, society, morals [and] religion.” He denounced vows of celibacy as “insane,” “anti-social,” “unconstitutional,” “sacrilegious,” “scandalous,” and “barbarous,” while condemning the celibate priest as an “enemy of the social order” and an “anti- citizen” who was “killing the nation.” Distancing himself from these “egotists,” the self- proclaimed “patriot priest” exclaimed, “I am in a great hurry to give to society a soldier- citizen, not only one, but six, maybe a dozen, if possible.”1 Within a year, the Constitution of 1791 authorized the marriage of priests, and in January 1792 Bernet de Boislorette triumphantly presented his wife and three children (two of them from her previous marriage) to the Legislative Assembly. Although the Assembly warmly welcomed Bernet de Boislorette, its members quarreled over how to refer to him in their records. Some approved of referring to him as a married priest, insisting that the term “priest” was compatible with those of “spouse,” “father,” and “citizen.” But others 62 unnatural frenchmen considered a married Catholic priest a contradiction in terms and an expression of “great contempt for the Catholic religion.” Yet others insisted that the term “father,” or more specifically “père de famille,” should be substituted for that of priest.2 The revolutionary campaign against clerical celibacy was led by a contingent of patriot priests like Bernet de Boislorette. Drawn heavily from the ranks of the lower clergy, the “patriotic” or “enlightened” clergy were equally loyal to the French Revolution and to Catholicism, and they believed in the harmony of the two. They advocated reforms that would recapture the purity of early Chris- tianity and would “regenerate” the nation.3 Many of these patriot priests considered the marriage of priests an essential instrument of regeneration. But the efforts of the “patriotic clergy” in promoting a regenerated French nation that was both Catholic and revolutionary would ultimately shape revolutionary politics in ways that these priests neither anticipated nor desired. The revolutionary campaign against clerical celibacy promoted the notion of the celibate priest as an unnatural, foreign presence in the nation, thereby fueling hostility and violence of revolutionaries toward the clergy as a whole. Consequently, revolutionaries’ conflict with the church and its clergy was not in spite of but paradoxically in part a result of the revolutionary fervor of the patriotic clergy. The figure of the celibate priest, even the celibate “patriot priest,” presented problems for the revolutionary project of refashioning passive subjects into active citizens. Revolutionary political thought closely linked citizenship to marriage and stressed the important role of marriage in developing civic virtue, forging social bonds, and reconstructing the French nation. Consequently, opponents of celibacy encouraged clerical marriage as a means of social and political transformation by regenerating men and morals, which had been corrupted by the excesses and abuses of the old regime. Many revolutionaries maintained that the institution of clerical celibacy had severed priests’ ties to society, to the nation, and to nature. The notion of the fundamental unnaturalness of celibacy heightened suspicions of priests’ ability to be fully integrated into priests into citizens 63 the French nation as loyal citizens, even before disputes over the formal relationship of the church and state in France threatened to split the nation in two. Many historians of revolutionary religious politics have stressed the “essentially contingent” nature of the split between the Revo- lution and the church. They have consequently placed enormous weight on the unintended consequences of the Civil Constitution of Clergy, identifying the crisis over this piece of legislation and the oath of loyalty as a major turning point in the French Rev- olution and the moment when the Revolution “went wrong.”4 A package of wide-ranging, radical reforms, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy included the controversial provision that required the popular election of new parish priests and bishops. Above all, the requirement that all clergy swear an oath of allegiance to the constitution created a schism in the French church and sparked a massive mobilization of counter- revolutionary forces.5 Although the Civil Constitution produced deep cleavages and profoundly influenced the course of the Revolution, the conflict between the Revolution and the church cannot be ascribed solely to the circumstances of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and Catholic counter- revolutionary resistance to the Revolution. Important intellectual and cultural forces were pulling revolutionary politics toward conflict with the church well before the conflicts over the Civil Constitution. Debates over clerical celibacy performed much of the ideological work that drove the Revolution and the Catholic church apart. Many revolutionaries perceived celibate clergymen as a threat because of who they were and what they represented—a kind of person incapable of fulfilling the obligations of active citizenship. The fact that revolutionaries took a series of dramatic measures against the church despite the commitment of the patriot clergy to the ideals and aims of the Revolution is evidence that there were already strong tensions by the time of the Revolution between understandings of what it meant to be a celibate clergyman and what it meant to be a good citizen. 64 unnatural frenchmen

The Unnatural Law of Celibacy: Severing Priests from Nature and the Nation The abolition of celibacy was one of the numerous causes championed in the public debates that took place on the eve of the Revolution. Calls for the marriage of priests found expression in the cahiers de doléances, the petitions of grievances that were drawn in preparation for the Estates General of 1789—the body that began the Revolution by transforming itself into the National Assembly on June 17. Several cahiers de doléances proposed the marriage of priests as a much- needed reform to the church and to French society.6 During preliminary deliberations over the cahiers of the sénéchaussée of Lyon, a Jansenist priest named François Souchon called for the marriage of priests, citing the example of the apostolic church and the imperatives of nature. Souchon argued that parish priests should no longer engage in “licentious and scandalous commerce with such-and- such woman or girl of the parish.” Rather, by “making children with honest and virtuous women,” they could become respectable spouses and pères de famille.7 The cahier of the Third Estate of Châlais also demanded the abolition of clerical celibacy and the marriage of all priests. Insisting that a woman’s tenderness and sensibilité would awaken the same sentiments in her spouse, the authors of the cahier claimed that the salutatory, transformative effects of having a wife and family would make priests “men like us”—no longer a separate caste removed from the rest of humanity.8 In the summer and fall of 1789, with the Revolution underway, appeals for clerical marriage came forth even more insistently. On November 27, 1789, three weeks after the National Assembly nationalized church properties, the abbé Cournand, a professor of literature, presented a motion in favor of clerical marriage in the local assembly of the Saint-Etienne- du- Mont district of Paris. In a lengthy, impassioned, and widely publicized statement, Cour- nand railed against the revolutionary legislature’s “criminal silence” on the issue of obligatory clerical celibacy, which violated clerics’ liberty and civic rights. Cournand argued that marriage would priests into citizens 65 restore priests’ “inalienable right . . . to exist as father and spouse.” Furthermore, he maintained that priests would be able to counsel their parishioners more effectively if they had firsthand knowledge as fathers and spouses of domestic and conjugal matters. Cour- nand’s motion helped spur lengthy, contentious debates on the issue among leading Parisian academics in the district of Saint-Etienne- du- Mont. A professor of theology who participated in the Saint- Etienne- du- Mont debates argued that marriage would transform priests into good pères de famille who would place the interests of their children, family, and nation ahead of their individualistic desires: “The père de famille does not only work for himself alone. He is unceasingly occupied with the happiness of his posterity; his entire life is often only a sacrifice that he makes for the happiness of his children.” Celibacy, in contrast, raised a “wall of separation” between priests and the rest of humanity, detaching them from the social chain. Although the district ultimately did not pass Cournand’s motion, his speech and the transcribed debates widely circulated in print and shaped subsequent debates in other local assemblies, in the press, and in the revolutionary legislature.9 The argument that celibacy isolated priests from civil society and made them foreigners to the patrie, to nature, and to humanity became a central claim in the campaign for clerical marriage. A proliferating anti-celibacy pamphlet literature identified priests as alien presences, owing not only to their loyalty to a foreign power, the papacy, but also to their practice of celibacy. In a 1789 pamphlet advocating clerical marriage, the journalist and theologian Nicolas- Jean Hugou de Bassville proclaimed, “[Celibate priests] are absolutely passive, worthless in the civil body. . . . They are a society in a society, a state in a state.”10 Many other revolutionary publications used similar language, often describing the celibate clergy as a nation within the nation. Clerical celibacy, as a guaran- tor and marker of priests’ separateness and distinctiveness from the laity, offended revolutionaries’ universalist sensibilities. Many revolutionaries increasingly viewed celibate priests as “insensitive spectator[s]” rather than active members of society and the nation as well as foreigners in their own country.11 66 unnatural frenchmen Anti- celibacy polemical works charged celibate priests with directly challenging the authority of nature and of the nation by blindly, slavishly serving the pope. Many revolutionaries viewed the “antisocial institution” of celibacy as a product of the “ambitions,” “intrigues,” and “despotism of the court of Rome.” The origins of clerical celibacy, according to its critics, were the political machinations of popes who wanted to increase the power and wealth of the church, while breaking the ties that attached clerics to their families, their countries, and “their legitimate sovereigns” in order to attach priests solely to the church. The anonymous author of the anti- celibacy pamphlet Priests Become Citizens, or Abolition of Re- ligious Celibacy claimed that celibate priests in France formed “a state apart, in which citizens obey the laws of a foreign despot [and] pay to him the odious debt of servitude.” Anti- celibacy publications also suggested that celibacy made priests isolated and detached, thereby more pliable and dependent on the pope. According to this narrative, the church required celibacy in order to establish a vast political empire in which priests were docile subjects and loyal soldiers in the army of the pope.12 Opponents of clerical celibacy, including Cournand, advocated clerical marriage as a means of transforming an army of “slaves,” which the pope could muster at his will, into an army of French citizens. Cournand, who also championed the rights of Saint- Domingue’s gens de couleur, considered the plight of celibate ecclesiastics no worse than that of slaves, because “even slaves [could] follow the leanings of their hearts.”13 According to Joseph- Antoine- Joachim Cérutti, the Jesuit founder of the popular weekly newspaper the Feuille villageoise, “The celibacy of priests is an absurd slavery, and the monastic state is a barbaric slavery.” Celibate ecclesiastics were, as he put it, “the negroes of religion.”14 In 1790 an anonymous pamphleteer, who identified herself as a cloistered nun, lamented that she and her religious sisters “are more unfortunate than Negroes, even in slavery. Our chains are all the more unbearable that they are imposed on us by a religion that preaches only gentleness [and] freedom.” The work recommended that efforts to abolish slavery be redirected to the cause of abolishing celibacy. Revolutionary priests into citizens 67 anti- celibacy literature emphasized the need for breaking off the chains of “spiritual slavery” and “corporeal servitude” that celibacy imposed on ecclesiastics.15 Cournand and his sympathizers’ efforts to abolish celibacy in- censed their opponents. An anonymous publication protesting Cournand’s motion defended the celibate priesthood as “a class of men who . . . can sacrifice the pleasures of the senses [for God] and be eternally compensated for it.”16 Other works stressed not only the dignity of celibate priests but also the immorality of Cournand. The Jansenist periodical Nouvelles ecclésiastiques accused Cournand of heresy and indecency.17 Edited by Augustin Barruel, a Jesuit who would later go on to write some of the most ferocious attacks on the Revolution itself, the Journal ecclésiastique maintained that Cournand’s “scandalous” motion was the “language of a libertine priest.” The periodical repeatedly referred to Cournand as a sick, disturbed man with a “troubled brain.”18 The famous Jansenist canonist and prolific writerGabriel- Nicholas Maultrot called Cournand’s motion “revolting.”19 A pamphlet published by a parish priest in Champagne branded the motion “Lutheran” and declared, “The abbé Cournand must be viewed as a pagan,” as well as a “monster” and a “libertine priest.” Cournand’s adversaries used the trope of the lascivious priest to cast doubt on the motivations behind his motion.20 In contrast, Cournand’s supporters used the same trope of the libertine priest to condemn obligatory celibacy. Drawing on the popular image of the lascivious priest, they argued that the oppres- sive imposition of celibacy resulted in clerical sexual immorality and perversion. They were helped, in this regard, by the publication of the archives of the Bastille, which exposed an unexpected gold mine of evidence of clerical sexual activity. The Bastille housed records of the Parisian police’s surveillance of the clients of many prominent brothels. Having instructed procuresses to summon them whenever priests or monks arrived at their brothels, the police then arrived on the scene to catch clerics in flagrante delicto. As records from the arrests of around one thousand clerics from 1755 to 1769 revealed, the police generally interrogated and humiliated 68 unnatural frenchmen the offending cleric, drew up a deposition that he signed, and then released him. The lieutenant of police sent copies of these reports to the archbishop of Paris and to the king. After the fall of the Bastille, these police archives fell into the hands of unsym- pathetic revolutionaries and eventually made their way into print. A publication entitled List of all the priests found in flagrante delicto with the prostitutes of Paris under the Old Regime (1790) disclosed the names of offending clerics, and The Chastity of the Clergy Unveiled printed,

Frontispiece engraving of Parisian police apprehending a priest after he is caught with his pants down in a brothel. Liste de tous les prêtres trouvés en flagrant délit chez les filles publiques de Paris, sous l’ancien régime, 1790. priests into citizens 69 more or less verbatim, the police reports of 206 selected cases of ecclesiastics caught in brothels. Publications that printed the police reports maintained that these records were sent to the king in order “to pique the libidinous curiosity of the sultan Louis XV” and to amuse his mistress Madame du Barry. These publications critiqued royal and episcopal despotism and took a strong stance against clerical celibacy: a “law that prohibits a class of men from being men . . . [and] citizens . . . [which] makes a necessity of seducing and corrupting the wife or the daughter of another, or of indulging in prostitutes—a law in opposition with the views of the Creator, of human rights, and of society.”21 Many revolutionary publications charged priests with sexual depravity and hypocrisy. Some noted that priests were generally more circumspect and secretive about their sexual activities by the eighteenth century than in previous times. A 1789 anti- celibacy treatise observed, “Clandestine liaisons have taken the place of public debaucheries.”22 Some critics insisted that the most galling and pernicious aspect of clerical celibacy was priests’ hypocrisy, which was antithetical to revolutionaries’ ideals of transparency and authenticity. Critiques of clerical celibacy suggested that the sexual immorality and hypocrisy of priests called into question their holiness as well as the maxims, moral precepts, and teachings of the Catholic Church. Many anti- celibacy publications railed against priests who publicly preached the virtues of austerity and denounced the corruption of the present world, while they hid their private vice and depraved mores. “As long as there is celibacy and seduction,” Religion without Priests (1790) warned, “hypocrisy will pass under the name of religion.”23 Jacques Jallet, a Jansenist parish priest from Poitou and revolutionary deputy, denounced the obligation of clerical celibacy as an “absurd and tyrannical,” “cruel,” and “barbarian law that condemns [one] to spend an unhappy life between crime and remorse!”24 In an anti- celibacy pamphlet published in 1790, a parish priest from the Eure-et- Loir appealed to the National Constituent Assembly to use any means necessary to abolish clerical celibacy in order to put an end to the sexual scandals and abuses that it engendered.25 70 unnatural frenchmen

Engraving of nuns and clergymen embracing after the suppression of religious orders. Décret de l’Assemblée National qui supprime les ordres religieux et religieuses.

The sexual lives of priests, monks, and nuns captured the French cultural imagination. Many erotic and libertine works in revolutionary France depicted monasteries and convents as “schools of vice” and as sites of sexual deviance. The Marquis de Sade represented the convent as a site of sadomasochism; his Justine featured savage and depraved clergyman viciously abusing, raping, and tor- turing women and young girls, whom they either seduced in the confessional or kidnapped.26 In a less graphic fashion, revolutionary print and popular culture generally depicted the obligation of celibacy and monasticism as obstacles to young men and women’s happiness and freedom. Following the abolition of monasticism and the suppression of religious orders in February 1790, the romantic lives of priests, monks, and nuns attracted even greater attention. During the first few years of the Revolution, there were dozens of performances of popular plays about clerical marriage.27 Revolutionary prints explored similar themes and often depicted the marriage of clergymen and nuns as the next step following the abolition of monasteries. These popular prints that celebrated and satirized the perceived relationship between secularization and priests into citizens 71

Engraving of monks and nuns leaving their cloisters and pairing off as they are joined in matrimony by a patriotic member of the Third Estate. Le tiers état mariant les religieux avec les religieuses.

Engraving of a monk who plans to marry later that day getting shaved and fitted with a wig with cuckold’s horns. On me raze ce matin, Je me marie ce soir. 72 unnatural frenchmen marriage often cast the Third Estate and the National Assembly as the heroic liberators of amorous clerics. These satirical images celebrating clerics’ liberation and marriages starkly contrasted representations of unmarried clerics who were shown to be still languishing under the yoke of obligatory celibacy. Critics of celibacy argued that celibate clerics lived in a constant state of futile, painful struggle against their natural human inclinations and suggested that these unnatural struggles could give rise to physical and psychological afflictions. A 1791 publication chronicled the sufferings of Blanchet, a thirty- two- year- old parish priest in French Guiana, and was intended to be distributed free of charge to the secular and regular clergy of both sexes. In The Harmful Effects of the Virtue of Chastity in Priests, Blanchet explained that he had been seized by “excessive pain,” “delirium,” and convulsive and violent movements, “similar to the most violent attacks of epilepsy.” He had feared that his curious bodily sensations and afflictions were “conjuring tricks of the devil” or possibly linked to his diet. He fasted, becoming emaciated, but his suffering did not abate. The publication identified the retention of excessive seminal fluid and celibacy more generally as the underlying cause of Blanchet’s and so many other clerics’ tormenting afflictions. With- out recourse to marriage, Blanchet bemoaned, “I live in opposition between the duty of the religion and that of nature: threatened of disease, if I refused the latter; of shame and ignominy . . . if I gave up the former.”28 According to the anti- celibacy literature of the period, celibacy produced disease in the human body as well as in the body politic. Numerous works portrayed clerical celibacy as a kind of parasit- ism, disease, and social death. Some critics described celibacy as a “slow and cruel death” that “destroys everything in a man.”29 One anti-celibacy pamphlet declared, “Celibacy is a state of death; it attacks—it stops generations in their tracks and plunges them into eternal oblivion. The existence of the celibate is dumb, vicious, isolated, and precarious: it is only a half- existence; the celibate is dead before ceasing to live.”30 Critics denounced celibacy for iso- lating, denaturing, and dehumanizing priests. Celibate priests, they priests into citizens 73 argued, were not only a separate caste and inherently foreign but also removed from nature and the human condition. “A clergyman is, in effect, outside of nature [hors de la nature], outside of society, outside of the human condition. . . . [Celibate clerics] abdicate their humanity by a solemn vow,” an anonymous pamphleteer observed in 1790.31 The Legalization of Clerical Marriage The notion that marriage could restore priests’ ties to nature, the nation, and humanity eventually won over the majority of revolutionary political leaders. But, despite intensifying agitation for clerical marriage during the year 1790, legislators remained preoccupied with other religious reforms, namely the extensive package of reforms to the clergy known as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Its provisions were debated in the spring of 1790 and were adopted in July. The legislation completely reorganized the structure of the Catholic Church in France and transformed the relationship between church and state. Clerics became civil servants, salaried by the state, and would remain so until 1905.32 Some revolutionaries believed that ecclesiastical reform must go beyond the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Two days after the proposal for the Civil Constitution came before the National Constituent Assembly on May 29, Maximilien Robespierre, then an up- and- coming deputy from Arras, proclaimed that it was not enough for priests to assume the roles of civil servants. He insisted that priests also needed to assume the roles of husbands and fathers. But, at the very moment when he broached the subject in the legislature, loud murmurs arose, and the president of the Assembly cut Robespierre off, closing discussion on the issue before any sub- stantive debate could take place.33 Following this aborted attempt, Robespierre received petitions from ecclesiastics, including future deputy to the National Convention Joseph Le Bon, imploring him to speak out again in favor of the marriage of priests.34 Like Robespierre, Gabriel- Honoré de Riqueti, the comte de Mirabeau, was under pressure from disaffected celibate ecclesiastics to agitate for the abolition of clerical celibacy. From the 74 unnatural frenchmen outbreak of the Revolution, Mirabeau received a steady stream of anti- celibacy petitions from clerics whose invocations of history, scripture, natural rights, and personal experience shaped the revolutionary discourse on priestly celibacy and marriage. One parish priest writing to Mirabeau discussed his struggles with sexual desires and temptation. He lamented, “I would have been a good spouse and a good father.” He also called for the abolition of the “immoral institution of ecclesiastical celibacy,” a reform that would “make the clergy more exemplary and more useful.” Other petitioning priests similarly told Mirabeau that their lives would be more meaningful and useful as husbands and fathers. One petitioner declared that “marriage, which would be useful to all priests, seems to me almost necessary for parish priests,” who lived with servants and were exposed to “perpetual temptations” that were only intensified by hearing about parishioners’ sexual desires and sins in the confessional. Through marriage, priests would become better citizens, better pastors, and no longer a source of scandal and disgrace for the church. Another petitioning cleric noted that the confiscation of church properties should alleviate fears of married priests’ giving the church’s wealth to their children. Another observed that the Revolution had created a nation in which men were free and without distinction. Accordingly, all people should have the same liberty to marry. Without this liberty, celibate clerics remained, in the words of a petitioning Franciscan monk, “citizens and foreigners at the same time.” A Benedictine monk complained to Mirabeau that entry into the holy orders stripped clerics of “the sacred title of citizen.”35 Mirabeau prepared a lengthy, polished, and impassioned defense of clerical marriage and awaited the proper moment to deliver it. Although Mirabeau proceeded cautiously, he believed that the time for clerical marriage had come; the National Assembly had already nationalized church properties and abolished monastic vows. Through marriage, priests could become “members of the social body” and “true citizens” to whom Mirabeau could then say, “It’s not that we have alienated this wealth from you; it is for you. You are a citizen. You have a part in the fortune publique. Your children, your priests into citizens 75 posterity will enjoy some of it.” Mirabeau also viewed the abolition of monastic vows as “a prelude to the liberation of [clerics from] the vow of celibacy.” Arguing that marriage tied individuals to the patrie, Mirabeau maintained that as long as priests remained celibate, they remained “slaves of the Church,” isolated from civil society. Mirabeau insisted that married parish priests better served their parishioners, God, and the nation “not only as pères de famille but as pères de la patrie.” Mirabeau asked, “Isn’t a père de famille more respected . . . than an isolated priest who has no civil ties?” Mirabeau considered the marriage of priests essential to the revolutionary project of regeneration, the remaking of the French people into a nation of new citizens who would enhance “morals, public prosperity, and the force of the French empire.” The great orator, however, never delivered his speech. Elected president of the National Assembly on January 30, 1791, Mirabeau died shortly thereafter, on April 2, before having the opportunity to speak out publicly on the issue.36 For the next several months, the issue of priestly marriage as well as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy continued to generate controversy. The debates and conflicts over these two issues were closely intertwined. Proponents of the reforms saw both measures as means of integrating priests more fully into the nation and argued that these reforms constituted a return to the simplicity of the early Christian church. Nonetheless, the Civil Constitution and the marriage of priests were extremely divisive, particularly following the Constituent Assembly’s decree of November 27, 1790, which required priests to take an oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitu- tion. Oath- taking ceremonies began in January, and almost half of priests refused to take the oath, becoming refractory or nonjuring clergy. In March 1791 Pope Pius VI formally condemned portions of the Civil Constitution as heretical, sacrilegious, and schismatic. The pope was also concerned about the risk of the Civil Consti- tution paving the way for clerical marriage. When he reiterated his condemnation of the oath in his papal bull of April 13, he insisted that clerics reject the Civil Constitution and uphold the “bond of spiritual marriage which unites you to your churches and which only death or Our Apostolic authority can dissolve.”37 76 unnatural frenchmen Supporters of celibacy insisted that the celibate priest already possessed a spouse—the church—and a greater spiritual family composed of the spiritual kin of his holy order, his parish, and the kingdom of heaven. Martin- François Thiébault, a parish priest and revolutionary deputy, insisted that he could not be compelled to break his personal commitment to his “spouse,” the church: “My church is for me a spouse whom I love, with whom I promised to live and die.”38 An anonymous publication entitled The True Mar- riage of Priests reaffirmed the importance of this “true marriage,” a nuptial union modeled upon Jesus Christ’s “marriage” to the church.39 Another anonymous author argued that priestly marriage constituted spiritual adultery against a priest’s true divine spouse, the church. Consequently, he insisted that any cleric who engaged in sexual activity, even within marriage, should be deposed and condemned for adultery.40 Jean- Baptiste Gratien, the constitutional bishop of the Seine-Inférieure, suggested that married priests abandoned their true children: their parishioners.41 A number of apologetic works published during the Revolution insisted that a priest’s spiritual family and spiritual fertility in the world to come was paramount. Through detachment from the world and the pleasures of the flesh, priests could imitate life in the world to come. The prolific writer Robert- Martin Lesuire’s defense of celibacy, The Marriage of Priests Refuted, or Celibacy Avenged, stressed that the “celestial state” and “sublime virtue” of celibacy ensured priests’ separateness from the world and proximity to God, elevat- ing them above humanity and advancing the work of salvation.42 Supporters of celibacy argued that suppressing celibacy imperiled the very sanctity of the priesthood and the salvation of all. Al- though Catholic proponents of clerical celibacy appropriated the political terms of their opponents, their primary concerns were the spiritual implications of clerical marriage on the priesthood, parishioners, and the Catholic Church as a whole. While clerical marriage was a troubling possibility for some, others were determined to make it a reality. The language of individual liberty and natural right was ubiquitous in the campaign for clerical marriage. Critics of celibacy argued that denying priests the priests into citizens 77 freedom to marry violated the revolutionary principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. A parish priest from Bordeaux argued that the decrees of the National Assembly and the Revolution’s commitment to the inalienable rights of man effectively made the abolition of celibacy a fait accompli and a relic of the Old Regime. In the name of the droits de l’homme, he insisted, “lay people can marry, therefore priests can marry as well.”43 Cournand questioned why the clergy should be deprived of a natural right shared by other citizens if all men were free and equal in their rights as citizens.44 During the contentious debates in the National Assembly on monastic vows, the deputy Dominique- Joseph Garat lamented, “in a moment of passing fervor, a young adolescent takes an oath from then on to know neither his father nor family [and] to never be a spouse, never a citizen.” François- Pierre Blin, a deputy from Nantes, expressed his hope that priests “would become citizens like others” through fulfilling “the duties of spouse and son, of respectable pères de famille, which could add the weight of example to that of their teachings.”45 Proponents of priestly marriage argued that France would reap great benefits from priests’ becoming spouses and fathers. The political economist and revolutionary Charles marquis de Casaux argued that celibate priests were “merely inhabitants of France,” but, as spouses, they would “become citizens” and would perfect “the art of being useful to the patrie” by raising and educating virtuous children. Each priest’s family would become “a living and public school of conjugal virtues” as well as civic, patriotic, and pastoral virtues.46 An anonymous anti-celibacy pamphlet insisted that priests should be allowed to serve their country through “the most indispensible of contributions, that of giving citizens to the patrie.”47 The directory of the department of Maine-et- Loire insisted that marriage would allow thousands of individuals “who only belong to society by weak links [to] be incorporated [into society] in a very advantageous way.” The nation would benefit from transforming celibate priests, who were “lazy, useless, and possibly harmful to society,” into useful citizens through marriage and fatherhood.48 78 unnatural frenchmen Revolutionary journals and newspapers clamored for the abolition of clerical celibacy. The Feuille villageoise, a widely circulating weekly publication that aimed to enlighten the rural population about the principles of the Revolution, contained the most numerous appeals. From 1790 to 1793, more than a dozen of its issues took up the question of the marriage of priests. One issue printed a speech delivered by a parish priest requesting permission from his parishioners to marry and “to live as a good père de famille, practicing the virtues that [he] preach[ed].”49 Other national and provincial newspapers also regularly featured articles and letters to the editor concerning the debates on clerical celibacy and marriage. These publications included the Feuille de correspondance, Moniteur universel, Camille Desmoulins’s Révolutions de France et de Brabant, Brissot’s Le patriote françois, Louis- Marie Prudhomme’s Révolutions de Paris, Affiches d’Angers, Courier de Provence, Courrier de Lyon, and La vedette, founded by Claude- Ignace Dormoy, a constitutional priest from Besançon who married during the Revolution. Other priests- cum- journalists and printers, including the abbé Jean- Charles Jumel in Tulle and Euloge Schneider in Strasbourg, not only agitated for clerical marriage in print and in their local Jacobin clubs but also married years later. In 1791 Schneider, a former Franciscan monk and future leader of the Terror in Alsace, demanded rights for priests to marry and declared, “Priests are men and citizens, and by consequence, they must enjoy the rights of man and of citizen.”50 The inaction of the National Assembly frustrated champions of clerical marriage. The Committee of Petitions and the Committee of Legislation received a steady stream of petitions demanding clerical marriage. Moreover, a great deal of agitation for the marriage of priests took place at various meetings of the Société des amis de la Constitution, also known as the network of Jacobin clubs. In the summer of 1791, Révolutions de Paris claimed, “For the past eighteen months, the patriotic clubs in every region have rung out with complaints raised against the celibacy of priests,” which the journal identified as a “monstrosity in civil society.”51 Shortly thereafter, revolutionary legislators established the legal basis for the marriage of priests. Adopted on September 3, the Constitution priests into citizens 79 of 1791 removed entry into the holy orders as an impediment to marriage and refused to recognize any religious vow or engagement that was contrary to “natural rights.” Following the constitutional validation of the civil marriage of clerics, legislators reconsidered French policy on the salaries and pensions of married ecclesiastics. Prior to the promulgation of the Constitution of 1791, the National Assembly had decreed, without any debate, that canonesses who married would be deprived of their salaries.52 On September 10, a week after adopting the Constitution of 1791, the Assembly revisited and reopened debate on this issue. Based on the reasoning that depriving married canonesses of their salaries would infringe upon their liberty to marry and therefore would violate the principles articulated in the constitution, the National Assembly decreed that married canonesses could keep their pensions.53 The Legislative Assembly also pledged shortly thereafter, on October 19, 1791, to maintain the pensions of all ecclesiastical benefice- holders who married. During the debate on this issue, the deputy Joseph Delaunay observed that in the absence of this measure ecclesiastics would be deterred from “fulfilling the wish [voeu] of nature and humanity by the fear of being deprived of their pensions.” The deputy and the constitutional bishop of Ille-et- Vilaine Claude Le Coz objected to Delaunay’s characteriza- tion of celibacy as contrary to nature and warned that this motion would inflame counter- revolutionary sentiments.54 A handful of bold priests had refused to wait for the government to authorize the marriage of priests and to pledge to maintain their pensions. After Remi Vinchon, a parish priest in the village of Herbisse, drew up a private marriage contract in May 1790, the mayor praised Vinchon and ordered that the contract be published and circulated. The couple explained that since the National Assembly had not yet established the manner in which clergymen may lay claim to the “inalienable right” of marriage, they would await more precise instructions. Nonetheless, they had clearly not waited to consummate their union, since they had a child less than four months later.55 Antoine Franchet, a parish priest from the Loire, also “hastened to take advantage of the successes 80 unnatural frenchmen assured by the Revolution” by resolving to marry his housekeeper, Antoinette Dufai, prior to the authorization of the marriage of priests. In his own account of his struggles against concupiscence, Franchet explained that he had frequently changed housekeepers and treated them harshly in order to avoid committing the sin of fornication. For this reason, Franchet’s marriage proposal took Dufai completely by surprise. In January 1791 the couple formed a “natural and sacramental secret contract” or a “contract of precau- tion,” which, in Franchet’s eyes, made what would otherwise be a sinful cohabitation into a legitimate matrimonial union. Although the legal status of the contact is unclear, Franchet’s reference to his performing “the marital act” with Dufai in May 1791 is less ambiguous—almost nine months later, in January 1792, their first son was born.56 Following these earliest clerical marriages as well as the marriage of the abbé Cournand, Révolutions de Paris expressed hope that these “courageous examples [would be] imitated by all priests who sincerely want to be useful to their patrie, to [regenerate] moeurs, and to become good citizens.” Other revolutionary publications echoed the sentiment.57 Indeed, rising numbers of priests married and encouraged their confrères to do the same, but far fewer nuns embraced their newly found liberty to leave their convent and marry. Generally, nuns left their convents with much greater reluctance than monks left their monasteries. Nuns were also less active in the campaign against clerical celibacy and generally drew less ire from detractors of celibacy than male ecclesiastics. Moreover, nuns married far less frequently during the Revolution than male ecclesiastics. Over the course of the Revolution, an estimated six thousand clergymen married, but only around seven hundred nuns, roughly 1 to 2 percent. Moreover, few nuns married prior to 1793. The wife of the radical journalist Jacques René Hébert was among the small number of nuns who married before the Terror. Approximately 20 percent of married nuns found their spouses among the ranks of the clergy, whereas roughly only 2 percent of priests and 4 percent of monks married former nuns. Some scholars have attributed these low rates of marriage among nuns to their social isolation.58 A revolutionary priests into citizens 81 pamphlet expressed Parisian nuns’ concerns about finding men to marry: “We need husbands—that’s clear, but how will we find them and in what class?”59 But the low rate of marriage among nuns was less a product of their inability to find husbands than a choice to remain unmarried. The complex possibilities and constraints that secularization and marriage presented were considerably different for religious men and women, and consequently, nuns left the cloister and the celibate state with greater resistance than male clerics. Furthermore, clergymen were both agents and targets of the campaign against celibacy to a much greater extent than nuns. Women’s exclusion from full participation in the polity largely explains why clergymen played greater public, political roles in revolutionary France than nuns. Given the perceived greater utility and social influence of parish priests, revolutionaries considered parish priests more significant than former monks and nuns as potentially powerful instruments of, or obstacles to, revolutionary political change. From Liberties and Rights to Duties Although the revolutionary legislature granted priests the liberty to marry, the vast majority of priests chose celibacy over marriage. These celibate priests posed a problem for revolutionaries who believed that marriage was not only a natural right but also a civic obligation. Revolutionary political thought identified marriage and fatherhood as indispensable to the process of becoming a citizen. Revolutionary ideas about the relationship between citizenship, family, and the patrie gave rise to the notion that priests needed to become husbands and fathers in order to be fully integrated into the nation as useful, virtuous citizens. By eventually conflating natural rights and civic obligations, the emphasis of the campaign against clerical celibacy shifted from priests’ right to marry to their civic duty and patriotic obligation to marry. Initially, the revolutionary anti- celibacy discourse focused on securing the freedom to “follow one’s heart,” whether that entailed marrying or remaining celibate. Some priests who expressed their personal “repugnance for marriage” and “strong disposition for 82 unnatural frenchmen celibacy” nonetheless insisted that priests should have the liberty to choose between celibacy and marriage.60 As Mirabeau put it, “The Church has forced priests into celibacy; we do not propose to force them to marriage, but to permit them to marry.” Mirabeau insisted that priests were entitled to the same rights as all citizens, and he identified marriage among the rights that “indistinctively belong to all classes of citizens.”61 Like Mirabeau, other advocates of clerical marriage drew heavily on the old regime discourse, developed by jurists and philosophes, of marriage as a civil contract governed by natural right.62 An anonymous publication on priestly marriage argued that the freedom to marry was a natural right that “no authority on earth has the right to destroy.” Linking the right of marriage with reproduction and life itself, the publication claimed, “There is no less injustice in prohibiting [a man] from reproducing than refusing him permission to feed himself.”63 In 1791 the Jansenist patriot priest and deputy Jacques Jallet argued that the law of nature, superior to any human authority, bestowed each man with the right to become a père de famille. And, no power on earth could make him renounce this right.64 The issue of clerical marriage went beyond guaranteeing priests’ rights and liberties, particularly during the period following the legalization of clerical marriage. Some revolutionary critics of celibacy, such as the constitutional bishop Robert- Thomas Lindet, maintained that priests should have the liberty to choose whether to remain celibate or marry, at the same time as they insisted that it was priests’ duty to marry. Lindet supported the French people’s selecting their own pastors whether celibate priests, married priests, or even married non-ordained men. He trusted that electoral assemblies would favor married men and recognize that “a virtuous père de famille, who governs his home well, could also govern the Church well.” The bishop maintained, “The domestic virtues of a père de famille [are] more useful than the sterile theological knowledge that dries out [priests’] souls . . . and closes [their] hearts to the sweetest sentiments that nature inspires.” By inspiring love of the patrie, nature, and humanity, marriage and fatherhood would make priests more virtuous, better servants of the public good. Lindet priests into citizens 83 insisted that priests must no longer violate the laws of nature: “It is time that priests return under the law that reigns over the human race and nature as a whole.” He called for all priests “to fulfill the duties of man, citizen, and père de famille.”65 Arguing that marriage was a natural right that a person must not relinquish, even willingly, revolutionary champions of clerical marriage increasingly emphasized the duty of priests to marry and to procreate. Many revolutionary thinkers stressed the importance of marriage as the foundation for republican politics and for citizenship. In 1791 the Encyclopédie méthodique’s commentary on “priestly despotism” declared that the marriage of priests would “force them to be citizens” and bind them to the patrie.66 An anonymous pamphlet insisted that marriage was imperative for a priest: “Natural law, divine law, morality, [and] the interest of society make it a duty for him.”67 Those who viewed marriage and fatherhood as political duties and social obligations disdainfully complained of celibate priests who refused to fulfil the duties of man and citizen. Revolutionaries associated men’s obligations toward their wives and children with citizens’ obligations to the patrie. Speaking on behalf of the Committee of Legislation in February 1792, the deputy Honoré Muraire described a citizen’s nuptial act as that “interesting moment, when recognizing that his duties toward society are not limited to personal devotion, [the citizen] engages in a contract to reproduce himself.”68 Nicolas de Bonneville, cofounder along with the abbé Fauchet of the Cercle social, explained the relationship between marriage and citizenship in revolutionary France in the following terms: “Marriage is a social bond that unites the citizen to the patrie and the patrie to the citizen.” Moreover, Bonne- ville identified marriage as a “duty, imposed by nature and by the free state.” He also described marriage as “the debt that the man of integrity [owes] to nature; it is the debt of the citizen to his patrie,” as well as to society, nature, and himself.69 Given the crucial importance of marriage to understandings of citizenship, many revolutionaries argued that the campaign against clerical celibacy had not gone far enough. In July 1792 Prudhomme’s Révolutions de Paris lamented, “We have not yet made enough reform in the 84 unnatural frenchmen sacerdotal caste. . . . We need more than only a small number of citizen- priests, husband- priests, and father- priests.”70 However, resistance to clerical marriage presented an obstacle to increasing the numbers of married priests. On February 5, 1792, deputy Goussin reported that the Committee of Petitions had sent to the Committee of Legislation a considerable number of petitions from priests and nuns complaining that religious and civic authorities would not grant them marriages.71 On February 18, Minister of the Interior Cahier de Gerville presented the Legis- lative Assembly with a report that detailed cases of parish priests having to publish their own banns and being expelled by parishioners who opposed their marriages. Cahier de Gerville lamented that revolutionary religious politics had placed the Assembly in the difficult and awkward position of mediating between parishioners and their parish priests. He recommended that the Assembly radically change the direction of its religious policies to extricate itself from this situation. Like-minded deputies called for the publication and distribution of the report, while others, such as the deputy Claude Basire denounced it for containing “several political heresies.”72 Political pressure to provide married clerics with financial security, legal rights, and privileges mounted during the following months. Jérôme Pétion, the mayor of Paris and a strong supporter of clerical marriage, pushed the legislature to clarify the status of married clerics in France. On behalf of a self-described “patriot priest” who wished to marry, Pétion petitioned the Committee of Legislation, asking the Assembly to respond to several of the priest’s questions: Would he publish his own banns? Could he continue to exercise his office and receive his salary as a married curé? If he left his cure, could he keep his full pension? On August 7, 1792, the Assembly provided a clear response to some of these lingering questions by decreeing, “All monks and nuns, pensioned former ecclesiastics, and religious ministers, salaried by the nation, who marry will continue to receive their pensions and salaries.” During the legislative debates on this issue, Jean-Baptiste Mailhe proposed that all married clerics would not only maintain their salaries but also receive a bonus of one hundred livres. “It is an priests into citizens 85 act of morality,” he proclaimed, “because the means to improve morals is to encourage marriages.” The deputy Dumolard, along with local administrators and concerned clerics, pushed the Assem- bly to make inheritance and succession rights available to former monks and nuns—whose profession of solemn vows had stripped them of all property, rights, and titles through a “civil death”—so that they may provide their children with an inheritance.73 With the legal and financial status of married priests protected, many priests proudly announced their marriage or intentions to marry before the Assembly, which often designated them with honorable mention in its meeting minutes.74 Nonetheless, most legislators were less concerned with providing incentives for clerical marriage than with removing obstacles to the marriage of priests. Parish priests kept the official registers of births, marriages, and deaths, and they could refuse marriage of laymen and fellow clerics. Frustrated ecclesiastics who had been denied the right to marry advocated that government officials exercise complete control over marital matters by maintaining and recording civil records, the état civil. The Feuille villageoise published a letter, dated September 8, 1792, from a parish priest who wrote, “My parishioners have notified me that they want a married parish priest and not a celibate one.” He announced that he had already chosen a spouse and was “impatiently await[ing] the law concerning the état civil of citizens in order to record our marriage.”75 On September 20, the day it disbanded, the Legislative Assembly made one of its most significant legislative moves by passing a package of reforms that transferred authority over the regulation and recording of the état civil from the church to secular authorities, effectively seculariz- ing marriage and abolishing canon law obstacles to marriage. The state alone determined what constituted impediments to marriage. Significantly, it also legalized divorce, permitted remarriage, and curtailed parental authority and arranged marriages.76 Although marriage had become strictly a secular affair in the eyes of French law, some priests, such as Pierre Dolivier, nonetheless wanted a religious marriage ceremony in addition to their civil marriage. A parish priest in the district of Etampes, Dolivier publicly 86 unnatural frenchmen declared his intentions to marry in October 1792. Railing against the “inexorable severity” and the “cruelest tyranny” of the obligation of clerical celibacy, he urged fellow clerics to abandon the “world of dissimulation,” in which they publicly preached austerity while privately living in debauchery and moral depravity. Dolivier associated celibacy with vice, and marriage and fatherhood with civic virtue. Expressing confidence that he would become “a good spouse, a good father, and a good citizen,” Dolivier added, “Such is the way to be a good parish priest!”77 Dolivier himself married, and he fathered a child, though not in that order. Despite being an unmarried cleric at the time, he recognized his son as his own and baptized him earlier that year in February. In November, Dolivier married the child’s mother, his domestic servant, in a ceremony over which fellow parish priest Pierre- François Lavau presided.78 Lavau used the occasion of Dolivier’s marriage to deliver an impassioned speech condemning clerical celibacy and praising clerical marriage. Lavau deemed Dolivier’s marriage “a truly Christian and civic action.” He proclaimed that marriage was “not only legal, but also sacred and obligatory for all.” Clerical celibacy, in contrast, was an abominable violation of divine and natural laws. Rooted in “greed, ambition, and fanaticism,” clerical celibacy “depopulates society, contradicts nature, invites debauchery, renders men isolated, and is advantageous only to the abhorrent politics of pontiffs who purposely separate [priests] from their fellow citizens.” Lavau also argued that celibacy preserved ecclesiastical wealth at the expense of severing priests’ ties to the family and nation. The celibacy of priests “[breaks] the ties that attach them to their family and to the state, in order to attach them only to the church, whose assets, by these means, remain in their entirety.” Lavau concluded, “The celibate clergy has been too long a foreign body [corps] in the state. . . . It is time that [celibate clergymen] become citizens.” Lavau adamantly defended clerical marriage as a means of enhancing the salutary influence of the parish priest by promoting good moeurs and religious morality. He lamented that many French men and women opposed the much- needed reform and subjected married priests and their supporters to “stupid taunts, cold ridicule, and fanatical pamphlets.”79 priests into citizens 87 The marriage of clergymen was indeed shocking and scandalous to many French men and women. Like their opponents, defenders of celibacy used the language of natural right, and they did so with particular vigor after the legalization of clerical marriage. Numer- ous defenses of celibacy argued that denying individuals the liberty to enter the holy orders and to remain celibate egregiously violated priests’ civil and natural rights. Supporters of celibacy forcefully argued that the freedom not to marry was as essential as the freedom to marry. They stressed that priests who had freely, voluntarily entered the priesthood had the right and freedom to uphold its requirement of celibacy. These writers defined clerical celibacy as not only an act of free will but also a contractual engagement, like marriage itself. The constitutional bishop Gratien defended the rights of celibate priests and insisted, “Every individual is [his own] master to make a contract or not [and] to embrace a state or not.”80 Jean-Marie- Félix Mayet, a parish priest and deputy from Lyon, defended the rights of clerics to uphold their religious vows, which he defined as civil contracts, and to pursue happiness by leading celibate lives without infringing upon the rights of others.81 The bishop of Amiens, Louis Charles Machault, argued in one of his pastoral instructions that suppressing celibacy violated both divine and natural law.82 Many ecclesiastics denounced those who violated their vows of celibacy, and they called for faithful Catholics to take a stand against the marriage of priests. The constitutional bishop of Ver- sailles, Augustin- Jean-Charles Clément, exhorted fellow bishops not to tolerate the marriage of priests. Clément published a tract arguing that misguided public opinion, namely the belief in the validity of clerical marriage, should not dictate religious principles and practices.83 A few constitutional bishops published pastoral letters against the marriage of priests, and the National Convention denounced their actions.84 The Journal ecclésiastique and Le nouveau disciple de Luther, authored by the Jansenist priest Pierre Brugière, denounced the marriage of Jean- François Aubert, the vicaire of Sainte- Marguerite in Paris, by declaring his marriage null and void as well as an act of apostasy. Brugière expressed his outrage over 88 unnatural frenchmen Aubert performing pastoral functions “while publicly living with a woman of whom he is merely the vile seducer and not the legitimate spouse.” According to Brugière, the couple’s cohabitation and “public concubinage” constituted a “public scandal,” “a hateful abomination,” and “the most depraved and scandalous conduct.”85 In the midst of these protests, Aubert presided over the marriage of Lindet, who was the constitutional bishop of the Eure and the first of the eleven bishops who married during the Revolution. Aubert was then elected curé of Saint-Augustin, and the bishop of Paris, Jean-Baptiste- Joseph Gobel, accepted Aubert’s nomination in May 1793. In response, Brugière and three other Parisian parish priests published an appeal for French bishops to oppose the marriage of priests. As a result of their opposition to clerical marriage, all four priests were imprisoned (though later released).86 Invoking the principles of religious toleration and freedom, apologists of clerical celibacy insisted that the Catholic Church should be permitted to set requirements for its own clergy. Bru- gière and his allies argued that the state should not overstep its boundaries by forcing the Catholic Church to accept married men as priests, just as it should not force Jews to accept a Muslim as a rabbi or Protestants to accept a Roman Catholic priest as a pastor. The Parisian curés declared, “No, the government will never forget the principles of liberty and justice to the point of imposing such a tyrannical yoke on us.”87 Claude Fauchet, the constitutional bishop of the Calvados in Normandy, similarly argued in his Journal des amis that while priests may exercise their freedom to marry, the Catholic Church may exercise its freedom to regulate its internal discipline by prohibiting married men from performing sacerdotal functions.88 Others argued that the revolutionary legislature should not deny the freedom and rights of the Catholic Church to enforce its rule of celibacy and of clerics to follow it.89 For some, clerical marriage represented an unconscionable assault on religious liberty; for others, it was an essential freedom as well as a political imperative. For all, the stakes of the debates of clerical marriage rose over the course of the year 1793. Intensify- ing political instability and insurrection reignited concerns about priests into citizens 89 depopulation, leading revolutionaries to pressure priests to marry and to raise children, future citizen- soldiers. The revolutionary priest Pierre- Henri Rousseville asserted that if fifty thousand priests married, forming fifty thousand families and two hundred thousand children, these children would serve as “soldiers against [the republic’s] enemies from outside and philosophes against the fanatics from within.”90 Revolutionaries were fighting wars on two fronts, against France’s internal and external enemies, and many identified priests as enemies of the Revolution. Revolutionaries held clergymen responsible for the escalating counter- revolutionary agitation in the provinces, particularly in the Vendée, where the attempt to draft new troops through the forced conscription (levée) of three hundred thousand men caused a significant counter- revolutionary uprising beginning in March 1793. The National Convention sanctioned the use of extreme violence and brutality to put down the Vendéan rebellion and ordered the death of all priests involved in the uprising. Rev- olutionaries took increasingly punitive measures against refractory priests whom they deemed enemies of the Revolution. In August the Convention ordered all nonjuring priests or refractory priests to be deported to French Guiana. Some revolutionaries came to view the entire clergy as a political threat, which could only be neutralized through marriage. Jacobins in the National Convention debated and elaborated a series of measures designed to protect the liberty and well- being of married priests who were threatened by the backlash of angry parishioners. Hostility and resistance to the marriage of priests occasionally took violent and explosive forms. Shortly after announcing his intentions to marry, François Lacombe, a young Bene- dictine parish priest, and his fiancée were subjected to a charivari, a raucous public shaming ritual intended to humiliate anyone who violated community standards for proper sexual or marital behavior. This charivari reached the proportions of a popular riot in Quingey. The couple sought legal protection and fled to Besançon, and armed forces, the National Guard, and a cavalry brigade transported them back to Quingey.91 Elsewhere, parishioners boycotted 90 unnatural frenchmen the services and sacraments administered by married priests, forced these priests out of their parishes, and threatened or insulted them and their wives. When a parish priest received death threats after announcing his intentions to marry and subsequently resigned, outraged administrations of the department of Landes wrote to representatives of the National Convention declaring clerical celibacy a crime of lèse- humanité.92 The Convention took further measures against priestly celibacy and suppressed opposition to clerical marriage. On July 19, 1793, it issued a decree guaranteeing the pay of married priests turned out by their parishioners. Deputies also debated depriving bishops who opposed priestly marriage of their pay, and some called for deposing these bishops and putting them behind bars for a year. The Convention decreed that bishops who directly or indirectly presented any obstacle to the marriage of priests would be deported.93 A number of bishops needed no prodding to support the marriage of priests. In June 1793 Pierre Pontard, the constitutional bishop of the Dordogne, denounced celibate priests as “monsters” for ignoring their obligations to nature and to the nation. Pontard wanted the ranks of the clergy filled with men who performed their patriotic obligations of marriage, and he even ordained married men as priests.94 In August 1793, Pierre- Anastase Torné, bishop of the Cher, gave the nuptial blessing at the wedding of a priest and former nun, where he delivered a speech attacking celibacy as a violation of natural law.95 Later that month at another wedding of a priest who served as a commander in the National Guard, Torné called for priests to pay their debt to the patrie by marrying and having children who will defend the republic.96 Many other revolutionaries were also committed to combating celibacy and supporting married priests by protecting them from reprisals and providing them with forms of legal immunity, in- demnities, and financial incentives. Appeals for ensuring priests’ liberty to marry also more radically and crucially called for the suppression of the celibate clergy altogether and their exclusion from political, civic, and pastoral life. In response to a complaint that the bishop of the Haute-Saône deprived a priest of his salary priests into citizens 91 on account of his marriage, deputy Delacroix proclaimed, “One cannot be a good citizen without being married.” Accordingly, the National Convention sent to the Committee of Legislation a proposal to “make all celibates ineligible for the salaried functions of religious practice.”97 Days later, on August 11, deputy Robert Gaston reiterated the call for excluding unmarried priests from public service. He claimed, “In living alone, [the celibate priest] can live attached to the ci- devant order of the clergy, but [the married priest], at the side of his companion [and] surrounded by his children, can think only of serving the patrie.”98 Many revolutionaries associated political participation and active citizenship with the patriotic duties of marriage and fatherhood. Revolutionaries’ calls for priests to fulfill these duties became ever more insistent as the revolution radicalized. During the Revolution, marriage was central to the broader political project of constructing a new nation, a new people, and individual citizens. Revolutionaries sought to regenerate priests and tie them to the nation through the bonds of marriage and family. They also increasingly viewed celibate priests as outsiders and even as threats to the new social, political, and moral order. Celi- bate priests were one of the first categories of individuals deemed unable to be integrated into the modern French nation, but they would not be the last. FOUR A ocial Crime  Clerical Celibacy from the Terror to Napoleon

A Social Crime

In the fall of 1793, the Committee of Public Safety sent Marc- Antoine Jullien to several Atlantic ports to “enlighten the people” and root out enemies of the nation.1 Identifying celibate priests as enemies and “dangerous and suspect men,” Jullien called for the criminalization of celibacy and the arrest of a bishop who had spoken out against the marriage of priests. Furthermore, Jullien planned an elaborate revolutionary festival in Rochefort to foster patriotism, social cohesion, and republican virtue by promoting marriage, since he viewed marriage and the family as central to the politics of regeneration. He instructed the popular society of Rochefort to name a commission to orchestrate a festival featuring a cortege of married couples preceded by banners with the inscrip- tion “Celibacy is a social crime. To be a good citizen, one must be a good son, a good husband, and a good father.”2 With the radicalization of the Revolution and the threat of counter- revolution, many of Jullien’s fellow radical revolutionaries became intolerant of celibate clerics. They identified these priests as politically suspicious figures. During this period of increasingly antagonistic relations between the Revolution and the church, Montagnards relied on marriage to distinguish patriot- priests from politically suspect or enemy priests. Radical revolutionaries combated the crime of celibacy and promoted marriage by threatening unmarried priests with deportation, arrest, imprisonment, and even death. Clerical marriages peaked during Year II of the Revolutionary Calendar (September 22, 1793–September 21, 1794).3 Five thousand a social crime 93 priests—roughly three- fourths of priests who married during the Revolution—wed during this year alone. Throughout the years following the end of the Terror, as revolutionaries attempted to reestablish political and social order, clerical marriage remained a persistent issue, one that continued to shape the mutually constitutive meanings of virtuous citizenship, republicanism, and marriage. The marriage of priests in revolutionary France was a product of deep, long-standing tensions and struggles over the relationship of politics, religion, and the gender and sexual order. Nonetheless, historians have generally understood it solely as an instrument of the anticlerical and iconoclastic de-Christianization campaign of Year II. They have also viewed the overwhelming majority of priests’ abdications and marriages as the product of coercion; however, persecution from de- Christianizers was rarely the sole determining factor for a priest’s marriage.4 Priests married for diverse reasons, ones shaped by complex practical and personal considerations. Deter- mining whether a particular priest chose to marry on account of fear, political pressures, social considerations, his desire for a wife, or his dedication to the principles of the Revolution often proves to be a difficult, if not impossible task for a historian, particularly when considering the period of the Terror. While priests who married during the early Revolution rarely expressed ambivalence or doubt about abandoning celibacy and typically did so enthusi- astically, attitudes toward celibacy and marriage varied drastically among those clerics who married during the Terror. Some advocated extirpating celibacy and Catholicism by any means necessary, while others expressed an aversion toward marriage, even their own. Most constitutional and post-constitutional priests’ attitudes toward marriage were more complex or ambivalent than the extremes of unadulterated enthusiasm or revulsion. However, priests’ attitudes toward marriage were entirely irrelevant to some republican officials who believed that marriage transformed all priests into good republican citizens, even those whose forced marriage was repugnant to them. These revolutionaries believed that these coerced marriages were in fact justified, and not travesties, precisely because it was a question of making all men do their civic duty. 94 unnatural frenchmen The question of celibacy reflected a fundamental concern about citizenship and civic duty, and the discourses surrounding the politics of clerical marriage were indicative of the centrality of marriage and fatherhood to revolutionary politics and to understandings of virtuous citizenship, manhood, and republicanism. The notion of the incompatibility of celibacy with masculine, republican virtue was a driving force behind the campaign against clerical celibacy during the Revolution. The ascendancy of a republican ideology that defined clerical celibacy and citizenship in mutually exclusive terms profoundly shaped the meanings of celibacy and marriage in the lives of constitutional priests and in French political culture. This notion met with formidable resistance from revolutionaries as well as counter- revolutionaries, laymen as well as clergymen, including patriotic priests who believed that celibacy rather than marriage was the ultimate expression of selfless republican virtue. But it was the equation of marriage with republicanism that profoundly shaped revolutionary religious politics as well as understandings of manhood and the gendered politics of citizenship during the Terror and beyond. Clerical Marriage in Year II: Proving Patriotism and the Politics of Exclusion The religious and political struggles over the issues of clerical celibacy and marriage led radical revolutionaries to associate marriage with republican patriotism and clerical celibacy with the counter- revolution. Alarmed by the threat of counter- revolution, both real and imagined, radical revolutionaries escalated their campaign against the church, the clergy, and clerical celibacy during Year II. The key role that Catholic clergy played in the ongoing rebellion in the Vendée strengthened the association between Ca- tholicism and counter- revolution in the minds of many radical revolutionaries. By equating Catholicism with counter- revolution, Montagnards branded not only the refractory clergy but also many constitutional priests as religious fanatics and, above all, counter-revolutionaries. As radical Jacobins came to scrutinize and suspect both refractory clerics and constitutional priests of a social crime 95 counter- revolutionary sympathies, the ecclesiastical oath no longer served as sufficient proof of a priest’s loyalty to the republic. Viewing marriage as the most authentic and incontrovertible proof of a priest’s patriotism, radical revolutionaries came to rely on the act of marriage rather than the ecclesiastical oath as a litmus test for distinguishing the “patriot priest” from the politically suspect priest. Revolutionary legislators sought to protect married priests, whom they considered inherently patriotic, from enemies of the patrie who opposed the progress of the Revolution and, along with it, the marriage of priests. In September 1793 the Convention decreed that any priest either driven out by his parishioners or dismissed by his superior on account of his marriage could relocate and preserve his salary, which would be paid at the expense of the municipality where he had been harassed.5 The same month, Pierre Pontard, the constitutional bishop of the Dordogne, urged the Convention to place the marriage of priests “under the special safeguard of the nation.” Praising Bishop Pontard’s “sublime example” of marrying a woman “poor in fortune, but rich in the virtues of the class of sans- culottes,” deputy Jean Julien, a Protes- tant minister, urged the Convention to increase the pension of every bishop who married by two thousand livres.6 The deputies of the Convention passed the motion but believed that financial incentives were not enough. They redoubled their efforts to protect priests from reprisals. They were particularly troubled by the prospect of counter- revolutionaries’ accusing married priests of incivisme, or lack of patriotism, thus leading to the arrest or deportation of these patriot priests. In November, the deputy François- Siméon Bézard reported to the Convention that some French men and women in rural communes had denounced priests precisely on account of their marriage. He expressed concerns about these denunciations of married patriot priests, particularly in areas of France where the counter- revolution was strong. On behalf of the Commit- tee of Legislation, Bézard proposed exempting all married priests from imprisonment and from deportation. On November 19, the Convention decreed that once a priest married or established his 96 unnatural frenchmen intentions to marry by publishing his banns, he could no longer be deported or imprisoned. Married refractory priests could remain free in France with exceptions granted in cases of incivisme.7 Some revolutionaries suggested that a married priest, even a refractory priest, was inherently patriotic, unless proven otherwise. The idea that marriage represented the most authentic and incontrovertible proof of a priest’s patriotism was central to the republican discourse on clerical marriage. As Bézard put it, “A priest cannot give a stronger guarantee of his loyalty to the patrie . . . than by marrying.” Bézard deemed married priests “de- fanaticized,” “assimi- lated” citizens who were “essentially tied to the Revolution.” The only “citizen-priests” were “père de famille–priests.”8 Rhetoric similar to Bézard’s pervaded revolutionary pamphlets, journals, legislative debates, and petitions that treated the subject of clerical marriage. Popular societies most forcefully advanced this argument. Members of the Jacobin club of Périgueux asserted, “For a real patriot, the only good priest is the one who binds himself to the public good by the sweet ties of marriage and of fatherhood.”9 Married priests and bishops concurred. A married priest from Meaux similarly declared that marriage and fatherhood were “the least equivocal proofs of patriotism and republicanism.”10 Torné, the married constitutional bishop of Cher, similarly proclaimed, “One is truly a citizen only as much as one is a husband. . . . The state of père de famille above all completes the guarantee of his civisme.”11 The corollary to this Jacobin notion that marriage and paternity incontrovertibly proved a priest’s civic virtue and patriotism was that a priest’s celibacy made him politically suspect or even a traitor. Gabriel Vaugeois, a married vicar, observed, “Priests find fault with marriage only because they want to separate themselves entirely from the whole of humanity, and form, in society, a society apart. . . . There is only one means for a ci- devant priest, who has elsewhere given proof of his patriotism, to prove that his patriotism is sincere; it is to marry. It is marriage that constitutes the true citizen.” In language echoing Rousseau (and later taken up in Napoleon’s Civil Code), Vaugeois also claimed that to have a family is to be invested in and tied to the affairs of the great a social crime 97 family—the nation. Vaugeois therefore deemed a celibate priest, lacking a family, either a nonentity to his patrie or “a conspirator and a traitor.”12 A speech delivered before the Parisian section of Guillaume Tell and subsequently published in pamphlet form stressed celibacy’s incompatibility with patriotism: “A celibate is always selfish, and by consequence denatured. He cannot therefore be sensitive, generous, human, [and] compassionate; in a word, he cannot be a good citizen.”13 Celibate priests’ idleness and selfishness rendered them inherently suspect, unpatriotic, and dangerous. Condemning celibate priests and bishops for their selfishness and lack of patriotism, the constitutional bishop Pontard called for “the sacrifice of these justifiably suspect egotists.”14 Understood as a natural right, a lynchpin of the natural order, and a source of republican virtue, marriage took on new political importance during the Terror, especially for constitutional priests whose refusal to marry became seen as a marker of counter- revolutionary sentiment. Jacobin republicans eschewed the idea that celibate priests were sacrificing marriage and family to dedicate themselves fully and selflessly to the common good and to their fellow citizens. Celibacy constituted in their eyes a violation of the laws of nature as well as an evasion of men’s civic duty to marry and to become the head of a republican household. In justifying these positions, Jacobins drew upon competing political languages of classical republicanism and especially “natural republicanism.” As Dan Edelstein argues, the Jacobins’ political philosophy of “natural republicanism” was based on the assumption that the natural state of society was a republic whose only laws derived from universal, unchanging “laws of nature” and natural right.15 Although Edel- stein has not explored the relationship of natural republicanism and marriage in his analysis of Jacobin political thought, I suggest that marriage was central to the revolutionary cult of nature, the discourse of natural republicanism, and the politics of the Terror. Radical revolutionaries used strong rhetoric to argue that celibate priests’ violation of the laws of nature made them enemies of humanity and of the republic. In August 1793 a parish priest from the department of Eure wrote to the Convention, denouncing 98 unnatural frenchmen celibate clerics as “enemies of the republican state” who “in defi- ance of constitutional laws, are bent on maintaining an unnatural, antisocial celibacy” and “infecting civil society.”16 By transgressing the laws of nature through their “unnatural” practice of celibacy, celibate priests became enemies of humanity. These attitudes toward celibate priests were tied to the natural right concept of hostis humani generis, or “enemies of the human race,” which Edelstein argues was a fundamental element of natural republicanism.17 Rev- olutionary contestations over the marriage of priests strengthened many Jacobins’ belief that celibacy was a violation of the laws of nature and an inherently dangerous source of corruption, vice, and degeneration. For their disregard of natural right, celibate priests were considered denatured individuals, enemies of humanity, and morally monstrous outlaws who had no place within the Republic. This view of celibate priests as enemies of humanity and viola- tors of natural law undergirded Jacobin polices to restrict celibate priests’ participation in political and public life. Jullien, a special agent of the Committee of Public Safety and a protégé of Robes- pierre, insisted that popular societies and Jacobin clubs exclude celibate priests, “who wish to isolate themselves further from their fellow man and to violate natural and social laws though celibacy.” Lorient’s société populaire et montagnard promptly banned all unmarried priests. The Jacobin club of Gondrin gave its clerical members only two weeks to find wives. On the recommendation of the representative on mission Pierre- Armand Dartigoeyte, the popular societies of Gers excluded all celibate priests who did not marry within six months. At a meeting of the Montagnard society of Gers in Auch, Dartigoeyte proposed that celibate priests be deprived of their salaries and that all priests over sixty years old adopt a child. Many popular societies, including those of Saint- Aignan, Com- piègne, and the sans- culottes of Chartres, urged the Convention to ban celibates from the priesthood and from all public service. The Jacobin club of Tarascon recommended that unmarried priests be drafted for service as army stretcher- bearers. The Jacobin club of Auxerre demanded that all unmarried clerics be deported to a “distant island.” The société républicaine of Epernay requested that a social crime 99 the Convention outlaw celibacy and revoke the salaries and rights of citizenship of priests who did not marry within six months. Jacobins in Condom demanded that the National Convention declare celibacy a capital crime and punish celibates accordingly.18 Many representatives on mission, whom the Committee of Pub- lic Safety sent to supervise the enforcement of revolutionary legislation throughout French provinces during Year II, issued repressive decrees against the clergy that exclusively targeted celibate priests. In accordance with Joseph Fouché’s orders, the department of Nièvre required every priest to marry, to adopt a child, or to support and feed an indigent elderly person. Any priest who failed to do so within one month was forced to cease his pastoral functions and denied his pension.19 Joseph Augustin Crassous, the representative on mission in the Seine- et- Oise, ordered the district of Dourdan to replace all celibate priests with pères de famille. Laplanche, a delegate of the representative on mission, ordered all parish priests in the districts of Pithiviers and Neuville to marry. More than twenty priests promised to marry within two months. Laplanche, a former monk who married the daughter of the conventionnel René- Louis Delaguelle from Loiret the following week, made arrangements to search for wives for them. Several representatives ordered priests and former priests to relocate to their district headquarters to be placed under surveillance, but they exempted married priests.20 Some representatives on mission also released imprisoned priests who had married or who indicated their intentions to marry. Marie Benoît Gouly, the representative on mission in the department of Ain, released dozens of imprisoned priests on the condition that within a month they either marry or adopt a “child of a poor sans- culotte.”21 Dartigoeyte instructed the agents nationaux of the districts of Gers and Haute-Garonne to release all married priests from prison so that they could return to their wives.22 Some priests claimed to have been incarcerated for days, weeks, months, or even over a year before accepting marriage as a condition for their release from prison. A cleric from Aix- en- Provence, condemned to death by the revolutionary tribunal of Marseilles for his counter- revolutionary beliefs, attested to living in an underground prison for nine months 100 unnatural frenchmen “without seeing the light of day” and insisted that marriage was the price he paid to ensure his survival. One cleric, who had been denounced before the Committee of Public Safety, arrested, and detained for deportation, recounted that two representatives on mission informed him that “the only means of washing away the supposed stain of fanaticism and of avoiding deportation was contracting marriage.” Another cleric maintained that the representative on mission and former cleric Joseph Le Bon presented him with the “choice to go into the army, rot in prison, or take a spouse.”23 These representatives on mission justified their differential treatment of celibate and married priests on the grounds that married priests had provided proof of their patriotism, since marriage, as Dartigoeyte explained, “is the new tie that attaches a citizen to his patrie.”24 Jean- Baptiste Le Carpentier, a representative on mission in the departments of Manche, Ille- et- Villane, Côtes- du- Nord, and Morbihan, also maintained that marriage “guaranteed [priests’] attachment to the social order,” and consequently he released more than fifty imprisoned priests who intended to marry.25 The representative on mission Jean- Pierre Couturier considered a priest’s marriage a testament to his attachment to the patrie and to the progress of the Revolution. In one of his reports to the Conven- tion, Couturier hailed marriage as “unequivocal proof ” of a priest’s patriotism and “the sure guarantee of his commitment to freedom and equality.”26 The Jacobin equation between clerical marriage and patriotism was tied to two overlapping notions of marriage. On the one hand, marriage was a sign of commitment to the ideals of the Revolution. On the other, marriage represented a kind of patriotic discipline that would cultivate civic virtue and would transform even suspect priests into patriots. However, uncertainty over the efficacy of forced marriage complicated and undermined the revolutionary project of transforming priests into citizens through marriage. Clerical Marriage and the Politics of Regeneration The notion that priestly marriage was an act of political and moral regeneration was tied to revolutionary views on gender a social crime 101 complementarity and companionate marriage. Jacobin thought associated marriage and paternity with compassion, affection, and virtue. In an anti-celibacy tract authored by the revolutionary and mathematician Joseph- Balthazard Bérard in 1794, a Jacobin priest lamented that he could not attain happiness without a spouse: “I am missing a half of myself: a portion of my being is separated from the other.”27 Bishop Pontard had similarly observed that, like every man, a priest is incomplete without a wife: his other half and his natural, perfect complement.28 Believing that companionate marriage cultivated and elevated the complementary virtues of husband and wife, opponents of clerical celibacy maintained that a wife’s ennobling moral qualities would transform selfish, “hard- hearted” priests into more sensitive, virtuous citizens. Numerous anti- celibacy publications claimed that conjugal and familial bonds would cause priests to live selflessly and to make constant sacrifices for their spouse, children, and country. Opponents of clerical celibacy advocated a new form of transcendence through patriotic sacrifice and a sacralization of nature and the nation. Revolutionaries conceived of marriage as a path to republican regeneration. Marriage was central to the abbé Henri Grégoire’s conception of universal regeneration, particularly for nonwhites and non- Catholics, as Alyssa Sepinwall’s work has shown, but Grégoire vigorously opposed attempts to regenerate priests and reintegrate them into the nation through the forging of marital and familial bonds.29 Despite Grégoire’s objections to clerical marriage, the Jacobin view of republican regeneration through marriage shaped in important ways the campaign against clerical celibacy as well as the de- Christianization campaign of 1793–94 as a whole. As Mona Ozouf argues, the project of regeneration during the Terror entailed the “systematic, painstaking socialization” of a new people.30 The spectacular pedagogical function of the marriage of priests was central to the political program of regeneration. The celebrations of clerical marriages served as collective acts of civic regeneration of the French people. Eager to advance the political program of regeneration through marriage, members of local popular societies and representatives 102 unnatural frenchmen on mission often played key roles in planning, celebrating, and publicizing clerical wedding festivities across France. These clerical nuptials often incorporated revolutionary symbols, including the bonnet rouge, or the Phrygian cap, and the tricolor cocarde; patriotic songs, including some composed by married priests; civic bap- tisms; and speeches denouncing clerical celibacy. Bias Parent, the Jacobin parish priest of Clamency, delivered a speech of this sort at his own wedding, where a large number of sans- culottes led the crowd in singing a revolutionary nuptial hymn. Parent dedicated the published version of his speech and account of the wedding festivities to representative Fouché.31 Members of the popular society of Saumur celebrated in a similar fashion the marriage of a priest who days later formally recognized a child whom he and his wife had had together.32 In the department of Dordogne, the société populaire of Saint- Orse covered the costs of one priest’s wedding celebration.33 Jacobin clubs in Poitiers, Limoges, and elsewhere bestowed civic crowns on married clerics and their wives.34 After a festive wedding procession and ceremony for a former nun and a priest, the société populaire of Saint-Flour hosted a public ball. Pierre Fontanier, the clerical groom, had addressed the club the previous day, announcing his intentions to fulfill “one of the foremost duties of human nature” and to become attached by the holiest of ties to society and the patrie. Fontanier also wrote a patriotic song whose lyrics associated marriage and fatherhood with citizenship: The first political tie, Is being father, being a spouse, It is the first civic tribute: O holy names of spouse and father. Fontanier’s song also challenged the masculinity and citizenship of celibate priests, asking, “Without family, is one a citizen? / Is one a citizen without being a man?”35 Certain representatives on mission proudly presided over these clerical marriages. During brumaire of Year II, Couturier, representative on mission to Seine-et- Oise, sent to the Convention several reports on clerical marriages where he had presided, including one a social crime 103 in which a constitutional priest and former monk delivered a speech at the foot of a “tree of liberty.” There the groom professed “his sacred love of the patrie . . . [and] his invariable attachment to the republican regime.”36 Representatives on mission often presided over the marriages of priests during revolutionary festivals, particularly the festival of reason. These fêtes décadaires often incorporated familial themes and rituals in celebration of conjugal and familial love and in scorn of celibacy. At the festival of reason in Nancy, representative on mission Faure urged clergymen to abdicate en masse and to marry. Faure praised married bishops and priests for having “acquired in the eyes of the Republic a greater degree of civisme by becoming spouses and fathers.”37 Some representatives on mission, such as Couturier, Fouché, Le Bon, and Lequinio, were more concerned with the marriage of priests than others. The local and regional variations in the de- Christianization campaign, in the campaign against clerical celibacy, and in popular resistance to these movements were considerable. The differences among representatives on mission and other agents of de- Christianization in their priorities, de- Christianizing strategies, and reactions to different local circumstances significantly shaped, but not solely determined, patterns of clerical marriage. These geographical patterns were highly uneven within regions and departments. In general, the numbers of clerical marriages were relatively low in eastern and southern France, especially in the Hautes- Alpes and Basses- Alpes. The Paris basin had the greatest number of married priests in absolute terms and in relation to the numbers of both constitutional and refractory clerics. The department of the Nord also had a relatively high number of married clergymen. Some scholars, including Michel Vovelle and Xavier Maréchaux, have suggested that the majority of priests’ marriages in the Paris basin, northern France, and Bordeaux were voluntary rather than imposed, in contrast to northeastern France, central France, and the Rhone Valley, where evidence of coercion is more abundant.38 Throughout France, priests’ motives for marrying were multifaceted, and in many cases, material and emotional concerns 104 unnatural frenchmen compounded the social and political pressures exerted on priests to marry during Year II. Many ecclesiastics suffered financial losses and hardships, some of which were tied to persecution or imprisonment during the Revolution. One cleric lamented that his “fortune was stolen and pillaged by sans-culottes” during his in- carceration.39 Many priests in despair and desperation after losing their benefices or their residences during the Revolution viewed marriage as a source of stability, financial security, and freedom from persecution. A married priest from Metz explained, “Find- ing myself without fortune, I decided that the estate of marriage would offer me the means to exist and would shelter me from persecution.”40 Fears of persecution, poverty, and loneliness often influenced priests’ decisions to marry. Others admitted that “self- interest alone,” including the appeal of acquiring a dowry, was their reason for marrying.41 In short, priests married for a variety and confluence of reasons, including financial security, emotional support, and affection. Some constitutional priests viewed their marriage as an expression of love not only for their wives but also for their patrie. These married priests displayed their revolutionary fervor by making donations to the patrie, adopting new revolutionary names, and giving their children names drawn from revolutionary symbols, revolutionary leaders, classical antiquity, or nature. On November 26, 1793, a former parish priest from the department of Seine-et- Oise; his wife, “a good republican woman”; and their three children— Lepeletier, Marat, and Robespierre—appeared at the bar of the Convention to make a donation of a gold watch and earrings to the patrie.42 The revolutionary periodical press frequently drew readers’ attention to such acts of patriotism. A letter from a “curé and père de famille” that appeared in Feuille du salut public in October 1793 proudly described the wedding festivities of a parish priest who donned the cap of liberty, or bonnet rouge, and the tricolor cocarde at the civil ceremony.43 The Affiches d’Angers reported the marriage of Jacques- Antoine Coquille d’Alleux, a former tonsured cleric and the constitutional priest of Beaupréau, who later followed the example of his “de- baptized” wife and adopted the name Horatius- Coclès a social crime 105 Coquille. At his marriage in October, Coquille had delivered a forceful speech denouncing clerical celibacy. He also presented his wife with a song whose lyrics proclaimed the victory of “chaste affection over false continence” and condemned celibate priests as useless and odious.44 Coquille was a clergyman who saw his marriage as an abandonment of Catholicism. Denouncing priests as useless and dangerous to the French republic, Coquille burned his letters of priesthood and asked the Convention to abolish Roman Catholicism. Unlike constitutional priests who renounced clerical celibacy but neither their faith nor the priesthood, Coquille and other abdicating priests who renounced the priesthood and Catholicism celebrated their marriage as a definitive break from the church. Coquille expressed his contempt for priests not only in speech and song but also in playwriting. Coquille wrote a play about the intrigues of a hypo- critical refractory priest named Caffard within the household of his protector and benefactor, a woman named Cadière, a clear allusion to the religious and sexual scandal of the 1730s involving Father Girard and his female penitent Catherine Cadière.45 Coquille’s play was part of a rich tradition of anticlerical French theater. Anticlerical and anti-celibacy sentiments shaped revolutionary French theater, and the marriage of priests and nuns was a particularly popular subject for plays performed throughout the revolutionary decade. Several plays performed and published in 1793 depicted the pope taking a wife and ordering priests to marry. A new version of The Day of the Vatican, a play that originated in Italy in 1790, premiered at Paris’s Theatre Louvois in August 1793. In the Parisian version, the pope declared his intentions to marry: “I accept the abbé [Cournand’s] motion on the marriage of [priests]; I will be the first to lead by example.”46 The pope also called for the marriage of priests in the abbé Pierre Léger’s play Pope Joan, which premiered earlier in 1793 at the Théatre Feydeau in Paris. Léger’s play was one of at least three plays written in the year 1793 that were inspired by the legend of Pope Joan. This myth was fabri- cated in the thirteenth century about a ninth- century woman who disguised herself as a man to follow her lover into the exclusively 106 unnatural frenchmen male world of scholarship; she was eventually elected pope, and two years later became pregnant and died after giving birth during a public procession from St. Peter’s Basilica. In Léger’s play, Car- dinal Joan declared before her election, “An infinite source of vice is celibacy; / I want from now on for the clergy to marry.” To the delight and amusement of Parisian audiences, Joan then announced that she would set the example by taking a husband.47 Revolutionary plays that addressed issues of clerical celibacy reinforced many of the same claims that champions of priestly marriage were articulating in their political writings, speeches, and petitions. The central claim was that a priest’s marriage validated his patriotism. As a character in a play concerning the marriage of a young vicar observed: “Of all the acts of patriotism [civisme], marriage is the most authentic.” In a play entitled The Interior of a Republican Household, a widow decides to marry a “curé sans- culotte” who explicitly equates marriage and patriotism and thereby declares that one must wed in order to take one’s place in the patrie.48 The plays of Jean- Baptiste Radet and Georges Desfontaines were the most extensive and popular theatrical treatments of the subject of clerical marriage. Performed eighty times, their play Return was the period’s most popular vaudeville. The play featured a scene in which a married patriot priest and his wife dance at a wedding while villagers sing a song celebrating the priest’s marriage, republicanism, and patriotism. By becoming a good husband and father, the priest has become a virtuous patriot, citizen, and sans-culotte. Radet and Desfontaines stressed the centrality of both marriage and fatherhood to republicanism: “To learn how to love one’s country, one must be a spouse and a father!”49 In another play by the pair, a parish priest and nun marry, and a revolutionary solider literally sings the praises of clerical marriage after meeting the couple. The soldier expresses his hopes that the newlywed priest will become a father and be able to baptize his own children rather than only those of others. Inspired by the soldier, the parish priest determines that, for the good of the “regenerated people,” he will abdicate the priesthood, take up arms, and adopt the name Aristide, after the Athenian warrior. This play, as well as revolutionary popu- a social crime 107 lar prints, songs, and Jacobin rhetoric, advanced the notion that the combination of the civic duties of marriage, fatherhood, and military service represented the ultimate expression of a priest’s patriotism.50 Like these theatrical representations, the public proclamations of some priests who abandoned both celibacy and the priesthood emphasized the opposition between priesthood and patriotism. These priests radically transformed their lives by abandoning celibacy and the priesthood, which they deemed incompatible with a regenerated, republican France. Unlike constitutional priests who

Engraving of a defrocked priest, who has joined the National Guard, walking alongside a woman with their arms around each other and with drinks in hand. His cassock and book, presumably his breviary or Bible, lie at his feet, but he has forgotten to remove his clerical collar. Hé mais, oui-da, j’ai quitté ma soutanne. 108 unnatural frenchmen continued to exercise their pastoral functions, these married abdicataires denounced the priesthood as useless, antisocial, and even a threat to the patrie. In November 1793 a parish priest who appeared before the Convention to depose his letters of priesthood declared, “I believe that priests can only be regenerated in society by abandoning celibacy. I believe that every individual who flees marriage is an egotist [and] is the enemy of mores and of his patrie.”51 At the Convention in mid- November, François Lacombe abdicated and railed against the “barbaric institution and the murderous prejudice that condemns priests to the harshest slavery, that of so- called celibacy.”52 Another married priest publicly denounced celibacy as “the murderous enemy of humanity, of reason, of the state, and of the religion that we profess.”53 A parish priest from the Isère who also announced his abdication and marriage at the bar of the Convention proclaimed his preference for “conjugal pleasures” over living as an “isolated egotist.” Another abdicator declared that he had been lonely and miserable, always at war with himself and his natural inclinations, until marriage returned him to nature and to the patrie.54 For some abdicating priests, particularly those who claimed to have been forced into the priesthood years earlier, marriage represented a weapon against and a release from superstition and fanaticism. During Year II an ecclesiastic from the Puy-de- Dôme reflected on the momentthirty- two years earlier when his father had placed him in a monastery at the age of sixteen and on his anointment and ordination into the priesthood. He described the latter in the following terms: “I was forced to appear before a man who was dressed as a woman. This man said a few words that I never understood [and] put some kind of drug on my fingers. They told me afterwards that I was a priest.” In 1791 he secretly married his domestic servant and had a child. The following year, he legitimized his marriage before a public official and fathered a second child.55 Other married abdicators ridiculed the church as their mystical, spiritual spouse. An abdicated priest in the department of Var announced that he had traded in a celestial spouse for a true wife, “a good patriote.”56 A former parish priest from Seine- a social crime 109 Inférieure similarly reported to the Convention, “Despite howls of fanaticism and ignorance, I married two years ago not an invisible, mysterious, and celestial spouse, but simply a visible, natural, and reasonable woman.”57 Married clerics often described themselves and their wives as “virtuous” and “patriotic” republicans who lived in conjugal happiness. A thirty- five- year- old former parish priest from the department of Aisne identified himself and his wife as sans-culottes and rhetorically linked their poverty and their marriage with their patriotism: “To prove ostensibly that I was a man and a citizen, I married, two months ago, a true sans-culotte of my former parish, twenty- two years old, poor in fortune but rich in wisdom and in virtue.” To provide further proof of his patriotism, he abdicated the priesthood and turned to teaching. Another abdicating priest and self- described “true sans- culotte” proudly proclaimed that his wife had “nothing else for her dowry except a heart burning of patriotism.” A fellow sans- culotte abdicating priest described his wife as “a loveable, spiritual, and above all republican spouse.”58 Relatively little is known about priests’ wives, their motives for marrying, and their attitudes toward marriage, religion, and the Revolution. Some of the women who married priests, including orphans, elderly women, widows, and divorcées, were relatively socially marginalized and lacked more attractive options. A small proportion of clergymen married relatives, particularly cousins and nieces; housekeepers; and nuns. During the Terror, some domestic servants married priests with the intention of separating as soon as circumstances permitted. Aside from domestic service, clergymen’s wives were most often involved in textile or agricultural work, but some were teachers, shopkeepers, midwives, and other occu- pations. Some women may have viewed marriage to a clergyman as an opportunity to marry without a substantial dowry. Women who married priests and monks were usually considerably younger than their spouses. The ages of the wives of priests spanned a remarkable range—on one extreme, a priest who had married his twelve-year- old niece and, on the other, a priest who married a ninety- six- year- old woman.59 110 unnatural frenchmen Some priests encountered difficulties in their quest for a suitable wife and for nuptial bliss. Priests who had trouble finding spouses occasionally requested or received the assistance of representatives on mission. A former ecclesiastic of Sens found that the representative Antoine Louis Albitte’s de-Christianizing activities actually inhibited his and other priests’ ability to look for marriage partners. Consequently, he asked Albitte to slacken his surveillance of priests.60 A number of priests also complained of opposition and hostility to their marriages, which they often attributed to their parishioners’ or their in- laws’ fanaticism, superstitions, and prejudices. Other priests encountered obstacles to marriage that they deemed insurmountable; one of the most commonly cited reasons was old age. A sixty- eight- year- old priest, who lamented that he was too old to marry, decided rather to adopt a fifty- two- year- old “fille majeure.” Many other priests chose more typical, much younger candidates for adoption.61 The foremost difficulties facing priests and their families in Year II were financial. Accordingly, married priests sought various forms of assistance from the Convention. They requested financial aid, increased pensions, or employment in order to support their families. One parish priest wrote to the Convention, “I am a parish priest, spouse, and father. I have not sought fortune; I have found virtue in the rags of poverty. . . . I ask for bread for my wife and child, but I want to earn it by making myself useful to the republic.”62 Some married priests and former monks wanted to ensure that they could provide for their families even after death and therefore petitioned for their rights of succession to be restored.63 Other ecclesiastics petitioned the Convention in an attempt to reclaim property, such as a vicar who wanted to reclaim ownership of a property that he had relinquished for a life annuity, because he found a woman who agreed to marry him only on the condition that he secured property. Conversely, other priests wanted to assist the Convention, rather than vice versa. Several married priests and nuns appeared before the Convention to give to the patrie. Donations to the patrie were even incorporated into priests’ wedding celebrations, such as one where celebrants donated more than one thousand articles of a social crime 111 clothing to French soldiers.64 Some married priests donated their pensions to the patrie, while others, such as an abdicated priest from Soissons who supported his wife as well as his elderly invalid mother, lamented that their financial needs inhibited them from doing so.65 François Chabot was among the small proportion of ecclesiastics for whom marriage was a financial boon; however, Chabot’s marriage was also a political liability. A deputy to the Convention, a representative on mission, as well as a former Capuchin monk and constitutional priest, Chabot married Léopoldine Frey, the sixteen- year- old sister of the wealthy Austrian Jewish bankers, the Frey brothers. The outcry over Chabot’s marriage revealed that the equation between clerical marriage and republican virtue had its limits. Marrying a foreigner, above all a wealthy young Austrian, rather than a virtuous French woman, was deemed an unpatriotic and immoral act that could compromise one’s claims to good citizenship. In November 1793 Louis-Pierre Dufourny denounced Chabot in the Jacobin club on these grounds. Dufourny also openly attacked Chabot for abandoning his impregnated housekeeper, Ju- lie Berger, to marry Frey for her dowry of two hundred thousand livres. Dufourny also insisted, “A wife is a garment; if Chabot needed this garment, he should have remembered that the nation has banned foreign fabrics.” A provincial republican society leveled similar charges against Chabot: “The deputy Chabot has lost the esteem and trust of patriots for having married a rich Austrian foreigner.” Furthermore, club members insisted that whoever married a foreigner, especially an Austrian woman, was an “enemy of the French” and no longer a citizen.66 In his defense Chabot insisted that he had merely “followed the laws of nature engraved on the hearts of all men” by choosing the moral code of nature over that of the cloister. Chabot professed that he was guilty only of “the crime of loving women,” which “is a crime only in the eyes of monstrous enemies of humanity.” Although he explained that his marriage made him a good republican rather than an enemy of the people, fellow conventionnels disagreed, and the Revolutionary Tribunal sentenced him to death in the spring of 1794.67 112 unnatural frenchmen The circumstances of Chabot’s marriage as well as those of priests who married as a tactic to escape persecution, imprisonment, or possible deportation raised questions for radical revolutionaries about the validity of clerical marriage as unequivocal proof of republican virtue. Some radical Jacobins were so invested in the campaign against “fanaticism” and clerical celibacy that they condoned priests’ marrying as a tactic to escape persecution, imprisonment, or possible deportation. Radical revolutionaries rarely distinguished between priests who married under duress and those who married with revolutionary fervor. According to this radical perspective, the reasons that priests married were relatively incon- sequential, since marriage was a moral duty and an obligation to the patrie. In contrast, other radical Jacobins did not consider every marriage a manifestation of patriotism, particularly those marriages contracted under duress. For priests who had married under considerable political pressure, the distinctions between “true” and “simulated” marriages were vitally important. Married priests who petitioned the papal legate during the first decade of the nineteenth century recounted how representatives on mission or other agents of de- Christianization threatened to imprison, deport, or even guillotine priests who did not provide proof of their patriotism by marrying. These retrospective accounts also revealed that some priests had tried to attain freedom with a feigned promise of marriage or by publishing banns without intending to contract marriage, or at least claimed to have done so. A priest from Amiens recounted that he had used this strategy until his third arrest, at which point he was compelled to carry out his promise to marry his domestic servant. A monk- cum- parish priest in the department of Moselle contracted a simulated marriage to a nun during the Terror as a “ploy to escape death.”68 A former Benedictine monk who had been arrested at the altar while saying Mass at Lille in February 1794 learned that he could attain his liberty by either marrying or going to the front as a soldier. After grappling with his decision for three months, the cleric finally promised to marry and was released from prison. Arrested again nine months later, he was then a social crime 113 compelled to sign, in his words, “an illegal civil act” of marriage to his domestic servant.69 Clerics who did not view their marriage as a matrimonial union but as a “fake” marriage or stratagem to avoid persecution often purposely chose an ill-matched spouse. Some priests hardly had a choice at all. One cleric attested that, unable to find any Catholic woman willing to marry him, he married a Protestant woman. An- other explained that chance determined his spousal selection, since he was released from prison on the condition that he marry within twenty- four hours.70 Others claimed to have sought out women whom they considered implausible spouses, in order to signal to faithful Catholics that their marriage was a sham. In the interests of avoiding persecution while avoiding suspicions of breaking canonical laws concerning celibacy, these priests identified old age, illness, and poverty as desirable traits in a “so- called” wife. One priest explained that he married an ill septuagenarian, with whom he never cohabited and who died six months later.71 For priests who married under compulsion and wanted to end their marriage as simply and quickly as possible, marrying an elderly woman seemed prudent. Some anticipated, even hoped, that their wife’s death would free them from the shackles of a shameful marriage. One priest, condemned to deportation, sought out “a person who was very old, poor, but honest” and found a septuagenarian woman who agreed to marry him in return for “a little charity.” He later wrote, “I had never seen her or spoken to her except in the moment of this indignant action. I believed that she would die a few months later.”72 One priest described his “so- called” wife as an impoverished “old maid, age seventy- six, in a state of paralysis, unable to walk and nearly on her deathbed,” whose death swiftly ended their unconsummated marriage.73 A parish priest in the diocese of Meaux married a pious woman fifteen years his elder, whom he regarded as a mother and who died three years later. The wife and sexagenarian aunt of a constitutional priest from Soissons died a few years after their marriage.74 The most striking example of this marital strategy was a priest who married a ninety- six- year- old woman, whom he described as deaf, dumb, and blind—and who died two days later.75 114 unnatural frenchmen These marriages of deception often involved not only elderly women or relatives but also nuns and housekeepers. Priests seeking to escape persecution sometimes sought out women, often female religious, known for their piety and virtue in hopes that they would agree to a fraudulent marriage. At the age of twenty- three, a tonsured cleric from the diocese of Amiens selected his wife on account of her age and her known aversion to marriage, having “spent all of her life in spiritual exercises and at that time was bound by a simple vow of virginity.” The former monk later explained, “She would not have consented to such a proposition if it had not been understood that [the marriage] was only a kind of formality, which would not undermine her dedication to God.”76 Some couples pledged to live “as brother and sister” and to separate once revolutionary dangers subsided. Some wives of priests, particularly their domestic servants, were extremely reluctant to marry but acquiesced on the explicit condition that they would never consummate the marriage. A number of priests who married their housekeeper also tried to avoid drawing attention or publicity to the marriage. Neither these clerics nor their servants regarded themselves as truly married and resolved to dissolve the marriage as soon as more favorable circumstances permitted its termination. Some domestic servants agreed to these conditions in order to save the lives of the men whom they had loyally served and whom some viewed like a son.77 In some cases, the servants continued their labor, while their “husbands” secretly continued to fulfill their pastoral duties. A parish priest from the diocese of Angers married his housekeeper who had served him for twelve years and continued to do so after the marriage. He maintained that their arrangement was widely known as “a fake and not a true marriage.”78 These priests often justified their transgression of clerical discipline by maintaining that their civil marriage was not a true but a “simulated” marriage. They stressed the illicit nature of their marriage and their “mental protestations” against it. In the interests of “making his so-called marriage as illicit as possible,” a priest from the diocese of Saint- Brieuc found a nun who was willing to marry him on the condition that they had neither a marriage contract a social crime 115 nor a nuptial benediction and that the two kept their marriage a secret. A priest from Soissons explained that his marriage to his ill, elderly aunt was simply a stratagem: “I never considered this marriage real. . . . [It was only] to deceive my persecutors.” One cleric who, under duress, married his niece, a nun, observed that his marriage was null on account of his status as a priest, on account of consanguinity, and on account of the violence and force under which he had married.79 The representative on mission François René Mallarmé scoffed at such claims about the invalidity of their marriages. In a letter from May 1794, Mallarmé wrote, “Many [priests] have married their servants, women sixty years old. . . . They have the stupidity or villainy not to believe in the validity of marriages that are not made in the presence of the Church.”80 Some radical revolutionaries discounted a priest’s motivations for marrying, since the act of marriage served important purposes regardless of whether a priest believed in its validity. First, the marriage of priests advanced de- Christianizers’ goal of extirpating the Catholic Church in France and its clergy. Second, marriage transformed priests from para- sitic outsiders into loyal and useful citizens and patriots. Marriage would cultivate patriotism in a priest, even if he had married only under the threat of deportation, imprisonment, or death. Conse- quently, some radical revolutionaries did not distinguish between priests who married under duress and those who married with revolutionary fervor. Tensions over the question of whether coerced clerical marriages constituted acts of political and moral regeneration became particularly salient during the spring and summer of 1794. Dis- agreements on this issue tended to fall along the same lines as disagreements over the efficacy of the broader de-Christianization campaign. Robespierre, for one, believed that the forced marriages of priests and de- Christianization would only inflame religious counter-revolutionary zeal and undermine the Revolution. Despite his championing of clerical marriage as an ideal means for priests to transcend egotism, to cultivate republican sensibilities, and to serve the greater good, he opposed the forced marriages of priests and 116 unnatural frenchmen the de- Christianization movement as a whole. He played a central role in bringing de- Christianization to an end. By the conclusion of the de- Christianization campaign and the Terror, revolutionaries no longer viewed coerced marriages as a viable and authentic means of regenerating priests but remained convinced that marriage was a source of republican virtue. Reconstituting Religion and Contesting Celibacy, 1794–1801 The fall of Robespierre on 9 thermidor (July 27, 1794) ushered in a new phase in religious policy and politics that haltingly shifted during successive political regimes. Although the campaign against clerical celibacy lost momentum after Thermidor, the notion that marriage ensured a priest’s patriotism continued to shape revolutionary religious politics and the political program of regeneration. Despite Robespierre’s successors’ antipathy toward priests and their active role in the de- Christianization movement, the Thermidorian Convention (1794–95) responded to popular revulsion against the excesses of de- Christianization by allowing a greater degree of Catholic worship and by enacting the formal separation of church and state. However, civil authorities’ anxiety over public religious expression gave rise to inconsistent, oscillating religious policies and increased state surveillance and control of Catholic worship. Nonetheless, the late 1790s saw a resurgence of religion as well as the reconstitution of the Constitutional Church.81 As various political regimes reconfigured the nature of the relations between church and state, persistent tensions surrounding the contentious issue of clerical marriage exacerbated problems and widened divisions within the Constitutional Church until its collapse following Napoleon’s reconciliation with Rome in 1801 and the creation of the Concordatory Church. The revolutionary regimes during the period from the Ther- midorian Convention to the Concordat of 1801 actively, but not aggressively, encouraged marriage and discouraged celibacy for laymen and clergymen alike. Like the Constitution of 1791, the Constitution of the Year III did not recognize any religious vow or engagement that was contrary to natural rights. The Constitu- a social crime 117 tion of the Year III also required that all deputies in the Council of Ancients, the legislature’s upper house, be either married or widowed. (The constitutional commission originally proposed that unmarried men be excluded from both councils.) Unlike its predecessors in 1789 and 1793, the Constitution of 1795 explicitly enumerated the obligations that man and citizen owed toward society and the body politic. Prior to the Convention’s adoption of the constitution on August 22, the constitutional commission debated prefixing a declaration of rights as well as duties to it. When the deputy Jean- Baptiste Mailhe insisted on the inclusion of constitutionally inscribed duties that men owed the patrie, the deputy Jean- François Ehrmann declared, “Republican virtue is made of public and private virtues.” Jacques- Antoine Creuzé- Latouche also spoke of the crucial need to make clear the interdependence of private and public virtues:

The safety of society rests on the virtues of its citizens; well, those virtues need to be made an obligation. . . . [Spelling them out] is necessary because every day we see men who in private fulfill all their duties toward their families, but who in society are traitors or rogues; we see others, on the other hand, who are irreproachable in their political career but who, foolishly thinking that the austerity of public virtues excludes the private virtues, are bad husbands and bad fathers. This error must be destroyed; all of the virtues must be re- united and demanded of citizens: that is why we propose to declare that the good citizen should practice all the virtues.

Accordingly, Article 4 of the section on duties in the “Declaration of Rights and Duties” declared, “No one is a good citizen if he is not a good son, good father, good brother, good friend, and good husband.”82 As the language of the constitution suggested, a central tenet of post- Thermidorian culture was the belief that marriage and family were the key institutions for forming and morally educating citizens. The Constitution of the Year III also signaled the subordination of natural rights to duties. Two of the preceding articles on duties declared that “the maintenance of society demands that those who 118 unnatural frenchmen compose it know and fulfill equally their duties” (Article 1), and that these moral duties were “engraved by nature in the hearts of [all men and citizens]” (Article 2). As Carla Hesse has observed, “After Thermidor, moral duty became the order of the day.”83 Marriage and the family provided a set of secular moral principles in which to ground the new political order. The persistent notion of marriage and the family as the basis of the political and social order profoundly shaped ideas about citizenship, republicanism, and regeneration in post-Thermidorian France. In post-Thermidorian France, critics of celibacy, particularly married clerics, therefore continued to argue that priestly marriage was not just a right but, above all, a duty. A 1795 treatise authored by the first ecclesiastic in the department of Oise to marry four years earlier, defended priestly marriage in terms of both rights and duties. It argued, “Any act that prohibits [man] from [exercising his right to reproduce] is fundamentally invalid . . . [and] is an attack on liberty.” The author maintained that the church’s requirement of celibacy as a condition for the priesthood violated natural rights. Moreover, he insisted that priests, like all citizens, had a duty and obligation to marry and reproduce in order to give citizens to the state and soldiers to the patrie. He declared that no religious oath “can exempt [a person] from [his] obligation to fulfill these duties.”84 The emphasis on paternal and conjugal duties in the discourse on clerical celibacy both reflected and shaped post- Thermidorian notions of citizenship that were tied to companionate marriage, social order, and duty. The revolutionary cult of marriage and of the family reached its peak in the post-Thermidorian period. The fête des époux was one of the clearest manifestations of the valorization of marriage as a source of social stability and republican virtue in post- Thermidorian political culture. In 1795 the republican leadership of the Directory inaugurated the festival of spouses, celebrated annually on 10 floréal, in order to inspire unmarried women and men to marry and to become parents.85 Although fostering marriage and fatherhood among priests specifically was not the primary aim of these festivals, it often was a central element. At the a social crime 119 festival of spouses at Angers in Year IV, festival organizers and Horatius- Coclès Coquille stressed that conjugal and familial love fostered patriotism and civic virtue: “It is in fulfilling the duties of spouse and father that we learn to fulfill the duties of citizen.”86 Many speeches delivered at these festivals across France (and even in Belgium and the Rhineland) and often also published as pamphlets insisted that clerical marriage was a moral, political, and “natural” imperative.87 At the festival in Aix-la- Chapelle (Aachen) in 1799, Joseph Anton Dorsch, the revolutionary Catholic priest, philosopher, and central administrator of the occupied territories in Aachen, criticized celibacy for detaching priests from society and the patrie, turning them into egotists and “soldiers of the Pope.” Dorsch implored celibate priests to listen to the voice of nature and to “be what nature made you—men; accomplish your destinies— become spouses. Close misleading books that pronounce anathema on the most legitimate state. Open the sacred and sublime book of nature: its language is that of your heart.” Dorsch and Jacobin leaders expressed their confidence in the power of the “natural state” of marriage and women’s sensibilité to soften priests’ “hardened hearts” and to cultivate republican virtue. “Domestic virtues are the source of political and civic virtues,” Dorsch proclaimed. Consequently, he recognized only good spouses and good fathers as good citizens.88 Although the republican leadership of the Directory promoted marriage in general and clerical marriage specifically, official attempts to advance clerical marriage were less important to the government under the Directory than under the Terror. Nonetheless, the contentious issue of clerical celibacy and marriage continued to arouse controversy and heated debate. Much of this controversy took place among the constitutional clergy. Married constitutional priests insisted that marriage was a Christian and civic duty and that “Christian and civil virtues” were coextensive with “conjugal and paternal virtues,” as a married episcopal vicar of Versailles argued in a 1795 publication on the marriage of priests.89 However, the opposition to the notion that the only committed republican clergymen were married priests became more vocal in the post- 120 unnatural frenchmen Thermidorian period, as leaders of the Constitutional Church struggled to prevent married priests, whom they deemed a disgrace to the Church and to the patrie, from exercising their sacerdotal functions. A fierce opponent of the marriage of priests and of the de- Christianization campaign of Year II, the abbé Henri Grégoire emerged as the central figure in the post- Thermidorian politics of clerical marriage. Grégoire steadfastly refused to marry, as he had also refused to shed his cassock and obey the law banning ecclesiastical dress or to renounce his oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Throughout the Revolution, he remained committed to the political and moral project of republican regeneration but opposed a de-Christianizing or anti- Christian model of regeneration. Marriage was central to his conception of universal regeneration, but he vigorously opposed attempts to regenerate priests and to reintegrate them into the nation through marital and familial bonds. Grégoire believed that the Gallican Church, starting with its clergy, needed to be rid of its corruption and restored to the purity of early Christianity in order to save Christianity and revive religion after the Terror. He considered clerical celibacy an essential point of ancient ecclesiastical discipline that would enable priests to devote themselves fully to the spiritual and social well- being of their parishioners and of the patrie.90 Under the leadership of the Grégoire and a group of leading constitutional bishops, the so- called United Bishops, the Con- stitutional Church reconstituted itself as a free and independent Gallican Church. The leadership of the newly reorganized Consti- tutional Church attempted to restore public worship and the rigorous observance of clerical discipline, specifically clerical celibacy.91 They took an uncompromising stance against the marriage of priests. Grégoire and his colleagues looked disdainfully on priests who had succumbed to the consolations of a wife, children, and family and thereby failed to uphold their commitment to selfless devotion and service to God and their fellow French citizens. In March 1795 Grégoire and three other constitutional bishops gath- ered in Paris and issued the first of two encyclical letters, which a social crime 121 prohibited priests who married—whether “under the pretext of avoiding persecution” or for any other reason—from practicing any sacerdotal functions. The United Bishops deemed married priests, including those who renounced their marriage, “unworthy of their status and of the confidence of faithful Catholics in matters of religion.”92 The position of Grégoire and the United Bishops on clerical marriage deeply troubled constitutional priests who had married during the Terror, particularly those who wanted to return to the priesthood. Grégoire insisted that church discipline prevented him from indulging these priests, even those who married out of fear and lived chastely with their “so-called” wives. Accordingly, he either refused to respond to these priests or simply referred them to the encyclical letter.93 His legislative and ecclesiastical colleagues received similar correspondence, including a number of reports concerning constitutional priests who had been “obliged to contract simulated marriages to avoid persecution” during the Ter- ror. In June 1795 a priest from the department of Haute-Garonne drew the United Bishops attention to the many unconsummated “involuntary marriages” that priests had contracted: “We saw septuagenarian elderly men, forced by clubistes enragés, marry nuns.” He explained that many of these married priests were waiting for the right moment to leave their wives and return to ministry.94 Another married priest from the Haute-Garonne who wrote to Grégoire after reading the encyclical letter attested to having resisted pressure to marry for two to three months. “Finally, frenzied [Jacobin] club members obligated me,” the priest bemoaned, “to contract a marriage [in my parish] in the middle of peasants who still had some respect for me. And it is this respect that my enemies wanted me to lose. I indeed lost it.” The cleric protested his exclusion from the priesthood and expressed his desire both to resume his pastoral functions, which the Terror had forced him to abandon, and to leave his wife, with whom he had been living “as brother and sister.”95 Grégoire was inundated with hundreds of letters concerning the marriage of priests, including polemical attacks from critics 122 unnatural frenchmen of celibacy, pleas for forgiveness, and appeals for greater leniency. Some priests, such as René Coquille- Deslongchamps, simply dismissed and derided the encyclical letter’s censure of the married priests, maintaining that it, like the pope’s condemnation of the Civil Constitution, was comical. Coquille- Deslongchamps insisted that the practice of clerical marriage was a return to the purity of the primitive church as well as a natural right that no earthly authority, including the Constitutional Church, could abridge.96 Others urged Grégoire to adopt a less severe stance toward married priests. They warned Grégoire that attaching so much importance to the issue and condemning all married priests to perpetual anathema and penance would create strife and a new schism. An unmarried parish priest in the Ardennes recommended to Grégoire that married priests who wished to resume sacerdotal functions could serve in another diocese rather than returning to their own parish, thereby avoiding scandal and a potential schism.97 One married priest who had been denied the sacraments on account of his marriage pretended to have left his wife in order to receive them. Wishing neither to continue deceiving his confessor nor to leave a wife whom he cherished, he asked Grégoire how he could rectify this situation.98 Some repentant constitutional priests privately consulted Grégoire about what action to take to repair the scandal of their marriage, while others publicly apologized for their marriage, appealing to God and the faithful for forgiveness. In a pamphlet published in late 1795, a vicar expressed his shame about having transgressed clerical discipline and discussed his wife’s intentions “to expiate the crime that I made her commit.” In accordance with the instructions of their archbishop, the vicar and his wife separated.99 In the journal Annales religieuses, politiques, et littéraires, edited by the abbés Sicard and Jauffret, and in a pamphlet the following year, a constitutional priest and his wife renounced their marriage and atoned for the “crime and public scandal” of their civil marriage.100 The An- nales de la religion, the periodical produced by Grégoire and the United Bishops, featured similar accounts from repentant priests, including one who had at the age of seventy- six had married a social crime 123 his fifty- eight- year- old housekeeper and lived with her “like a brother.”101 Such narratives and publicized declarations of married priests’ regret, remorse, and retractions aimed to counteract, even erase, the “public scandal” of their marriages. At the time, these efforts had limited success. Scandals surrounding clerics continued to capture the cultural imagination, particularly when these scandals involved lurid stories of sexual escapades, divorce, abandonment, criminal charges, deportation, violence, and even murder. Most familial or conjugal dramas involving married priests and nuns remained relatively private matters. Nonetheless, certain sensational affairs came under very public scrutiny. These cases reveal how French men and women’s intimate lives became entangled in the ideological, religious, and political conflicts over clerical marriage. The politics of clerical marriage were central to the narrative that Marie- Louise Leroy, a former Bernadine nun, and her legal counsel crafted after her divorce from a former cleric, Dominique- Louis Jabre-Duplessis. In February 1796 the divorced couple had an illegitimate child, whom Jabre- Duplessis abandoned. The property disputes concerning their estate led Leroy to seek legal representation and to publish a mémoire judiciare. Melodramatically, Leroy begged for the return of her husband, “whom she cherished,” and the restoration of her rights and those of her daughter. The narrative stressed the redemptive and regenerative powers of marriage and blamed the dissolution of their marriage on prejudice, fanaticism, and hatred of married priests. Leroy described her departure from the cloister and her marriage as moments of regeneration and rebirth; she was no longer “dead to humanity.” Neither was her husband, to whom she wrote, “You are a priest; I am a nun: before [you became a priest], before I became [a nun], were we not human beings [hommes]? They threatened you with indignation and public scorn if you continued to be a man [homme] with me.” According to the mémoire, hostility toward clerical marriage led Jabre- Duplessis to solicit a divorce from his wife. They remained loving, affectionate companions who continued to share a bed. Leroy gave birth to a child whom Jabre-Duplessis “received in his paternal arms” and 124 unnatural frenchmen reported as his own in municipal records. The mémoire suggested that opprobrium toward married ecclesiastics was to blame for Leroy’s and her illegitimate daughter’s misfortunes.102 Graver misfortunes—even murder and infanticide—were blamed on prejudice against married priests and nuns. In August 1797 the criminal tribunal of Puy-de- Dôme condemned Etienne Chabozi to death by the guillotine for the murder of his wife, a former nun who was six- months pregnant. Anne Durif had been married to Chabozi for two years and was twenty years his elder. Contempo- rary accounts suggested that Chabozi married for financial reasons and had no desire to father a child with his wife. To prevent the birth of his unborn child, he assaulted his pregnant wife with a pitchfork, causing hemorrhaging and the fatal premature birth of her child as well as her own death. During the criminal interroga- tions, Chabozi himself never alluded to persecution or prejudice against him and his wife resulting from their marriage. Nonetheless, the journal Amis des lois’ account of the gruesome attack alleged that religious fanaticism and hostility toward the marriage of priests and nuns had driven him to murder. A graphic print of the violent attack, accompanied by the lyrics of a song about the killing, attributed the murder to the solicitations of a refractory priest. Reports circulated in the periodical press that refractory priests and other religious “fanatics” had told Chabozi that his marriage was a sacrilege and that his wife deserved to be burned alive. These accounts claimed that antagonism toward married priests and nuns sowed the seeds of hatred in Chabozi’s heart that led him to kill his wife and unborn child.103 Joseph-François Bruslon, the married constitutional priest of Faye- la-Vineuse, blamed his own misfortunes, specifically his failed political career, arrest, and deportation sentence to Guiana, on animos- ity toward married clerics. Bruslon specifically blamed Hyancinthe Duliepvre, the constitutional priest and president of the municipality of Vouvray, for thwarting his political ambitions. The municipality had refused Bruslon’s request to assume the position of municipal secretary, citing Bruslon’s “immoral” reputation and his publication of a defamatory libel against the directory of the mu- a social crime 125

Woodblock print of a refractory priest denouncing Durif on account of her marriage and her husband later binding her to a ladder and stabbing her with a pitchfork. Grand assassinat arrivée dans le bourg de Talendre, commune de Monton en Auvergne, commis par un fanatique qui a evantré sa femme à coup de fourche, et lui à arraché l’enfant dont elle était en seinte de six mois, par la solicitation d’un prêtre refractaire. Paris: Chez Fleuret, 1797. nicipality. Bruslon in turn denounced Duliepvre as an “enemy of the chose publique” and as a persecutor of married priests, accusations that Duliepvre dismissed. In September 1798, local leaders requested that sanctions be placed against Bruslon. They accused Bruslon of “sowing discord, hate, distrust everywhere” and of continually denouncing and threatening elected authorities. Police reports of Bruslon’s threatening to burn down the homes of his adversaries confirmed suspicions that he was “a dangerous man.” In October, police ordered the arrest and deportation of Bruslon—“an immoral and trouble-making priest”—for disturbing the peace in Vouvray.104 Bruslon was deported under the law of 19 fructidor in 1797, which was passed the day after the left-wing coup d’état of 18 fructidor (September 4). This law reinstated laws from the Terror against nonjuring and émigré clergy, requiring priests to swear a new oath and effectively authorizing the deportation of thousands of priests who did not comply—except married priests. The rationale for 126 unnatural frenchmen exempting married priests was the same as it had been during the Terror; that is, marriage constituted the ultimate proof of a priest’s loyalty to the patrie. The government’s exemption of married priests made the deportation of Bruslon, a married priest and an outspo- ken opponent of clerical celibacy, an exceptional and intriguing case. Bruslon made his marital status the focal point of his campaign for liberation from his detention on the island of Ré. Bruslon was one of the approximately 1,500 priests interned on the islands of Ré and Oléron off the west coast of France en route to French Guiana. Less than 600 were actually deported to Guiana, and nearly half died before reaching the destination. Desperate to avoid this fate, Bruslon wrote petitions on his own behalf and on behalf of a few other deported married priests.105 Bruslon viewed himself as a victim of calumny and prejudice. He attributed his deportation to prejudice against married priests and alleged that Duliepvre had publicly denounced married priests as apostates and their wives as concubines.106 Concerned that Bruslon might have been either falsely accused of being unmarried or unjustly denounced on account of his marriage, authorities called for investigations of both Bruslon and Duliepvre in order to determine if there had been solid grounds for Bruslon’s deportation sentence. Police determined that, despite his marriage, Bruslon was a social and political menace and thus rejected Bruslon’s demands for release. Bruslon and his wife both unsuccessfully appealed to the Council of 500 for his release and return.107 Bruslon’s internment on the island of Ré was relief for Grégoire and other leaders of the Constitutional Church who considered Bruslon a menace. Throughout the 1790s, Bruslon publicly attacked its leadership and developed a highly antagonistic relationship with the abbé Grégoire and the constitutional bishop of Indre- et- Loire, Pierre Suzor. Bruslon published attacks on Suzor and his stance against clerical marriage as well as the constitutional bishops’ encyclique of 1795.108 Grégoire and Suzor consulted with each other about the most appropriate way to handle Bruslon and the agitation that he incited. Often referring to Bruslon as “perverse” and “immoral,” Suzor condemned him and other married priests for a social crime 127 “their sacrileges” and for having “openly scorned the laws of the Church.”109 Nonetheless, Bruslon insisted on continuing his sacerdotal functions and became increasingly vocal in his opposition to the exclusion of married priests from both the Constitutional Church’s National Council and from sacerdotal ministry. Enraged by married priests’ lack of representation at the National Council, which the United Bishops convened on August 15, 1797, Bruslon issued his own Lettre encyclique in November 1797. He proclaimed, “Married priests are not heretics, although they are viewed and treated as such by Monsieur Grégoire and five or six of his colleagues [encycliqueurs.]”110 To Suzor’s satisfaction, police ordered Bruslon’s arrest and deportation within the year and subsequently denied the many requests that he made for release from internment in Ré during the period from the fall of 1798 to 1799. Brulson also requested the release of three other married priests who had been arrested on charges of opposing the Constitution of 1795 and “directing anarchist movements in the primary electoral assemblies of the department of the Vienne.” After learning of these charges, a twenty- one- year- old woman from Poitiers alerted one of the denounced priests, Pierre- Jean Mignien- Planier, in Saintes. As a result of Marie Adelaïde Morillon’s warning, Planier escaped apprehension. While in hiding, he wrote a mémoire justificatif proclaiming his innocence and patriotism. He explained that he had become a priest in 1772 in order to appease his parents, but he abandoned the priesthood three years later and made plans to marry. He and Marie-Françoise Oudin went to England where they married in an Anglican service in 1775. Planier subsequently faced criminal charges for abducting and seducing Oudin. Nonetheless, the couple eventually returned to France and officially married there in 1792. Planier invoked his marriage, his son, and his ac- quisition of biens nationaux as evidence of his patriotism. His wife of twenty- four years, his octogenarian father, and young citoyenne Morillon also wrote to officials and stressed these same points in their requests for clemency for Planier. Appealing directly to the Directory, Oudin wrote, “If you are spouses and fathers, you will not be insensitive to the tears of a spouse . . . [and] to the prayers 128 unnatural frenchmen of a father. . . . We implore you in the name of patriotism, the virtue of conjugal love, and filial piety to repeal your order of last 14 brumaire.” The distressed wives and supporters of the other two married priests employed similar rhetoric in their petitions for the married priests’ release from the island of Ré. The wife of one of the priests insisted that, despite “popular prejudices,” her husband had fulfilled his patriotic and societal duties as “a good father, spouse, friend, [and] citizen.” In their appeals for his release, the inhabitants of the parish portrayed him, his pregnant wife, and their two young children as victims of “atrocious calumnies.”111 The priests were ultimately released by virtue of the law of 8 frimaire (November 29), which decreed that any married priest who had been deported under the law of 19 fructidor Year V and was in detention on the islands of Ré or Oléron would be freed.112 Earlier that month, Napoleon Bonaparte’s coup d’état of 18 brumaire (November 10, 1799) had ushered in a new political climate that reversed the fortunes of these priests. After Napoleon became First Consul, he also granted amnesty to deported and nonjuring émigré bishops and priests who returned to France. Recognizing the political utility of Catholic support of the state as well as the political liability of intense, continual Catholic resistance, Napoleon allowed certain churches to reopen. During the next few years, Napoleon and the Consulate government attempted to reconcile conflicts between ecclesiastical and secular authorities in order to maintain social order and obedience to the French government. Napoleon and his ministers, namely Bishop Etienne Bernier and Talleyrand, began negotiations with Pope Pius VII and Papal Secretary of State Cardinal Consalvi. Following the lengthy deliberations over the numerous drafts of the Concordat of 1801, the final draft was signed on July16 and subsequently ratified in Rome and Paris, on August15 and Sep- tember 8, respectively. The Concordat secured freedom of public worship, and the Catholic religion entered a new legal phase as the “religion of the majority of the French people.” Napoleon and the pope called for all bishops, juring and nonjuring alike, to renounce their sees and await reappointment. By the terms of a social crime 129 the Concordat, both bishops (who were appointed by the First Consul and canonically instituted by the pope) and priests (whom bishops in turn nominated) swore loyalty to and were salaried by the French state. The Concordat also effectively put an end to the Constitutional Church, whose second National Council at Paris convened in June, a month before the signing of the Concordat. On August 16, Napoleon ordered the dissolution of the second National Council and the Constitutional Church.113 Following the dissolution of the Constitutional Church and the enactment of the Concordat, a lengthy process of reconciliation between married priests and the Roman Catholic Church began. The religious and political authorities who oversaw this process expressly aimed to erase the marriage of priests from the collective French memory. Their task was delicate and daunting, as priestly celibacy and marriage were lightning rods for scandal and controversy. Furthermore, the attitudes of married clerics and their spouses toward marriage, the conditions under which they married, and their conjugal experiences were remarkably varied. These differences came to the fore as ecclesiastical leaders grappled with the difficulties involved in bringing married priests back into the fold of the Roman Catholic Church. FIVE Married Priests in the apoleonic Era Married Priests in the Napoleonic Era

For Charles- Maurice de Talleyrand, Napoleon’s chief diplomat, the issues of clerical celibacy and marriage were personal. Despite his extreme disinclination toward celibacy, Talleyrand had entered the priesthood in 1779. The following year, at the age of twenty- six, he had become agent- general of the French clergy, the clergy’s representative to the crown. Eight years later, he was consecrated bishop of Autun. In 1791 Pope Pius VI excommunicated Talleyrand on account of his support of the nationalization of church properties and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. A decade later, Talleyrand engaged in lengthy negotiations with Rome over the terms of the Concordat of 1801, the post-revolutionary reconciliation of the French government and the papacy. The excommunicated bishop, then Napoleon’s foreign minister and the architect of the Concor- dat, insisted on the inclusion of an article formally recognizing the validity of priests’ marriages and reducing married priests to the lay communion. Talleyrand maintained that the inclusion of this article in the Concordat was “morally indispensable.” He also argued that validating priests’ marriages would reassure and secure the support of “a host of individuals who have become pères de famille and citizens.” Aware of Talleyrand’s desire for secularization and his long- term, illicit relationship with Catherine Grand, the court of Rome refused Talleyrand’s demands.1 Talleyrand’s affair with Catherine Grand, née Worley, became public after he intervened to save her from arrest by the French police, who suspected her of conspiracy and plotting against the married priests in the napoleonic era 131 republic. Rumored to be a spy and a former courtesan, Grand was a noted beauty from Pondicherry and the daughter of a French East India trader. She had married a British civil servant in Cal- cutta at the age of sixteen and divorced him in 1798. Concerned by the indecency of Talleyrand’s relationship with Grand, Napo- leon urged him either to break ties with his mistress or to marry her. Talleyrand repeatedly appealed to the pope for permission to marry. Although Pope Pius VI removed Talleyrand from the ban of excommunication, granted him absolution, and allowed him to enter the lay communion, he refused to allow the former bishop to marry. Hercule Consalvi, the papal secretary of state, informed Talleyrand: “I should have been glad if your Excellency’s wishes could have been completely satisfied and that license to marry could have been included in the Brief. But what was to be done when the history of the Church does not contain a single precedent in eighteen centuries? Your Excellency is too enlightened not to recognize that, even under more pressing circumstances, the example of eighteen centuries is such that the Holy Father cannot deviate from it.” On June 29, 1802, Pius VI added to his papal brief a conciliatory letter to Napoleon, explaining: “We would have been ready to satisfy your Minister in his desire to contract marriage if this were not contrary to the laws of the Church. For eighteen centuries there has not been a single example of license to marry being granted to a consecrated bishop.” Hoping that Talleyrand fully accepted and resigned himself to the terms of the brief, the papal representatives noted, “Nothing further has been said about the license to marry. . . . We may therefore hope that no further entreaties on the subject are contemplated, and that the minister has not taken umbrage.”2 On the contrary, Napoleon and Talleyrand resolved that the marriage would take place regardless. The Consulate issued and publicized a decree registering the papal brief, but its careful word- ing emphasized Talleyrand’s secularization and obscured the fact that he remained bound by his religious vows and unable to marry in the eyes of the pope. Pope Pius VI vainly tried to disabuse the French public of the mistaken notion that Talleyrand was free 132 unnatural frenchmen to marry. Nonetheless, Talleyrand contracted marriage in 1803. Prior to the wedding, Madame de Staël wrote to her friend Juliette Récamier, “They say Madame Grand is to be married to M. de Talleyrand. Bonaparte wants everyone to be married, bishops, car- dinals, etc.”3 Although Napoleon did not champion the marriage of priests, he took considerable measures to facilitate the marriage of the former bishop of Autun. Although the circumstances of Talleyrand’s marriage were exceptional, they were indicative of broader tensions between the Catho- lic Church and the French state in the Napoleonic era. The tensions between religious authorities and secular authorities, particularly former rabidly anticlerical Jacobins in the Napoleonic administration, escalated after Napoleonic General Etienne Radet arrested Pope Pius VII in 1809 and Napoleon annexed papal territories into the French Empire a year later. Moreover, the Eglise de France during the Consulate and Empire was in many respects a shell of its former self. It lacked most of its former monastic orders and faced a decline in clerical recruitment. Clerics who abdicated or married during the Revolution but never returned to the priesthood further diminished the priestly presence in post-revolutionary France. In- creasing hostility toward clerical celibacy and the priesthood likely also contributed to the reduction of the French clergy. For those ecclesiastics like Talleyrand who sought permission to marry as well as for ecclesiastics who had married during or after the Revolution, the politics of reconciliation between Paris and Rome impinged upon their intimate lives and relationships. Post- revolutionary French civil law recognized the legitimacy of priests’ marriages, but canon law still prohibited and invalidated ecclesiastical marriages. From 1801 to 1808, the papal legate to France, Cardi- nal Giovanni Battista Caprara, oversaw the process of reintegrating priests who had married during the Revolution into the Catholic Church. Nearly 4,000 married priests, monks, and nuns participated in this process of reconciliation by papal petition. Approx- imately two- thirds were secular clerics, and one- third were regular clerics of whom only about 350 petitioners were married nuns or nuns who requested a dispensation to marry. Less than 10 percent married priests in the napoleonic era 133 of married priests sought to resume their pastoral activities, and the cardinal required them to separate from their wives and any children in order to reenter the priesthood. The vast majority of petitioning married priests sought to receive absolution from the Holy See, to have their marriages legitimated, and to be integrated into lay society.4 The central issues in the controversy over clerical celibacy and marriage found expression in these married priests’ letters. The archives of the papal legation contain thousands of retrospective accounts from clerics about the religious politics of the Revolution, their personal experiences, and their intimate relationships. Albert Mathiez, one of the first historians of the Revolution to delve into these archives, observed in 1926 that he knew of “few human documents of such gripping interest.” During the 1970s and 1980s, the historians Claude Langlois, T.-J.- A. Le Goff, and Michel Vovelle turned their attention to the sociological and statistical dimensions of the marriages of priests during the Revolution. But, aside from these studies and the more recent work of Xavier Maréchaux, the Caprara correspondence and the marriage of priests during the Revolution have received scant attention.5 It is a situation that, in a sense, testifies to the effectiveness of ecclesiastical authorities’ self-conscious attempts to “erase the scandal” of clerical marriage. One might think that the attempts of Napoleonic France to cope with the legacy of clerical marriage and to bring “concord” with the Concordat of 1801 would resolve the issue and end the strife between the church and the state. But these measures did nothing of the sort. The very process of reconciliation gave new life to debates over celibacy and the relationship between church and state. Weighing in on these debates, many of the priests who had married during the Revolution embraced their new roles as husbands and fathers and maintained that nothing was more natural than conjugal and paternal love. Petitioning the Papal Legate In post-revolutionary France, married priests negotiated the complex relationship between church and state, the formal terms 134 unnatural frenchmen of which were set by the Concordat of 1801. After eight months of arduous negotiations and twenty- one drafts of the agreement, the Concordat of 1801 affirmed Catholicism as the “religion of the majority of French men and women.” Successive French regimes upheld the Concordat of 1801 until its abrogation by the Third Republic with the law of the separation of church and state in 1905. The Concordat recognized the authority of the pope and his right to institute and to depose bishops. It also invested Napoleon with the power to nominate bishops and to require them to swear an oath of fidelity to the French republic. Additionally, Rome relinquished claims to the church properties that were seized and sold during the Revolution, and the French state agreed to pay the salaries of bishops and parochial clergy.6 The restructuring of the church in France and the reconstitution of its clergy were daunting tasks. The French state clashed with papacy on vexing questions surrounding relations between church and state in the post- revolutionary era, particularly those concerning the marriages of priests. During deliberations over the terms of the Concordat, the papacy refused Talleyrand’s reiterated requests that the pope formally reprieve all priests who had married during the Revolution. Representing the Holy See, Cardinal Giuseppe Spina reassured French negotiators that the pope would be merciful to “these lost sheep” and would “repair the great scandal that the marriage of priests has produced in France.” Nonetheless, Spina reaffirmed papal opposition to including this measure in the Concordat. He maintained that the reconciliation process was “a matter of conscience” and “should depend upon the different circumstances of each individual.” Spina insisted, “It cannot be the object of the Concordat.”7 The final draft of the Concordat, signed on July 16, 1801, omitted such a clause. Refusing to include it in the Concordat, Rome offered to conduct the process of reconciliation through a papal brief and a papal legate. The terms of the papal brief, like those of the Concordat, were highly contested. Rome feared that the papal brief would attract “alarming publicity” about the “great scandal” of priestly marriage married priests in the napoleonic era 135 in France rather than effacing or repairing the scandal.8 The French government worried that the pope would subject married priests to humiliating, public penances. France’s chief negotiator, the abbé Etienne Bernier insisted in a letter to Cardinal Consalvi that the papal brief permit married ecclesiastics to live with their spouses in marriages whose validity the pope recognized. Papal and French plenipotentiaries agreed that the papal brief would be modeled upon the example of Pope Julius III who granted powers of dispensation to Cardinal Reginald Pole in 1554. Pole, the papal legate in England during the reign of Mary I, permitted married Catholic priests in England either to remain married as laymen or to separate from their wives and reenter the priesthood.9 Napoleon instructed Bernier to inform the pope that French priests were unlikely to leave their spouses and follow the latter course of action. On behalf of the French government, Bernier wrote to Consalvi, “The character of the nation opposes it. . . . It is not our moeurs, and we doubt that an invitation [to married priests] to resume their [sacerdotal] duties would be well-received by the French people.” Above all, Napoleon and Bernier opposed any reference in the Concordat to England, “a nation still our enemy.”10 France and Rome finally agreed that the papal brief would grant a papal legate the power to remove the censures incurred by secular priests who had married before the promulgation of the Concor- dat. On August 15, 1801, Pope Pius VII issued the brief, Etsi apostolici principatus, from Rome at the same time he issued the papal bull ratifying the Concordat. At Napoleon’s request, Pius VII named the prelate and statesman Giovanni Battista Caprara legat a latere to France on August 24. On September 5, Cardinal Caprara headed to Paris to supervise the application of the Concordat. In the interests of avoiding “alarming publicity,” the papal brief was only communicated to bishops, who then informed clergymen in their dioceses. Nonetheless, news of the rehabilitation of married priests quickly spread. Caprara received his first petition from a married priest seeking reconciliation with Rome in September and received thousands more over the course of the next several years. In the eyes of the church, the impediment of the holy orders rendered 136 unnatural frenchmen these marriages null and void. In order for a priest’s marriage to be consecrated within the church, he needed a dispensation of this impediment, thereby legitimizing his marriage. In contrast, the French state legitimated the marriage of priests and any children born of such unions. Consequently, priests petitioned Caprara only if they were concerned with the spiritual (rather than the civil or legal) dimension of their marriage. Al- though the French state recognized the validity of priests’ marriages, it declared marriage incompatible with ecclesiastical functions in the law of 18 germinal Year X (April 8, 1802). The 121 articles of this law, also known as the Organic Articles, defined the relationship between church and state in Napoleonic France. Napoleon unilaterally added the Organic Articles to the Concordat immediately before its promulgation by the law of 18 germinal. Pope Pius VII adamantly refused to recognize the Organic Articles, which nonetheless became French law. Seventy- seven of these articles pertained to French Catholicism and the other forty- four concerned Protestantism. The Organic Articles provided for greater state supervision of the church and created a ministry of worship to more securely place the church under the control of the state.11 Days after the promulgation of the Concordat and Organic Articles, Jean- Etienne- Marie Portalis, Napoleon’s newly appointed minister of public worship who was chiefly responsible for the Organic Articles, provided additional clarification of the status of married clerics within the French state and the Roman Catholic Church. On April 15, Portalis delivered a speech in which he discussed at length the issue of clerical marriage and celibacy. The Organic Articles bound priests to uphold canon law, which prohibited clerical marriage, but also permitted those who had entered the holy orders to contract marriage as long as they abandoned the priesthood. As Portalis explained, married men who had once taken holy orders enjoyed all the rights, liberties, and advantages guaranteed by the laws of the state, as long as they abstained from the priesthood.12 Defending the practice of clerical celibacy, Portalis strongly urged ecclesiastical authorities to treat priests who married during the Revolution with magnanimity. On June 8, 1802, he married priests in the napoleonic era 137 implored archbishops, “Priests who come to you for the tranquility of their consciences must not be rejected by ignominious measures and strictures that place them between dishonor and despair.”13 However, several concordatory bishops (for example, Henri Rey- mond in Dijon, Claude Le Coz in Besançon, Dominique Lacombe in Angoulême, Jean- Claude Leblanc de Beaulieu in Soissons, and Claude- François- Marie Primat in Toulouse) remained unyielding in their opposition to consecrate the marriages of former priests in their dioceses.14 The number of priests seeking to rehabilitate their marriage and to reintegrate into the Catholic Church as laymen increased during the months following the adoption of the Concordat in France in April 1802. During this period, Caprara only granted dispensations to petitioning secular priests, since the legate’s dispensing powers, as defined in the1801 papal brief, did not extend to the regular clergy. The Vatican considered monks and nuns who had taken solemn vows of chastity and later married during the Revolution to have committed a more grievous offense against the church than secular clergymen, because there was a double impediment to their marriage, having entered into the holy orders in addition to having taken solemn vows of chastity. As a result of their violation of the solemn vow of chastity, regular clergy needed to appeal directly to the pope; however, the substantial number of regular clerics who wrote to Caprara led the pope to reevaluate his stance. On October 27, 1802, Pius VII issued a papal brief, Inter plura illa mala, granting Caprara the authority to reconcile any monk or nun who had married before August 15, 1801. Caprara received the greatest number of petitions during the period from 1802 to 1804 and nearly 1,000 petitions in the year 1803 alone.15 The pope devised guidelines for what information clerics should include in their letters to Caprara. These guidelines provided “instruction for the writing of petitions of religious men and women who have contracted a civil marriage, asking that the obligation of the solemn vow of chastity be suspended . . . and that their marriage be rehabilitated before the Church.” The pope instructed petitioners to provide the following information: (1) the names 138 unnatural frenchmen of both cleric and spouse, as well as an indication of whether the spouse had been “free” to contract marriage—in other words, not under any constraint or nondispensed impediment; (2) whether the petitioner had taken religious vows freely or by “constraint, or at least a respectful fear of one’s parents”; (3) the date of the marriage contract; (4) the motivations for marriage; (5) the number of children born of the marriage; (6) a discussion of the care the couple would take to raise their children according to Catholic principles; (7) a discussion of the difficulties that would prevent the cleric from separating from his spouse and children; and (8) an expression of the couple’s sincere repentance and firm resolution to “repair the scandal” of their marriage through exemplary conduct and marital fidelity.16 Ecclesiastical authorities often assisted and provided petitioners with sample petitions, and some petitioners closely followed the formula the pope had devised. Some petitions were terse but others provide truly remarkable accounts of the extraordinary internal struggles that priests faced during this period. The rhetorical strategies and lacunae in the thousands of letters sent to Caprara during the first decade of the nineteenth century reveal how married ecclesiastics portrayed their individual experiences of the Revolution and how they responded to and made sense of its aftermath. Of the married priests whose petitions provided information about their professional lives, 40 percent were involved in civil administration, and over 25 percent were teachers. The professions of married ex-clerics also included artisan, agricultural worker, brewer, notary, doctor, surgeon, soldier, postmaster, librarian, firefighter, chief of police, and mayor. While most petitioners had only one living child at the time of writing to Caprara, hundreds of married priests had three or more children. One cleric even had ten children. Securing a steady stream of income was a financial imperative for married priests, the majority of whom had children and had very limited resources. Some lived in dire poverty.17 The length and detail of priests’ petitions to Caprara varied widely. Petitioners generally wrote in the third person. Approxi- mately 20 to 25 percent of petitions were written in Latin; these married priests in the napoleonic era 139 petitions in Latin were generally strictly formulaic and often penned by a prelate for the petitioner. Intermediaries, such as écrivains publics, wives, widows, lawyers, fellow clerics, and bishops, also wrote to Caprara on behalf of married priests.18 Bishops or clerics often provided corroborating reports to verify the information petitioners presented to Caprara. Considerable omissions and lacunae in the Caprara correspondence frequently pertained to the identity and lives of the wives of priests. In some cases, petitioning priests provided no information whatsoever about their wife or provided only her name. Some priests appealed to Caprara on behalf of their wives, and some co-wrote letters with their wives. The majority of priests’ wives who wrote to Caprara were former nuns, who sought absolution and dispensation from Caprara for marrying a fellow cleric. Only 2 percent of secular priests and 4 percent of regular priests petitioning Caprara had married a nun, whereas one-fourth of the nuns who petitioned Caprara had married a priest.19 Caprara rehabilitated the marriages of those who supplied the requisite information and who had married prior to August 15, 1801. On account of both “the frightening, stormy circumstances of the Revolution” and the pope’s “extraordinary charity,” Caprara explained that he would grant dispensations for the impediment of holy orders to individuals who married prior to the Concordat.20 In most cases, a priest could relatively easily receive permission to rehabilitate his marriage by simply writing to Caprara, but reintegrating into the priesthood often involved a lengthy and demanding process of reconciliation. Only priests who separated from their wives or who were widowers were eligible for reintegration into the priesthood. Those resuming their priestly functions were generally granted permission to do so as long as they resided in or moved to a different geographic area from where they married. Xavier Maréchaux has found that only 16 percent of married priests who wrote to Caprara requested reentry into the priesthood.21 Caprara was more willing and likely to accept a priest’s request to rehabilitate his marriage (a request Caprara only flatly refused when the marriage took place after the ratification of the Concordat) than to reintegrate him into the priesthood. Refusing to allow a married 140 unnatural frenchmen priest, who attested to having abstained from sexual relations with his wife for the previous two years, to reenter the priesthood, Caprara wrote, “After the serious mistakes that you have had the misfortune to commit, it would be . . . a real scandal to allow you to resume the functions of the Holy Ministry, to which you have lost all rights.”22 Generally, priests who unsuccessfully petitioned to resume their sacerdotal functions nonetheless received permission from Caprara to rehabilitate their marriage instead. All priests who sought reintegration into the priesthood wrote to Caprara, but only a portion of priests who led lives as laymen petitioned Caprara. Approximately half of the priests who married during the Revolution wrote to Caprara. Many radical priests who had married during the Revolution and renounced the priesthood did not care or bother to seek reconciliation with the church and absolution from the Holy See. Unless pressured by their families to write to Caprara, they generally abstained from doing so. There- fore, married priests who reported coercion and those who sought reintegration into the priesthood are overrepresented in the Caprara correspondence. Nonetheless, these letters provides rich biographic and prosopographical information on the lives of married priests and, to a lesser extent, those of the women they married. Both married priests seeking rehabilitation of their marriage and petitioners seeking reintegration into the priesthood frequently discussed and justified their marriage as a means of avoiding death, persecution, deportation, threats, and intimidation. The small minority of married priests seeking to resume their pastoral functions emphasized the extreme duress under which they married, their commitment to celibacy and to the priesthood, and their willingness to separate from their spouse. Crafting dramatic retrospective accounts of persecution and victimization, many petitioners depicted their marriage as a desperate attempt at self-preservation and a survival strategy to elude persecution. They sought to convince the cardinal that they had not transgressed clerical discipline lightly and that they were worthy of papal indulgence. Priests who wrote to Caprara seeking forgiveness and dispensations for their transgressions of clerical discipline justified their marriage as a necessity married priests in the napoleonic era 141 under the exigent circumstances of the Revolution. Many clerics claimed that the Terror inspired paralyzing fear that rendered them weak, “pusillanimous cowards” who “lacked courage and ceded to fear.”23 One petitioner stated, “Fear of death and even more so that of deportation were the only reasons that convinced me to violate the commitment that I had made, by entering the priesthood, to live in celibacy.”24 Most petitioners stressed the overwhelming pressure and exceptional circumstances under which they married. Petitioners suggested that contracting marriage seemed, at the time, a sensible and justifiable course of action under the “stormy,” “vertiginous,” and “confusing” circumstances of the Revolution. Claiming that the exceptional circumstances of the Revolution clouded their moral judgment, many petitioners expressed remorse about losing sight of and abandoning their sacerdotal duties. Some petitioners reported that revolutionary ideology had seduced them into erroneously believing that priests could validly marry. They cited the considerable confusion that arose from conflicting civic and ecclesiastical regula- tions. “Falsely thinking that his religious engagements were broken by the provisions of the law that suppressed [monasticism],” a monk explained that he had contracted marriage during the Rev- olution “in the good faith of ignorance.” Others maintained that priestly marriage was valid and legitimate during the Revolution. One petitioner argued that during the Revolution, ecclesiastical celibacy “had not been obligatory for those, like myself, who could not have observed it without placing their life in danger.” A priest from Meaux who faced deportation similarly maintained, “I judged that it was permissible for me to escape this terrible measure [deportation] in contracting a [marital] alliance.” A parish priest from Seine-et- Oise justified his decision to marry even in the absence of persecution: “I will not tell you that fear of death guided me in this action. . . . I believed that I could [marry] in good conscience and exercise the functions of the Holy Ministry. I could be mistaken.”25 While some clerics attested to having been “carried away by the enthusiasm of the French Revolution, like by an irresistible torrent,” other petitioners claimed that they married only upon the 142 unnatural frenchmen urging of concerned family members, friends, and parishioners. In their letters to Caprara, some priests discussed these solicitations in terms of well- intentioned, life- saving advice from good, honest people, whereas others described such advice as “pernicious” and as the source of their suffering and despair.26 Many priests exaggerated to Caprara the extent and degree to which they were personally persecuted in order to justify their marriage and appear less culpable to the papal legate. In 1802 Nicolas Jolyclerc petitioned the papacy for forgiveness and declared that he was among the victims of the forced marriage of priests. Jolyclerc explained that he and his brother, also a priest, both found themselves imprisoned and facing death. In prison, they learned that marriage was “the only means of securing and saving their lives.” But Jolyclerc’s retrospective account should not be taken as a reliable account of the events preceding his marriage. Although Jolyclerc mentioned that he had authored several works on the subjects of natural history, chemistry, and physics, he failed to note that he had also published an anti-celibacy tract in 1798. In this work, Joly- clerc equated clerical celibacy with tyranny and servitude. Jolyclerc’s publication suggested that he viewed his own marriage as an act of liberation rather than a coerced act of desperation. But four years after publishing his defense of clerical marriage, he represented his marriage to the pope in a starkly different manner. By that point, Jolyclerc’s personal circumstances and France’s political climate had significantly changed. After his wife had passed away, he wanted to reconcile with Rome and presented his marriage accordingly.27 A sign that validated priests’ claims to have been under extraordinary pressure was their quickly seeking an annulment or divorce, an act that civil authorities recommended but that ecclesiastical authorities strongly opposed. A parish priest from Cahors attested to “pretending to contract marriage with his domestic servant in his own home with the express understanding between each other not to violate in any way the vow of chastity attached to the holy orders.” The couple lived in continence, purportedly avoiding “even the slightest familiarity,” and divorced within less than a year.28 From 1792 to 1803, divorce was accessible to all social groups to married priests in the napoleonic era 143 an unprecedented degree. The September 20, 1792 law on divorce had abolished séparation de corps and had introduced divorce by mutual consent, for incompatibility, or on specified grounds such as abuse, immorality, or desertion. Divorce became less common following Napoleon’s restrictions on the practice in 1804, and it was abolished altogether in 1816 with the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy.29 Until that point, the most common form of divorce among married priests was by mutual consent. Often, wives consented to separation only on the condition that their husbands would provide assistance for the support and education of their children. Financial considerations weighed heavily on the minds of many women who wed priests, leading some to resist divorce. One woman who married her uncle, an eighty- six- year- old priest from Autun, refused to grant him a divorce by mutual consent, since she wished to receive the entirety of his property after his death, as their marriage contract stipulated.30 After dissolving their “so-called” marriages, some priests dis- avowed their marriages before public assemblies and their parishioners. During Year II, a constitutional priest and former monk contracted marriage with one of his relatives, who had been “almost three- months pregnant by another man.” In 1797 he separated from his “so- called” wife, relinquishing all of his property to her. He published his retraction and their declaration of separation, distributing the documents in his parish.31 By publicly renouncing their marriages, priests sought to “liberate” wives and also to regain the trust of their parishioners in hopes of resuming ecclesiastical functions.32 Although the majority of petitioners seeking to return to the priesthood had ended “simulated,” unconsummated marriages by separation or divorce, many clerical couples who separated or divorced had children. In most cases, the mother had custody, and the father provided financial support for her and the children. Many priests mistakenly believed that ecclesiastical authorities who urged priests to separate from their wives wanted them to divorce. In some instances, priests initiated the process of reintegrating into the priesthood upon the death of their child or wife. One constitutional priest informed Caprara that he had “lived 144 unnatural frenchmen conjugally with his cousin, a nun, for seventeen months and from this incestuous and sacrilegious concubinage had a child who lived only three months.” After separating from his wife, who died soon thereafter, the cleric sought reintegration into the priesthood.33 A widowed monk, who wanted to resume sacerdotal functions in order to support his two daughters, lamented in his letter to Caprara that his parents had died during the Revolution, yet his monastic vows had dispossessed him of any inheritance. He was incapable of earning a living on account of his disabled left arm and lived on charity. In order to end his family’s constant struggle against “the most dreadful indigence,” he wished to return to the priesthood.34 Reintegrating into the priesthood for financial reasons, however, was relatively rare given the difficulty of reintegration and the relatively modest remuneration. Generally, priests who had to care for young children after the death of a spouse, or more rarely in cases of marital separation, remarried and worked outside of the church, most often as teachers and civil servants. A small proportion of married priests separated from their wives, successfully navigated the difficult reintegration process, and received cures. The Caprara correspondence, however, only rarely reveals the final outcome of a priest’s bid for reintegration. Although Caprara absolved priests of the censures incurred by their marriage, which was a necessary precondition but not a guarantee of reintegration into the clergy, it was local and diocesan ecclesiastical authorities who actually determined whether these priests could fulfill pastoral functions. As Caprara informed a petitioning priest from Angoulême, his bishop would decide what would be most suitable and whether the petitioner could rehabilitate his minis- terial role.35 Confessors and bishops could determine and impose the particular conditions for priests’ penance and reintegration into the priesthood. Many priests who seriously considered or even attempted to separate from their wives in order to return to the priesthood ultimately decided to remain together, rather than meeting stringent requirements for priestly rehabilitation. Deterred by the conditions of clerical rehabilitation, many of the priests who initially expressed their desire to reenter the priesthood later married priests in the napoleonic era 145 requested a nuptial benediction instead. Some petitioners who wanted to return to the priesthood but did not want to separate from their wives indicated their desire to rehabilitate their sacerdotal functions only in the case of becoming widowers.36 Marriage marked a new, distinctive phase in the lives of ecclesiastics. For some, this period was short- lived, but for others, it was a lifelong radical and continuous transformation. The conditions under which priests married influenced their choice of spouse and their expectations about marriage. Conjugal life often defied priests’ expectations, from those whose loving marriages ended in divorce to those who married under duress with the firm intention to separate from their “so- called” spouse as soon as possible but became devoted husbands and fathers instead. Married priests’ highly varied attitudes toward marriage found expression in their petitions to the papal legate. “Give Me Marriage or Give Me Death!”: Defending Conjugal and Paternal Love A small minority of petitioners agreed to submit to whatever terms of reconciliation that Rome imposed upon them, but the majority refused under any circumstances to separate from their wives and children. Their allegiances were torn between their families and their faith. Their personal values and ethics were in conflict with the institutional values and concerns of the Catholic Church. Despite former priests’ dedication to the Catholic Church and their desire for reconciliation, most married priests refused to sacrifice their family lives. Their allegiances to their wives and children were stronger than their allegiances to the papacy. Papal dispensation for the censures married priests incurred came as a great relief to petitioning clerics and prevented them from breaking ties with the church. Some petitioners candidly admitted that neither fear nor persecution motivated their marriage, and they boldly and unapolo- getically defended the practice and legitimacy of clerical marriage, invoking the scripture, nature, reason, ecclesiastical history, and personal experience. These married ecclesiastics declared that the 146 unnatural frenchmen rule of priestly celibacy was not a matter of divine law, or dogma, or even morality, but a point of ecclesiastical discipline, which was subject to change and was absent in the Eastern Church.37 A former parish priest of Cambrai even expressed hopes in his petition that the Holy See would abolish clerical celibacy, a reform “that pious and enlightened persons have wanted for several centuries.”38 Pierre Fontanier, who published an anti-celibacy tract in 1792, continued to extol the virtues of clerical marriage in his petitions to the papacy. Fontanier adamantly defended the legitimacy of the marriage that he had contracted: “I did not have the slightest doubt about the legitimacy of my marriage, even the religious aspect. . . . My opinion has not changed.”39 Although Caprara granted Fontanier absolution and dispensation from the holy orders, the cardinal urged Fontanier’s vicar to instill the unrepentant cleric with an understanding and appreciation of the gravity and enormity of the scandal he caused for the church.40 Petitioners like Fontanier did not shield Caprara from their unabashed opposition to clerical celibacy and admitted that they had long yearned for the opportunity to marry and fulfill their true vocation of père de famille. One petitioner confessed that he had never felt a sense of vocation for the priesthood but “felt called to the state of marriage.”41 The former general vicar of Tulle wrote, “I was born to be a good père de famille.” His rallying cry during the Revolution was: “Give me marriage or give me death!”42 Many petitioners discussed their fraught relationship with clerical celibacy, emphasizing their misery, distress, and revulsion toward sexual renunciation. One petitioner expressed his “invincible repugnance to celibacy,” and another wrote of “the invincible disgust that he had constantly felt for the constraints of celibacy.” Without God’s calling to the priesthood and to celibacy, these priests viewed celibacy as impossibly difficult and as an insurmountable obstacle to their happiness and tranquility. Some ecclesiastics maintained that their “natural inclinations” had always been opposed to celibacy. Others attested that their aversion to celibacy had intensified over time, becoming “more and more in- tolerable.” One cleric explained that after he had been forced to married priests in the napoleonic era 147 enter the ecclesiastical state, “the fire of his passions reignited more violently than ever.”43 The advent of clerical marriage during the Revolution had enabled priests to satisfy their urges and desires in a manner that they viewed as legitimate and licit—but that the pope abhorred. The Revolution created a new order in which priests reported that they felt free to follow their hearts and “to obey the imperious laws of nature.” Petitioners described “profiting from the French Revolution by following [their] natural inclinations” and marrying. One petitioning cleric, “incapable of regulating his own desires,” hoped to find in marriage “a remedy for concupiscence [and], what is more, a means of salvation.” Emphasizing the remedial function of marriage, another petitioner considered his marriage “the most legitimate means of satisfying a natural inclination that was impossible for me to resist”; it was a means “of avoiding incontinence and fornication,” in the words of another petitioning cleric.44 Marriage represented not only an alternative to celibacy but also an antidote to illicit sex. Some petitioners provided Caprara with information about their illicit sexual pasts. Petitioning parish priests and tonsured clerics admitted to having premarital sex, fathering children out of wedlock, and living with concubines. One petitioner discussed having had an affair with a married woman before he entered the seminary.45 Another confided to Caprara that he had acted on his strong sexual desires with the woman who had cared for him when he had fallen ill in 1788: “Nature spoke so strongly in me that she [Nature] drove us to acts which are only permitted in marriage.”46 Petitioners recounted marrying the women with whom they had premarital affairs. Particularly when pregnancy resulted, clerics sought to “right the wrong” they did to the “seduced and dishonored” woman. A petitioning monk informed Caprara that he married a nun whom he had impregnated; another monk had married his goddaughter, whom he had impregnated (while also having an affair with her sister) and with whom he later had six more children.47 Other clerics tried to avoid marriage and conceal the paternity of their children. A priest in Montpellier fathered two 148 unnatural frenchmen children whose paternity the couple tried unsuccessfully to hide.48 Another petitioner and his sexual partner had hid their child’s birth from the public in 1795 and raised the child by a wet nurse. Later they decided to legally contract marriage in 1800.49 Another petitioning cleric and his concubine, “having always passed and been received and recognized everywhere as husband and wife in order to avoid scandal,” baptized their four children as legitimate. Al- though they had been unwed at the time, the couple later married in a secret civil ceremony.50 These letters provide rare and rich documentation of clerics’ illicit sexual lives. In exceptionally lurid testimony, Jacques- Nicolas- Michel Mare confessed to Caprara to having had “a secret affair with a person dedicated to God (a sister of Providence)” in his parish. Furthermore, he admitted to having had affairs with several married women, including a thirteen- year- long affair that resulted in a public scandal and the birth of a child. The cuckolded husband, who was a former friend of the philandering priest, realized the child was not his own. In turn, Mare suggested that his friend divorce his wife—in hopes that he could then marry her. The laundry list of sins that Mare confessed to Caprara also included “a secret affair with another married woman, which began with liaisons at the confessional”; an affair with a unmarried woman who had previously had a sexual relationship with another ecclesiastical and who secretly gave birth to an illegitimate child; and “carnal knowledge of a young girl, his penitent, whom he had suborned.” Mare, who eventually married and raised two children, asked Capr- ara for forgiveness for these “horrors” and “blame[d] himself for having entered into his [ecclesiastical] state with inclinations quite opposed to the virtue of chastity.”51 Many married priests invoked the ideal of “conjugal chastity,” stressing their fidelity to their spouse and their sexual restraint. Pe- titioners also emphasized friendship and affection over lust and passion as the basis of their marriage. One petitioner observed, “The marriage that we contracted is the fruit not of brutal passion but of love and esteem that never diminished.”52 Another similarly observed that his conjugal relationship was “driven by a feeling of married priests in the napoleonic era 149 esteem and reciprocal friendship rather than by passion.”53 Accus- tomed to living together, these couples insisted that they needed the support and affection of their spouse. One priest explained that he could not separate permanently from his wife: “All of the times that I separated from her, even for several months, she fell ill, not by a carnal love . . . but by friendship and attachment.”54 A couple from Clermont, a former priest and nun who had been friends since childhood, declared that separation would be “cruel.”55 Another clerical couple stated, “The close union and pure friendship that we have are very powerful ties that can only be broken by death.”56 Others, even those who claimed to have been forced to marry, described their marriage in superlative terms as “the most perfect friendship,” “the most tender, the most perfect union,” and “truly a terrestrial paradise.”57 The vast majority of petitioning priests refused to separate from their wives, for whom they expressed deep affection. In some cases, petitioners who reported to have married under duress with intentions never to consummate their marriage and to separate as soon as possible ultimately choose marriage and fatherhood over the priesthood. Their letters articulated a vision of conjugal and domestic relationships based on the model of the affective conjugal family and held their own marriages up as “models of conjugal virtue.”58 Priests who effusively praised the virtues of their wives and marriage often maintained that their conjugal bonds strengthened over time, particularly after the birth of their children. Conjugal and paternal love were mutually reinforcing in the hearts and minds of these married clerics—or at least in their letters to Caprara. They wrote about their ever- increasing attachment to and affection for their wives and children. Furthermore, their feelings of conjugal and paternal love, affection, and tenderness were closely bound to a sense of obligation and duty toward their wives and children. Hundreds of petitioning priests explained to Caprara that their devotion and duty to their families prevented them from abandoning their wives and children. Some expressed their reverence for “the rights and duties of paternity,” and others insisted that abandoning their children would be the greatest sin they could commit.59 One cleric adamantly refused to shirk the conjugal duties he owed to his 150 unnatural frenchmen wife, “for whom he has all the friendship, esteem, and attachment that a faithful spouse must have,” and his paternal duties toward his children, for whom he pledged to be a “bon père de famille.”60 Pe- titioning priests commonly described their conjugal and paternal bonds as “indissoluble.” A father of several children declared that breaking his indissoluble bond with his children would “rip out his guts and paternal heart.”61 Another insisted, “It would tear his very heart and the depths of his body and soul.”62 Separation would ensure petitioners own misery and that of their wives and children. One petitioner informed Caprara that tearing apart families was contrary to his faith and “repugnant to the natural sentiments of a good father and good mother.”63 Many petitioning priests affirmed their commitment to fulfill the duties of nature as “a good spouse and a good père de famille.”64 The ties that bound clerics to their wives and children were not only emotional but also economic. Stressing their spouses and children’s need for their emotional and financial support, petitioners insisted on fulfilling their obligations to their families. Priests commonly referred to separating and to abandoning their families in need of their support as “morally impossible.” A priest from Amiens attested that his wife and child could “survive only by the fruits of his labor.” Other petitioners protested that abandoning their wives and children would leave them dishonored and impoverished. Priests feared that separation would destroy their families and the lives of their beloved children and wives. They insisted that their children’s well- being depended on the presence of both parents to raise and care for them.65 Petitioning priests and their wives also insisted that they needed the care of one another. Ad- ditionally, petitioners often justified their refusal to separate from their wives on the basis of their own or their wives’ illness or old age. Ill husbands needed their wives to care for them, and ill wives needed the care of their husbands. One sixty- year- old priest explained that he “had a great need of a companion to help me and to soothe me in my pain.”66 The preservation of marriage and the family was a moral, social, and “natural” imperative. Many petitioning priests affirmed their married priests in the napoleonic era 151 commitment to fulfill the duties of nature as “a good spouse and a good père de famille.”67 Their wives similarly pledged to be good mères de famille and “to faithfully fulfill the sacred duties of nature.”68 These couples informed Caprara that separating and tearing apart their families were contrary to their faith and “repugnant to the natural sentiments of a good father and good mother.”69 Married priests tried to reconcile their attachment to the Catholic religion with their attachment to their spouses and children. As one petitioner observed, “I tenderly treasure my wife; I have the greatest affection for my two children, one of whom is eight and the other six. The duties of nature irrevocably attach me to them, and I want to be able to reconcile this love, so sweet and natural, with the duties imposed upon me by the religion in which I was born and of which I was once a minister.”70 Struggling with the tension between these “natural” and religious duties, another petitioner recognized that his marriage was illegitimate in the eyes of the church, but he was unable and unwilling to break the “ties of conjugal [and] paternal love” that tightly bound him to his family.71 Priests who opposed separation and sought legitimation of their marriage from the papacy often adamantly affirmed their attachment to their family, patrie, and religion. Most married priests, particularly those with children, ethically objected to separating. Although Rome urged married French clerics who were willing to separate from their wives to do so, in order to “erase the scandal” of clerical marriage, most married priests balked at the proposition, arguing that the greater scandal would be the dissolution of their marriages and households. Clerics protested that separating would dishonor and disgrace their wives and their in- laws. They maintained that the French public accepted their marriages as “legitimate and Christian” and would view separation as “odious.” Separating would leave their wives and children in a perilous, miserable position, provoking public scorn and violating good moeurs.72 Furthermore, petitioners also claimed that separation would undermine the social order by breaking the most important bond of civil society—marriage.73 Priests and their wives also feared the possibility of sexual scandal resulting from the breaking 152 unnatural frenchmen of this bond, which would expose them to the “extreme difficulty” of living celibately after years of conjugal life. Most petitioners suggested that the so-called scandal of their marriage would pale in comparison to the scandals that would result from their separation. Petitioners insisted that the greatest casualty and “innocent victims” of marital separation would be their families. They expressed fears that deserting their children would cause them to “fall into the abyss of all sorts of disorders and miseries” and “would indubita- bly lead to their temporal and spiritual ruin.” Married clerics questioned Caprara about how much their children and wives should suffer and be punished for a crime they did not commit. Some petitioners seeking to exculpate their wives from blame insisted that their spouses were unaware of the gravity of the offense and the diriment impediment invalidating their marriage in the church. Petitioners insisted that their marriage should not cost their wives and children their salvation.74 As married priests and their wives approached old age and even death, they composed particularly urgent pleas for the papacy to condone their marriage. “In delicate health, habitually ill, and pregnant, fearing dying in this dreadful state in which she finds herself,” a wife of a former constitutional priest in the department of Deux- Sèvres, who claimed that her husband had abducted her, disgraced her family, and persuaded her that they could marry legitimately, fervently sought out the sacraments and the legitimation of her marriage. In a pathos- filled letter, another distraught petitioner detailed his terminally ill wife’s futile attempts at convincing her parish priest to administer to her the sacraments: “She died as a result of breast cancer, which tormented her, and of moral suffering, which pained her even more. . . . When she knew her illness could not be cured, she begged the parish priest to offer a mass for her. . . . Her request for confession was refused even a second time . . . when the priests refused to follow the directives on reconciliation. . . . They always wanted to consider her a public concubine, and as such they required of her full separation.” Unwilling to separate from her husband, she died without receiving the last sacraments, devastating her husband.75 married priests in the napoleonic era 153 Although Caprara was committed to “repairing the scandal” of clerical marriages contracted before August 15, 1801, the pope and papal legate firmly refused to grant dispensations for the censures that ecclesiastics had incurred by marrying after the promulgation of the Concordat. The terms of the reconciliation process did not apply to these clerics, yet priests who had married after the Con- cordat as well as those who wanted dispensation to marry futilely appealed to Caprara for leniency. Petitioning clerics who married after the Concordat unsuccessfully used a variety of strategies to secure the legitimation of their marriage. Some simply omitted the date of their marriage from their petitions, and one petitioner even lied about the date. Others explained that they were unaware of the Concordat at the time of its ratification or feigned ignorance of the Concordat. One priest, whose wife’s death in February 1801 left him with a young daughter, remarried a widow on October 1, 1801. He lamented that he was unaware of the papal bull issued days earlier.76 In March 1802, a former Franciscan monk remarried a year after the death of his first wife, a former nun. His second wife had converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, and the couple professed to have been ignorant of the ratification of the Concordat at the time of their marriage.77 Nonetheless, Caprara deemed such marriages null and void, unable to be rehabilitated. He insisted that these priests separate from their so- called wives. Caprara adamantly defended his position that there were no means of rehabilitating so- called marriages taking place after the Con- cordat. The cardinal maintained that rehabilitation was impossible and beyond the scope of the exceptional powers that the papacy granted him. Although clerics had recourse to petitioning the pope, Caprara explained that doing so would be “useless,” since the pope also opposed giving indulgences for post- revolutionary marriages.78 Although the cardinal’s unyielding response to these petitions remained the same, the individual circumstances of priests who had married after the Concordat varied widely. A substantial proportion of these petitioners had been previously married. Clerics whose spouse’s death left them with young children were particularly likely to remarry, even after the Concordat. Some clerics 154 unnatural frenchmen explained that they wanted to marry simply because they had fallen “hopelessly in love.”79 Priests who married under the exigent circumstances of pregnancy constituted another significant contingent. Others married in order to fulfill promises of marriage that they claimed to have made months, years, or even a decade prior to the Concordat. Several petitioning priests attested to having made public their intentions to marry their future wives years before the Concordat and had been living together as husband and wife with children long before actually contracting marriage.80 A priest from La Rochelle attested to living in a “natural and consummated marriage,” which lacked religious and civil formalities, before formally contracting marriage after the Concordat, following the death of his parents, as he no longer feared disinheritance.81 Other petitioners insisted that their marriages were “naturally and really prior” to the Concordat, even if formally contracted after the treaty. They also attested to having mistakenly believed that the pope had approved of the marriage of priests as the French government had. These petitioners expressed confidence that the church would be forgiving, allowing them to remain with their wives and children. Describing the prospect of abandoning his children as “a shameful, immoral, scandalous, and desolate downfall for me, for my wife, for my two children,” one petition felt certain that the church would not “demand sacrifices that offend nature and good moeurs.”82 Indignant at Caprara’s orders to separate, petitioners affirmed their commitment to uphold their conjugal and paternal duties. They objected to separation as undermining the natural and moral order. One cleric who married in the year 1802, Jean- Marie- Nicholas Maurice, argued that separating from his wife and children was a “disgusting” act against nature and the established social order. Such a separation was “repudiated by law, by my spouse, by her parents, by my own daughter, and finally by [the public].” He asked, “Do I have the right to condemn [my wife] to perpetual celibacy? Wouldn’t I be responsible, in the eyes of men and even God himself, for the ruin and degradation of her morals, the loss of her fortune, her estate, and all her hopes?” Maurice decried the married priests in the napoleonic era 155 injustice and immorality of separating from his wife: “What has [my wife] done to deserve such terrible treatment? . . . Must she be responsible for the tie that chains me and that your hand can break?” Maurice argued that Caprara should release him from his obligation to remain celibate rather than compel him to transgress social and natural laws by breaking the bonds of paternity and conjugality.83 Drawing attention to the state and church’s conflicting stances toward married clerics, Maurice lamented, “I am an unfortunate victim of the disunity [of the priesthood and the empire] and of the inconsistency of civil and religious laws.” He argued that if French law had upheld the canonical impediment that made priests unable to marry, he would not have been caught within the struggle between the church and the French state on the question of clerical marriage. As a result of the inconsistency between civil and religious law, Maurice faced a difficult dilemma: obeying the wishes of the church would mean betraying his patrie and the social compact; refusing to comply with Caprara’s demands would subject him, his wife, and their children to censure and anathema. Maurice urged Caprara to grant indulgences to married priests who had become unwittingly embroiled in the conflict between the church and state. By extending clemency beyond the limits of the date of the Concordat, Maurice argued that the papacy would restore social and familial unity and “would reattach the state to the Church.” He continued, “Under your auspices and those of religion, the conjugal bond [and] the rights and duties of paternity would be respected . . . and you would be honored by fathers, spouses, [and] by all sensitive souls.” On the other hand, forcing married clerics to abandon their children and spouses would undermine the Catholic religion and provoke an “internal and deadly war” between church and state.84 His line of reasoning failed to convince Caprara. The problem and “scandal” of clerical marriage continued to plague the papacy well into the nineteenth century. For several years after the Concordat, priests continued to marry, as no French law declared priests incapable of contracting marriage. The church, 156 unnatural frenchmen however, explicitly forbade such marriages to take place. Nonethe- less, priests petitioned Caprara for permission to be released from their vows and to marry. They often justified their request on the grounds that marriage represented a means of avoiding sexual sin. Petitioners stressed their difficulties in overcoming temptations of the flesh, a task that became more daunting after leaving ecclesiastical office. Louis Fontana, a former monk turned doctor, insisted that perpetual celibacy was impossible in the “corrupt and corrupting secular world,” despite his efforts to “concentrate all my thoughts on the meditation of celestial objects, in the perfection of my interior self.” Fontana found himself surrounded by pitfalls: “I struggled against a perverse world, where entrancing sirens lead astray the inexperienced navigator by their perfidious voices [and] where my soul is always in peril.” Fontana implored Caprara to liberate him from his monastic vows and permit him to marry.85 Many petitioners requesting permission to marry were widowers who found celibacy very difficult to maintain after the death of their spouse. Divorcés also sought dispensation to remarry, particularly those who cared for young children. The impending birth of a child also led to post-Concordatory marriages. For this reason, a pregnant former nun, whose nine- year marriage to a Capuchin monk ended in divorce by mutual consent, requested permission to remarry.86 Other petitioners explained that they wanted to marry simply because they had fallen in love. Many expressed their desire for emotional or material support in a lifelong companion. Some had already been romantically and sexually involved for years with a partner whom they wanted to marry. A priest from Nancy asked for a dispensation of the impediment of holy orders to marry his concubine, a widow with whom he had been living for the past eight years.87 Such requests aroused the indignation of clerical authorities, such as the bishop of Carcassonne who reported with disgust that a priest wanted permission to marry a prostitute [ fille publique] in 1805.88 Caprara also expressed his displeasure at the persistence of requests to marry and to legitimate marriages contracted in the post- Concordatory era. married priests in the napoleonic era 157 Caprara viewed all post-Concordatory marriages as immoral. Al- though the papacy would make selective exceptions for clerics who married during the turmoil and confusion of the Revolution, the Concordat had ushered in a “new order of things,” putting an end to the revolutionary period of exceptionality. Caprara maintained that permitting a person bound by a solemn vow of chastity to contract marriage was a “scandal.” He lamented, “The Holy Father would be disappointed to learn that there are still ecclesiastics who dare forget their duties to such a degree.” According to Caprara, ignoring the “solemn promises that [a cleric] made to God and the Church” and refusing to separate from his spouse would cause a considerable scandal and the cleric’s “eternal ruin.” In response to the protestations and pleadings of a Benedictine monk-cum- agricultural worker from Bordeaux who confessed to having seduced and impregnated a teenage girl whom he married after the Concordat, Caprara refused to accept blame for his predicament. Caprara admonished, “It is not my fault, and I can’t cry about your spiritual ruin or that of the person whom you have abused.” Caprara warned that refusing to separate would cost the former monk his salvation: “This passion of the moment . . . will be the cause of the eternal loss of his soul.”89 Ecclesiastical authorities maintained that separation and penance were the only recourse for such clerics who contracted marriage after the Concordat.90 From tales of suffering to those of conjugal bliss, the corpus of correspondence between married clerics and Caprara encom- passes the diversity of married clerics’ experiences from the pre- revolutionary through the post-revolutionary eras. In most cases, their marriages defy simple categorization. Although some priests under duress contracted unconsummated marriages that ended swiftly and mutually in separation, others, even those claiming to have married under the most repressive and coercive circumstances, effusively described their affection for their wives and children from whom they refused to separate. In most cases, conjugal and affective bonds between priests and their wives solidified over time. What priests once viewed as a coerced marriage became a source of happiness and fulfillment for them. 158 unnatural frenchmen

Controversy Renewed At the same time as Caprara oversaw the process of discreetly reintegrating married priests into the Catholic Church, very public contestations over clerical celibacy and marriage manifested themselves in print and in the courts. During the first decade of the nineteenth century, renewed debates over clerical celibacy revisited many of the arguments that emerged in the literature of the previous century, particularly those concerning the “unnaturalness” of the practice. These debates also impinged upon tense relations between the church and state in France during the period from the Concordat to the Restoration. In early- nineteenth- century France, some Catholics adopted a harsh, unforgiving stance toward married priests. The editors of the Nouvelles ecclésiastiques opposed extending benevolence to married priests, whom they labeled “cowardly deserters of the sanctuary.” The publication suggested that Rome should be more scrupulous and discerning in granting dispenses to priests who married during the Revolution.91 Many other works, such as two 1801 treatises by the abbé J.-Esprit Bonnet and Pierre- Jean Agier, drew attention to the distinctions between three kinds of married priests: those who eagerly married, those who married under duress, and lastly those who married as a result of the Terror but then, as Bonnet put it, “found themselves enveloped in the irrevocable results of their conjugal union.”92 Although the prominent jurist and Jansenist Agier believed that all married priests disgraced and dishonored the church, he suggested that some married priests were more culpable and shameful than others. Leading ecclesiastical and secular authorities in Napoleonic France generally distinguished between repentant and unrepentant married priests, defending the former and scorning the latter. Although Portalis, Minister of Worship, insisted that repentant married priests were to be treated benevo- lently, he maintained that the marriage of priests was “a public sin, a scandal, which demands public reparation.”93 Despite considerable hostility toward clerical marriage in post- revolutionary France, proponents of clerical marriage widely decried married priests in the napoleonic era 159 the practice of celibacy as “a sin against nature.” One anonymous pamphlet denounced clerical celibacy as a “state of death” as well as a plague and an epidemic spreading across the globe.94 A former magistrate from Calais, Guillaume Poncet de La Grave, described celibate ecclesiastics as “walking cadavers” in his anti-celibacy tract of 1801. He also maintained that the ancient Greeks and Jews rightly viewed celibates as misanthropic enemies of humanity.95 Jean Pons, a justice of the peace from Nîmes, labeled clerical celibacy an unnatural, inhuman institution and “a monstrosity against nature.” In his 1808 treatise on religious tolerance and clerical celibacy, Pons characterized clerical celibacy as a pernicious disease afflicting the human race: “Religious celibacy publicly devours society . . . like a cancer devours the human body.” Pons identified celibate clerics and other men who rejected marriage and paternity as selfish and heartless.96 As one anonymous pamphleteer put it, celibate clerics were “deaf to the cry of nature.”97 Nineteenth- century critiques of clerical celibacy, like those of the eighteenth century, maintained that sexual continence produced disease and that obligatory celibacy bred debauchery. Works of natural history cited celibate monks, nuns, and priests, particularly those with certain temperaments, falling prey to fatal illnesses.98 In 1808 Gabriel Henry, a doctor of theology and parish priest, anonymously published Correspondence of Two Ecclesiastics on the Question: Is It Time to Abrogate the Law of Priestly Celibacy, in which an ecclesiastic claimed to have observed “frightening symptoms” afflicting celibate ecclesiastics who were cured merely “by the consoling idea of marriage.”99 Critics also argued that celibacy “denatured” clerics, depriving them of the remedy of marriage and therefore breed- ing sexual scandal. They insisted that obligatory clerical celibacy corrupted moeurs and the priesthood, leading the celibate priest to seduce either a young woman, wresting her from her parental home and then abandoning her, or another man’s wife, bringing discord and dishonor into their household.100 Apologists of clerical celibacy dismissed claims of rampant clerical sexual immorality. Catechism on Ecclesiastical Celibacy (1808), attributed to Claude Le Coz, the former constitutional bishop of 160 unnatural frenchmen Besançon, criticized those who recounted scandalous anecdotes and “truly disgusting stories” about the sexual lives of the clergy. Le Coz denounced not only these authors as enemies of religion but also married priests, to whom he refused to administer last rites, a practice he defended in an 1801 pamphlet. The former archbishop argued that vice and debauchery were the products not of clerical celibacy but of clerical marriage. He suggested that the children of married priests were the unfortunate victims of their father’s sins who became impoverished and dissolute upon his death. Le Coz claimed that many of the children of pastors in London were thieves and prostitutes.101 A central point of contention between apologists and critics of clerical celibacy was the effects of the practice on the French state and the post-revolutionary order. Proponents of the marriage of priests argued that celibacy endangered the nation by inhibit- ing population growth and thereby dwindling France’s political and economic power; clerical marriage conversely would promote population growth, stimulating French industry, commerce, and agriculture. These critics argued that clerical celibacy was harmful to the state, to the church, and to ecclesiastics themselves. Poncet de la Grave lamented that celibate priests, monks, and nuns deprived the nation of future generations of useful citizens.102 Challenging these claims, supporters of clerical celibacy, including Le Coz and François- René de Chateaubriand ridiculed the faulty “political arithmetic” of their opponents and argued that overpopulation rather than depopulation should be their concern. As Chateaubri- and explained in The Genius of Christianity, “States never perish by the lack of but by an over-abundance of men. An excessive population is the scourge of empires.” In a reversal from earlier pronatalist and depopulationist discussions of clerical celibacy, Chateaubriand emphasized the dangers of overpopulation and the need for the state to restrain population growth. Chateaubriand therefore suggested that a celibate clergy benefited France not only by their own sexual abstinence but also by acting as agents of social and sexual regulation, stopping the progress of libertinage, on the one hand, and encouraging procreation among married couples, on the other.103 married priests in the napoleonic era 161 Debates about the influence of the celibate clergy in France raised questions about the meanings of virtue. Detractors of clerical celibacy insisted that celibates were less virtuous citizens than pères de famille. They insisted that married priests would best serve their parishioners and the patrie as a model of bonnes moeurs and “domestic government,” providing noble examples of the social virtues of conjugal fidelity, paternal and filial love, respect, and obedience.104 The counter- revolutionary political theorist Louis de Bonald attacked such criticisms of celibacy for failing to distinguish between the aims of the “domestic man” and the “public man” as well as those of marriage and celibacy. Bonald associated marriage and the “domestic man” with conserving the human race through reproduction, whereas he associated celibacy with the “public man” who served others. Bonald maintained that celibacy made ministers better able to serve others by disengaging them from personal ties.105 Chateaubriand also argued that priests without children, wives, and the burdens of the secular world could more effectively work toward the progress of enlightenment, moral perfection, and the ease of suffering. Chateaubriand maintained that priests could approach the realm of the celestial and the sublime through abstaining from the pleasures of the flesh.106 Leading Catholics in post- revolutionary France argued that ensuring the sanctity and divinity of the priesthood through the preservation of clerical celibacy was a moral necessity. The morality of celibacy became an increasingly salient issue following the promulgation of Napoleon’s Civil Code of 1804, which provided for the annulment of any marriage contrary to “good moeurs and the public order” but was silent on the matter of clerical marriage.107 As secular authorities’ resistance to clerical marriage mounted, the civil status of the marriage of priests became murkier. The case of the priest Marc Boisset, who wanted to marry one of his parishioners, garnered national attention and exposed the tensions between canon law and civil law. Despite the opposition of the bride’s father to the marriage, the tribunal of Li- bourne defended Boisset’s ability to contract marriage with Rosalie Plantey. The archbishop of Bordeaux encouraged her father, Jean 162 unnatural frenchmen Plantey, to appeal the case, and the court of appeals of Bordeaux overturned the earlier decision, to the relief of the archbishop of Bordeaux, who had described the marriage of priests as an act of “monstrous immorality” in a letter to Portalis. In December 1805 Napoleon ordered that Rosalie Plantey be placed under the care and supervision of her family. Noting that there was no legal prohibition against their marriage, the emperor nonetheless maintained, “The prohibition against the marriage of priests in Catholicism is as much a political as religious law.” He argued that this prohibition was necessary to maintain “the sanctity of the priesthood” and to ensure social stability. Consequently, Napoleon ordered the police to arrest Boisset and to detain him in a correctional facility in Bordeaux. In January 1806 Portalis informed the archbishop of Bordeaux that Napoleon had banned all officiers de l’état civil from registering Boisset’s marriage, which he deemed “a crime against religion and morality.”108 The Boisset affair alarmed Gabrielle Petit. She had fallen in love with a former constitutional priest from Périgueux, Barthé- lemy Charonceuil, and had become pregnant several years earlier. At that time, her brother wrote to Charonceuil to inform him of the pregnancy and to suggest that he marry Petit. After the birth of their child months later, Charonceuil declared before the officier publique that the child was his. The couple had several other children and married in late 1798. The couple petitioned Caprara and received, on November 4, 1802, a dispensation of the impediment of the holy orders, enabling the legitimation of their marriage in the eyes of the church. News of Portalis and Napoleon’s responses to the Boisset affair worried Petit, but her husband reassured her that they had committed no crime, since he had abdicated during Year II and received papal dispensation for their marriage. In a letter of February 1806, he reassured her that “death alone” would separate him from her and their daughter. Within months, however, he ended their relationship and contracted marriage with another woman in April 1807. Petit tried to oppose the marriage as the legitimate wife of Charonceuil, but the tribunal of Périgueux refused to recognize her opposition. The case went to the appellate court married priests in the napoleonic era 163 of Bordeaux, which declared Charonceuil incapable of contracting a second marriage and upheld the terms of the papal brief that permitted Charonceuil to contract marriage with Petit but no other woman. In October 1809 the Cour de cassation overturned the decision of the Bordeaux court, which “committed a grave error in declaring that all priests were indistinctively incapable of marrying.” The court observed that entry into the priesthood was not a diriment impediment to marriage in French law and that priests, particularly those who had stopped exercising sacerdotal functions, had the civil right to marry.109 Throughout the Napoleonic era, the French government and public constantly questioned and contested the ambiguous status of clerical marriage. The emperor and his minister of religious affairs acknowledged but opposed, for moral, social, and religious reasons, priests’ ability to marry civilly. Portalis declared in an 1807 circular, “The law is silent on the marriages of priests, [but] these marriages are generally condemned by public opinion.” Portalis recognized marriages contracted by Catholic priests as legally valid yet believed that such marriages threatened moeurs and the social order.110 Portalis’s fears of Catholic priests’ seducing parishioners were widely shared and articulated in mémoires judiciaires, anti- celibacy and anticlerical publications, and many literary forms. Increasingly convinced that clerical marriage threatened families and society, Napoleon declared that he would not tolerate marriage contracted by those who continued to exercise sacerdotal functions since the Concordat. Napoleon and Pius VII were in agreement on their stance against married priests in the Concordatory Church, but disputes between the emperor and the pope on other matters became acrimonious by 1808. In response to the escalation of the Napoleonic wars, specifically the French occupation of Rome, the papal secretary of state broke off all diplomatic relations with Napoleon and recalled Caprara from Paris in February 1808. In May 1809 Napoleon issued imperial decrees at Schönbrunn abolishing the temporal sovereignty of the pope and annexing papal lands to the French empire. Pope Pius VII refused to abdicate his temporal sovereignty and excommunicated 164 unnatural frenchmen Napoleon in June 1809. A few weeks later, the French general Eti- enne Radet arrested Pius VII, who was then sent to Savona in northern Italy and later transported to Fontainebleau in 1812. The severe tensions between Napoleon and Pius VII contributed to the emperor’s deteriorating relationship with the episcopacy and to other problems with the church.111 A shortage of clergy was one of the most significant difficulties facing the Concordatory Church. The demographics of the clergy in Napoleonic France, with its high proportion of elderly priests and low levels of clerical recruitment, exacerbated the problem. The reluctance of most priests who married during the Revolution to separate from their wives and reenter the priesthood contributed in some part to this shortage. Furthermore, the upheaval over clerical celibacy and marriage did little to entice young, new ordinands, who were increasingly drawn from the ranks of the lower classes and rural populations. As a result, almost 10,500 parishes, over 20 percent of the total, were vacant in 1808. On the eve of the Revolution, there had been around 130,000. The Concordatory Church had fewer than 40,000 secular priests, who had become civil servants salaried by the state. Parish priests remained central to religious life but had lost some of the considerable influence that they had had under the Old Regime.112 These developments in clerical life contributed in part to the revival of forms of popular piety, the emergence of new cults of saints and pilgrimages, the development of new forms of Catholic devotion, and the “feminization” of religion in post- revolutionary France. The prominence and significance of female religiosity during this period was most clearly manifested in the growth of female religious congregations and orders, particularly those devoted to teaching, charitable work, and nursing, as well as the rising numbers of religious women in nineteenth- century France.113 The issue of priestly celibacy garnered less yet still notable attention in the changing religious and political landscape in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Napoleon continued to weigh in on the issue until the eve of his downfall. In an address before the Council of State, on December 20, 1813, Napoleon observed, “The married priests in the napoleonic era 165 priesthood is a kind of marriage; the priest being united to the Church as a husband to his wife.” Napoleon proposed applying laws on bigamy to priests to preserve priests’ true marriage: their spiritual union with the church. The government of the Bourbon Resto- ration (1814–30) shared Napoleon’s impulse to restrict priests’ ability to contract marriage. On June 4, 1814, the Constitutional Charter of 1814 declared Catholicism the religion of the state, renewing debates about whether priests could contract civil marriage.114 The ongoing process of reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the French state actually set the stage for renewed conflict throughout the nineteenth century. Clerical celibacy and marriage continued to preoccupy civil and religious authorities in France throughout the Restoration era and beyond. During the years following Caprara’s legation, priests who had married or sought permission to marry could appeal directly to Rome. More than two hundred priests did so. Many of these priests, such as Talleyrand, petitioned the pope shortly before their death. In March 1838 Talleyrand wrote a letter of retraction to Pope Gregory XVI, apologizing for having committed serious errors that so “vexed and troubled the Catholic Church.” Two months later, Talleyrand died and received the last rites.115 By the mid- nineteenth century, the numbers of married clerics such as Talleyrand were rapidly dwindling. In the 1810s and 1820s, the journal L’ami de la religion et du Roi published accounts of aging and dying married priests who issued public retractions on their deathbeds in order to receive the last sacraments. One of these “wayward priests” who had married during the Restoration equated his “sacrilegious marriage” with “spiritual death.”116 Such deathbed retractions and petitions were some of the many ways in which married priests and other French men and women grappled with and came to terms with the unprecedented change and upheaval caused by the Revolution and its aftermath.

EPILOGUE

“The annals of crime can scarcely produce an equal instance of priestly debauchery, hypocrisy, and cruelty,” a London periodical observed in 1824 of the heinous crimes committed two years earlier by the French priest Antoine Mingrat.1 After his seminary training in Grenoble, Mingrat had become the parish priest of Saint-Aupre in Isère, where reports soon surfaced of his sexual liaisons with young women. After Mingrat’s superiors learned of his affair with the daughter of one of his parishioners, they ordered Mingrat to leave his presbytery and transferred him to the parish of Saint- Quentin. The journalist Paul- Louis Courier later harshly criticized the church’s response to Mingrat’s transgressions. Courier observed that all ecclesiastical discipline seemed to mean was that “when a priest causes a scandal somewhere, he is sent somewhere else.”2 The scandal that Mingrat caused in the parish of Saint- Aupre, however, paled in comparison to the one that erupted in Saint-Quentin. On the evening of May 8, 1822, Marie Gérin, a twenty- six- year- old wife of a retired soldier, went to church to confess. Mingrat told the attractive young woman that she was not suitably dressed for confession and invited her into his presbytery to hear her confession there. Once inside the presbytery, Mingrat sexually assaulted, strangled, and killed Gérin. Mingrat purportedly then stripped and tied up her body, lowering it from his window by a cord, and then dragged it to the banks of the Isère river. He drew his pocketknife and attempted, with great difficulty, to cut up Gérin’s body into pieces. He returned to his presbytery to fetch a hatchet and then 168 unnatural frenchmen used it to chop off her limbs. Mingrat left her handkerchief on the banks of the river so that it would appear that she had drowned and possibly committed suicide. Shortly before dawn, a laborer noticed an area near the river where the ground was covered with fresh blood, and there he found a bloody cord and knife. A week later, a group of young men fishing discovered a mutilated piece of a human leg in the water. Authorities identified the limb as Marie Gérin’s and questioned Mingrat about her death. Mingrat suggested that Gérin, possessed by Satan, had drowned herself.3 As evidence quickly mounted against Mingrat, a priest from a neighboring parish sent Mingrat a letter informing him that he was suspected of murder. The fellow cleric urged Mingrat to flee immediately if he were guilty. Mingrat took heed and crossed the border into Piedmont, where pursuing French gendarmes appre- hended him and turned him over to the authorities of the kingdom of Piedmont- Sardinia. Gérin’s mutilated body was found days later, and there was little doubt at that point about Mingrat’s guilt. The court of assizes of the department of Isère in Grenoble found Mingrat guilty of voluntary, premeditated homicide and sentenced him to death.4 This death sentence did not put an end to the Mingrat affair. Despite the public’s demands for Mingrat’s extradition, the Sardinia government never offered it. Moreover, the French government never requested it. There was wild speculation about who was protecting the priest, and rumors circulated that he was protected by a Catholic princess, an influential noblewoman, and ecclesiastical authorities.5 One commentator later lamented, “The members of the church, which, by his foul life and bloody act, he had disgraced, used every influence, and with success, to screen the assassin from the hands’ of the executioner.”6 Marie Gérin’s bereaved husband and her brother went to Paris and demanded that the French government compel the king of Piedmont- Sardinia to turn Mingrat over to France. Jean-Pierre Gérin published a detailed account of his sister’s gruesome murder in 1824.7 The prefect of the department of Deux- Sèvres learned of Gérin’s intention to distribute the publication and demanded that he provide a copy of his license to epilogue 169 sell books. After Gérin failed to produce one, the prefect seized the copies of his pamphlet. Gérin and his wife vociferously objected, and police placed both under arrest. Madame Gérin, who spent two weeks in prison, attested that several priests came to threaten and intimidate her. According to the Gérins’ sympathizers, ecclesiastical and civil authorities deemed the couple’s account of Marie’s murder an attempt to discredit the priesthood, and they therefore silenced and persecuted the victim’s family, at the same time as they permitted her murderer to escape punishment.8 The cultural contests over Mingrat’s crimes were symptomatic of long- standing tensions in French society over clerical sexuality. The Mingrat affair renewed debates about priestly celibacy and inspired dozens of articles, pamphlets, and even plays in France and Britain. The shocking murder of Marie Gérin by her confessor made a particularly powerful impression on Stendhal, who described it as “the most brutal and ferocious act of a priest that has ever stained the annals of a civilized nation.” Linking Mingrat’s crimes to the narrative of sexual danger in the confessional, Stendhal remarked, “The crime of this monstrous priest serves a mortal blow to auricular confession.”9 Courier deemed clerical celibacy and the practice of auricular confession a “monstrous combination,” invented by the pope and responsible for clerical corruption, immorality, and crimes such as Mingrat’s. Exhorting priests to marry, Courier denounced clerical celibacy as “this abominable, impious vow to never have a wife, a family, a home.” Courier insisted that priests should be pères de famille, serving as models for others and teaching by example. He claimed that the pope preferred that a priest be “adulterous, shameless, debauched, and a murderer, like Mingrat, than married.” Echoing the Jacobin discourse on clerical celibacy, Courier denounced celibate priests for being “outside of the state [and] outside of the law [hors de l’Etat, hors de la loi].”10 Catholic commentators dismissed these claims as attempts to use Mingrat’s crimes to foster anticlericalism and anti-Catholicism. The Catholic press, particularly the journal L’ami de la religion, railed against those who authored, printed, and hawked publications that intended “not only to present the crime in all of its darkness and to 170 unnatural frenchmen arouse horror and indignation against the culprit but also to defame all who wear the habit that [Mingrat] dishonored.” The journal lamented that these works, which portrayed all priests as odious and criminal, “incited hatred against a whole class of citizens . . . who bemoan the most this appalling example of perversity.”11 Armand Fouquier’s collection of causes célèbres noted that the slightest im- propriety or scandal could threaten the dignity of the priesthood: “The priest must be so superior to the rest of men by the example of his life that a single crime can obliterate in an instant such sublime virtues.” He warned, “It is a mistake to confound the crimes of one person with the thousands of priests with pure souls.”12 Many French men and women agreed that Mingrat’s actions did not constitute an indictment of clerical celibacy or the priesthood, but ongoing debates about the merits of celibacy divided the French public both long before and after the Mingrat affair. Nonetheless, there had been a general acceptance and approval of clerical celibacy in France at the beginning of the eighteenth century, but it became an extremely divisive issue during the En- lightenment and Revolution. Opposition to clerical celibacy was anchored in philosophical discourses about nature, demographic concerns, the rise of companionate marriage, and the bourgeon- ing public sphere. The attack on clerical celibacy reflected and shaped changing attitudes toward sexuality, religion, and politics in eighteenth- century France. These changes were tied to Enlight- enment views of “Nature” as the organizing principal of the political, social, and sexual order and a concomitant new emphasis on “nature” as a source of morality and ethics. Detractors of celibacy argued that it corrupted men’s nature. New thinking about utility, rights, duties, and patriotism added weight to the anti- celibacy arguments. However, critics of celibacy faced formidable opposition from those who defended the social utility and spiritual value of clerical celibacy. The controversy over clerical celibacy and marriage deepened the conflict between the Revolution and the church, and it contributed to the radicalization of the Revolution. Prior to the Revolution, critics of celibacy spoke out against the Catholic Church imposing epilogue 171 celibacy upon its clergy; but over the course of the Revolution, critics began ascribing more agency to individual celibate priests whom they denounced for remaining celibate, particularly after the legalization of clerical marriage. At the same time, the emphasis of the anti-celibacy campaign shifted from securing priests the right to marry to making marriage and reproduction patriotic duties. Many revolutionaries came to view clerical celibacy as a pernicious threat to the moral, social, and political order, and clerical marriage as a patriotic responsibility. Their open contempt for celibate priests outraged loyal Catholics and further inflamed antagonisms between revolutionaries and counter- revolutionaries. The notion of the “unnaturalness” of celibacy was one of the primary reasons why radical revolutionaries considered celibate clerics “enemies of humanity” who transgressed the laws of nature and deviated from republican constructions of citizenship, masculinity, and civic virtue. Critics of celibacy insisted that marriage and fatherhood would transform denatured, antisocial priests into virtuous citizens. Some radical revolutionaries believed that priests needed to be compelled to fulfill the patriotic duties of marriage and fatherhood. While many priests embraced the opportunity to marry, pressure and coercion largely factored into others’ decision to marry. Priests’ attitudes toward and experiences of marriage varied widely and often changed over time. Many priests who reluctantly married and even considered their marriage a sham grew attached to their spouses and started families. When given the opportunity to reintegrate into the priesthood during the post- revolutionary period, the vast majority of married priests chose instead to live as married laymen. The Catholic Church provided papal dispensations for petitioners seeking either reentry into the priesthood after separating from their wives or, for most, the legitimization of their status as married laypersons. While the Catholic Church succeeded in minimizing the scandal of the marriage of priests, it was unable to squelch opposition to clerical celibacy. Anxieties about clerical celibacy and sexuality continued to shape religious and sexual politics in modern France. The perception of the celibate priesthood as an unnatural vocation exacerbated the 172 unnatural frenchmen problem of a significant decline in clerical recruitment. At the same time, female religiosity flourished. The so- called “feminization of religion,” which occurred in France and elsewhere during the nineteenth century, wedded religiosity to femininity and domesticity.13 Piety, chastity, and domesticity were believed to come naturally to women. In contrast to understandings of female passionlessness and passivity that focused on motherhood, male sexual desire became seen as an overpowering drive that required an outlet in marriage. Anticlerical republicans perceived celibate priests as a threat to pious, virtuous women who were vulnerable prey for lecherous clergymen. Some considered priestly celibacy in tension with normative male sexuality and masculine virtue in a republican and secular political culture. As Thomas Kselman has argued, there was a strong sexual dimension to prolonged conflicts between Catholics and anticlerical or secular republicans during the Third Republic (1870–1940), which led to the official separation of church and state in1905 and the birth of laïcité.14 But, the changing relationship between church and state in modern France did not put an end to concerns about clerical celibacy. Debates about clerical celibacy have gained renewed prominence in the wake of clerical sexual scandals. The most striking change in constructions of clerical sexual scandals over the last two centuries has been a shift from an emphasis on the seduction of women, particularly virgins, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the problem of pedophile priests in the twentieth and twenty- first centuries. Recent scandals involving the Roman Catholic Church have primarily focused on priests’ sexual abuse of children, particularly boys. A dramatic rise in the number of pedophiles in the priesthood is an implausible explanation for this shift. Rather, distinct public perceptions, fears, and concerns have shaped the discursive and social constructions of clerical sexual scandals in different historical contexts. The sexual abuse crisis of the past few decades has been shaped by psychiatric and medical discourses on pedophilia and sexual abuse as well as gradually changing understandings of childhood, sexuality, and children as innocent and in need of protection from exposure to adult sexuality and sexual epilogue 173 contact.15 The crisis also reflects changing attitudes toward the Catholic Church and outrage over church authorities’ mishandling cases of priestly sexual abuse, particularly the practice of transfer- ring an offending priest to another parish. In recent years, some critics of celibacy have suggested that the celibate priesthood attracts men conflicted by or ashamed of their sexual impulses and desires who then enter a clerical culture that stunts their psycho- sexual development. Some suggest a correlation—or even causation—between priestly celibacy and pedophilia and see the celibate priesthood as a kind of haven for pedophiles. Supporters and even some critics of the Catholic Church dismiss these claims, insisting that celibacy or sexual abstinence does not cause one to become sexually attracted to children and to act on those desires. Catholic priests are no more likely to molest children than other clergy or men in general. Allowing priests to marry may not affect the prevalence of sexual abuse. The issue of clerical celibacy is distinct from that of the Catholic Church not doing enough to prevent the sexual victimization of children and to prevent abusers from continuing their abuse, yet the two are closely tied in the eyes of many who question clerical celibacy. The Roman Catholic Church, then and now, has remained stead- fast in its commitment to clerical celibacy. But today, many observ- ers perceive a crisis in the Catholic Church and in the institution of marriage. Many critics have challenged the Catholic Church’s stances on gay marriage, female ordination, and celibacy; some even question the church having priests at all.16 In France, increasing numbers of men and women do not practice Catholicism and are also turning away from marriage in favor of the secular system of civil unions that was created in 1999 for heterosexual and homosexual couples alike. On May 18, 2013, same-sex marriage became legal in France. In France and across the globe, marriage is a politically charged issue that is entangled in struggles over religion, sexuality, and the modern secular state. The unresolved issues at stake in the eighteenth- and early- nineteenth- century debates over clerical marriage remain at the heart of modern political thought and culture today.

NOTES

Introduction 1. Gaudin, Avis à mon fils; Hall, “Abbé Gaudin’s Development”; Delayaut, “Jacques Gaudin”; Artarit, “Prêtres vendéens et mariés.” 2. [Gaudin], Les inconvéniens du célibat, 20–21, 401, 17. 3. [Maultrot], Discipline de l’Eglise. 4. Archives nationales (henceforth an) af/iv/1899 dossier 10 pièce 106. 5. Phillips, “Attack on Celibacy,” 166. 6. Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe, 29. Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam observed, “Many are celibate, but few are chaste.” See Bock, Women in European History, 20. The Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot and Jean d’Alembert noted, “Age necessarily renders old men continent; it is rare that it renders them pure. . . . One should not confuse chastity with continence. One who is not continent can be pure; and reciprocally, one who is not pure can be continent.” See “Chasteté,” Encyclopédie, 3:233–35. 7. On nuns in Enlightenment and Revolutionary France, see Choudhury, Convents and Nuns; Murphy, Religieuses dans la Révolution française; Langlois, Le catholicisme au féminin; Betros, “Liberty, Citizenship, and Suppression of Female Religious”; Graham, “Married Nuns before Cardinal Caprara.” 8. As a result, several scholars have suggested that the celibate clergy represented a “third gender.” See, for example, Swanson, “Angels Incarnate: Clergy and Masculinity,” 160–77; Murray, “One Flesh, Two Sexes, Three Genders?” 34–51; McNamara, “Herrenfrage”; Airiau, “Le prêtre catholique.” 9. McCurdy, Citizen Bachelors, 6; Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England; Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England; Fletcher, Gender, Sex, and Subordination; Hitchcock and Cohen, English Masculinities. On disciplining the passions in early modern France, see Farr, Authority and Sexuality, 19–23, 31; and Linton, Politics of Virtue. 10. Cott, “Passionlessness”; Dabhoiwala, Origins of Sex, 141–44. 176 notes to pages 6–16 11. Heuer, Family and the Nation, 13. 12. Hunt, Family Romance. On the exclusion of French women from politics and the public sphere, see also Landes, Women and the Public Sphere; Pateman, Sexual Contract; Gutwirth, Twilight of the Goddesses; Goodman, Republic of Letters; Ford, Divided Houses. 13. Desan, Family on Trial; Heuer, Family and the Nation. 14. Taylor, Sources of the Self, 14, 211–47. 15. Foucault, History of Sexuality. 16. Eighteenth- century thinkers were by no means the first to discuss sexuality in terms of “Nature.” John Boswell has examined the history of the idea of the unnaturalness of nonreproductive sexuality in premodern Europe, but he warns against conflating different meanings of the “natural” and “unnatural” and against imposing later understandings of the concept of nature on earlier ones. See Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, 11. 17. Tackett, Religion, Revolution, and Regional Culture; Van Kley, “Christianity as Ca- sualty”; Langlois, “Rupture entre l’Eglise et la Révolution”; McManners, French Revolution and the Church, 38; Atkin and Tallet, Priests, Prelates and People, 55; Aston, Religion and Revolution in France; Sepinwall, Abbé Grégoire, 113; Aston, Religion and Rev- olution, xii, 162; Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred, 3.

. Clerical Celibacy from Early Christianity to the Ancien Régime 1. Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy. 2. Peters, “History, Historians, and Clerical Celibacy”; Brown, Body and Society; Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society; Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West. 3. Brown, Body and Society, 53–54. On the diverse early Christian ascetic interpretations and exegeses of 1 Corinthians 7, see Clark, Reading Renunciation, 259–329. 4. Brown, Body and Society, 51–57, 83–102; Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 59. 5. On the differences between Christian and Stoic ethics, see Foucault, “On the Genealogy of Ethics,” 205; and Brown, Body and Society, 21. 6. Salisbury, Church Fathers, Independent Virgins, 15. 7. Brown, Body and Society, 160–77, 205. 8. Brown, “Notion of Virginity,” 432. 9. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 69–70, 110; Laeuchli, Power and Sexuality; Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West, 42–45. 10. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 111; Cochini, Origines apostoliques du célibat, 8; Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West, 48–49; Brown, Body and Society, 358. 11. Brown, Body and Society, 340–86; Hunter, Marriage, Heresy, and Celibacy; Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West, 33–38; Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 85; Salisbury, Church Fathers, Independent Virgins, 11–38. 12. Brown, Augustine of Hippo; Augustine, Confessions; Clark, St. Augustine on Marriage, 387–417; Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 80–82. notes to pages 17–24 177 13. Levin, Sex and Society, 247–52; Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West, 77, 84–85; Cholij, Clerical Celibacy in East and West. 14. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 214–15; Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West, 93–95, 111; Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe, 44; Barstow, Married Priests and Reforming Papacy. 15. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 215–21; Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West, 100–102; Vauchez, “Clerical Celibacy and the Laity,” 184–85. 16. Some scholars identify the First Lateran Council as the point when clerical marriage lost its legal status, but it was not until the Second Lateran Council that these marriages, including those previously contracted, became null and void. See Cholij, Clerical Celibacy in East and West, 66; Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West, 103–4; Vauchez, “Clerical Celibacy and the Laity,” 185–86. 17. Vauchez, “Clerical Celibacy and the Laity,” 191–97; Grévy- Pons, Célibat et nature; Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West, 132–37. 18. Ozment, When Fathers Ruled, 17, 7; Ozment, Protestants, 160; Ozment, Age of Re- form, 381–84; Harrington, Marriage in Reformation Germany, 60–63; Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West, 180. 19. On these Reformation- era polemics, see Parish, Clerical Marriage and English Reformation; and Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West, 143–83. 20. Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles, 82. 21. Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West, 198–99; Ozment, Age of Reform, 397–409; Wiesner- Hanks, Christianity and Sexuality, 104; Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 568; Ranke- Heinemann, Eunuchs for the Kingdom of God, 114; Strasser, “First Form and Grace,” 53. 22. McManners, Church and Society, 2:280, 300–301; Walch, La spiritualité conjugal. 23. Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies; Bloch, Royal Touch. 24. Hufton, “French Church,” 21–22; Gibson, Social History of French Catholicism, 16; McManners, Church and Society, vol. 2; Psia, World of Catholic Renewal, 117. 25. Bergin, Church, Society, and Religious Change, 194–207; Mullet, Catholic Reforma- tion, 157. 26. John McManners identified the eighteenth century as the “great epoch of episcopal visitation.” See McManners, Church and Society, 1:278. 27. Visitation report of 1652, quoted in Barnes, “Social Transformation of Parish Clergy,” 142. 28. Haliczer, Sexuality in the Confessional; McManners, Church and Society, 1:366; Farr, Authority and Sexuality, 75, 80; Delumeau, L’aveu et le pardon. In 1623 Pope Gregory XV issued a bull specifically condemning the seduction of women in the confessional. See Farr, Authority and Sexuality, 185, n. 20. Also, seventeenth- century church authorities sometimes excluded nuns and women under forty from a priest’s first license to hear confessions. See Wiesner- Hanks, Christianity and Sexuality, 118. 178 notes to pages 25–36 29. McManners, Church and Society, 1:364–65; Barnes, “Social Transformation of Par- ish Clergy,” 152; Farr, Authority and Sexuality, 75–84; Bossy, Christianity in the West, 65–66. 30. Van Kley, Jansensim and Expulsion of Jesuits; Van Kley, Religious Origins; Merrick, De- sacralization of the French Monarchy; Bergin, Church, Society, and Religious Change, 394–412. 31. Tackett and Langlois, “A l’épreuve de la Révolution,” 240–41; Tackett and Langlois, “Ecclesiastical Structures and Clerical Geography,” 357. 32. McManners, Church and Society, 1:208–34; Hufton, “French Church,” 15–16. 33. McManners, Church and Society, 1:321–57; Hufton, “French Church,” 14, 22–23. 34. Or la crise de la conscience européenne, as termed by Paul Hazard.

. An Unnatural State 1. Grimm and Diderot, Mémoires historiques, littéraires, et anecdotiques, 1:232–33; Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique, 4:60, 2:365–66. 2. [Desforges], Avantages du mariage, 2:219. 3. Arrêt de parlement, 1–2; Archives de la Bastille, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, ms 11993 and ms 12495 f. 111; Ravaisson, Archives de la Bastille, 17:219–22; Delort, Histoire de la détention des philosophes, 2:275–88. 4. On the relationship between the Enlightenment and the Counter- Enlightenment in France, see McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment; and Burson, “Crystallization of Counter- Enlightenment.” 5. Gauchet, Le désenchantement du monde; Taylor, Sources of the Self, 14, 211–47. On En- lightenment thought on happiness, see McMahon, Happiness: A History, 197–252. 6. On eighteenth- century thought on nature, see Daston, “Nature of Nature in Early Modern Europe”; Daston, “Enlightenment Fears, Fears of Enlighten- ment”; Spary, “Nature of Enlightenment.” 7. Tackett, Religion, Revolution, and Regional Culture, 291; McManners, Church and Society, 1:358–83. 8. Saint- Pierre, Ouvrages de politique, 13:7–8, 155, 158–59; Saint- Pierre, “Observations politiques sur le célibat des prêtres,” 2:175–78. 9. Gaudin, Les inconvéniens du célibat, 16–17, 411–12. 10. Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique, 134. 11. Vattel, Le droit des gens, 1:141–42. 12. Voltaire, Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, 19:7. 13. D’Holbach, Théologie portative, 131. 14. Desforges, Avantages du mariage, 30; Desforges quoted in Plongeron, Théologie et politique, 197. 15. Diderot, Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville, 47. 16. On the rise of the ideal of companionate marriage, see Stone, Family, Sex and Marriage; and Trumbach, Rise of the Egalitarian Family. On its importance in the lives and thought of Enlightenment savants, see Roberts, “Philosophes Mariés and Epouses Philosphiques.” For the père de famille in Old Regime France, see Tuttle, notes to pages 36–43 179 “Celebrating the Père de Famille”; Tuttle, Conceiving the Old Regime; Hunt, Family Romance, 17–40. 17. “Le symbole d’un laïque”; d’Holbach, L’évangile du jour, 4: bk. 8, 39. 18. Pétion (Pétion de Villeneuve), Essai sur le mariage, 130, 133. 19. Ibid., xiv. 20. Chaudon, Dictionnaire anti- philosophique, 53. 21. Bergier, Encyclopédie méthodique: Théologie, 1:281–82. 22. [Harel], La vraie philosophie, 133; Gouget, Question politique, 157–58, 160, 186. 23. Bergier, Encyclopédie méthodique: Théologie, 1:282. 24. Chaudon, Dictionnaire anti- philosophique, 54. 25. Harel, La vraie philosophie, 133–34. 26. Bergier, Encyclopédie méthodique: Théologie, 1:282. 27. Démeunier, L’esprit des usages, 2:320. 28. [Villiers], Apologie du célibat chrétien, 369–70. 29. Blum, Strength in Numbers, 25. On the discourses of depopulation and pronatalism in Old Regime France, see also Tuttle, Conceiving the Old Regime; Tuttle, “Celebrating the Père de Famille”; Perrot, “Les économistes, les philosophes et la population”; Spengler, France Faces Depopulation; Spengler, French Predecessors of Malthus; Tarczylo, Sexe et liberté; Quinlan, Great Nation in Decline, 53–86. 30. Montesquieu, Lettres persanes, letter 117; Montesquieu, L’esprit des lois, especially pt. 4, bk. 23, chap. 21. 31. Saint- Pierre, “Observations politiques sur le célibat,” 152–53. 32. La Beaumelle, Défense de l’Esprit des loix, 109–10. Many journals, including the Jansenist publication Nouvelles ecclésiastiques, attributed the work to Montesquieu. Israel, Enlightenment Contested, 404, 836; Adams, Huguenots and French Opinion, 68. 33. Shovlin, “Political Economy and French Nobility,” 125; Mirabeau, L’ami des hommes, 1: pt. 1, 23. 34. Hecht, “Célibat, stratégies familiales et essor du capitalisme,” 279. On physiocracy, see Fox- Genovese, Origins of Physiocracy; Shovlin, Political Economy of Virtue; Sonenscher, “Physiocracy as a Theodicy”; Sonenscher, Before the Deluge, 188–239. 35. Coyer, La noblesse commerçante, 65–66; Plumard de Dangeul, Remarques sur les avantages; Gaudin, Inconvéniens du célibat, 416–17, 425–26; Robinet, Dictionnaire universel, 11:84, 419. 36. [Saury], Lettre d’un provincial, 8, 10; Saint- Pierre, “Observations politiques sur le célibat,” 2:175. 37. Plumard de Dangeul, Remarques sur les avantages et les désavantages de la France, 38; Goudar, Les intérêts de la France, 1:360. 38. Jaubert, Des causes de la dépopulation, 45–46; Cerfvol, Du droit du souverain, 105–7. 39. Chevrier, Testament politique, 177. 40. Brissot, Recherches philosophiques, 252. 41. Pichon, Mémoire sur le célibat, 22–23. 180 notes to pages 43–50 42. Robinet, Dictionnaire universel, 11:77–82. 43. Reboul, Essai sur les mœurs, 36. 44. See, for example, Nouveau journal helvétique, 18; Felice, Code de l’humanité, 2:511. 45. Jaubert, Des causes de la dépopulation, 46. 46. Moheau, Recherches sur la population, 230; Blum, Strength in Numbers, 44. 47. Diderot, Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville, 47. 48. Brissot, Recherches philosophiques, 24–25. 49. Bergier, Le déisme réfuté par lui- même, 1:293. This statement also appeared in [Feller], Catéchisme philosophique, 625. 50. Bergier, Encyclopédie méthodique: Théologie, 1:289. 51. [Féroux], Vues d’un solitaire patriote, 96. 52. Gouget, Question politique, 157–58, 160. 53. Bergier, Encyclopédie méthodique: Théologie, 1:282. 54. See, for example, Harel, La vrai philosophie, 133–34. 55. [Hayer], La religion vengée, 11:215–16; Féroux, Vues d’un solitaire patriote, 115–21; Beurier, Conférences, 543–44; Charpentier, Lettres critiques, 1:145; Feller, Catéchisme philosophique, 625–26; De l’état religieux, 836. 56. Pluquet, Dictionnaire des hérésies, 636. 57. Ibid., 285; Chaudon, Dictionnaire anti- philosophique, 54. 58. [Reneaulme de Lagaranne], Lettre de M . . . , 32–39. 59. Buffon, Histoire naturelle, 2:505. 60. Ronsil, Mémoires de chirurgie. 61. See, for example, Robinet, Dictionnaire universel, 24:393. 62. “Mariage,” Encyclopédie, 10:116. 63. Laqueur, Solitary Sex; Tissot, L’onanisme. 64. [Saury], Lettre d’un provincial, 18–21; Robinet, Dictionnaire universel, 24:393; [Re- neaulme de Lagaranne], Lettre de M. . . . , 32–39. 65. Robinet, Dictionnaire universel, 24:393. 66. Lignac, De l’homme et de la femme, 58–59, 47; Lignac, Physical View of Man and Woman, 2:55. 67. [Saury], Lettre d’un provincial, 28. 68. See, for example, Robinet, Dictionnaire universel, 24:394; [Reneaulme de Laga- ranne], Lettre de M . . . , 47; Diderot, Jacques le fataliste, 242. On scholars and melancholy in early modern Europe, see Trevor, Poetics of Melancholy. 69. [Saury], Lettre d’un provincial, 29. 70. Ibid., 18–20. 71. Lignac observed that by pursuing a policy of medical screening, “no fatal maladies would then so often occasion disturbance and disorder. A thousand examples prove, beyond dispute, that the constrained temperament, though extinguished for a time, can never be destroyed.” Lignac, De l’homme et de la femme, 52–53. 72. [Saury], Lettre d’un provincial, 71, 77. notes to pages 50–58 181 73. See, for example, Doppet, Aphrodisiaque externe, 48, 53; Brissot, Recherches philosophiques, 24–25; Robinet, Dictionnaire universel, 24:397. 74. Brissot, Recherches philosophiques, 24–26. 75. Diderot, Lettres à Sophie Volland, 51. 76. D’Holbach, Système de la nature, 2:194. 77. See Laqueur, “Orgasm.” 78. [Reneaulme de Lagaranne], Lettre de M . . . , 44. 79. McManners, Church and Society, 2:280, 300–301; Walch, La spiritualité conjugal; Corbin, L’harmonie des plaisirs. 80. [Hayer], La religion vengée, 11:223; Feller, Catéchisme philosophique, 624. 81. [Hayer], La religion vengée, 11:233. 82. Bergier, Encyclopédie méthodique: Théologie, 1:285. 83. Feller, Catéchisme philosophique, 627. 84. Darnton, Literary Underground; Darnton, Forbidden Best- Sellers; Darnton, “Sex for Thought”; Hunt, “Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity”; Choudhury, Convents and Nuns; Choudhury, “Despotic Habits.” 85. Jacob, “Materialist World of Pornography,” 187; Darnton, Forbidden Best- Sellers, 111. 86. Sarah Maza notes that at least sixty- six items pertaining to the case were published, and many were reprinted. Maza, Private Lives and Public Affairs, n. 65, 38. On the Cadière- Girard affair, see also Choudhury, “ ‘Carnal Quietism’ ”; Choudhury, Convents and Nuns; Kuznicki, “Sorcery and Publicity”; Darnton, Forbidden Best- Sellers, 89–114. 87. Thérèse philosophe; Darnton, Forbidden Best- Sellers, 89–114. 88. Compleat history of intrigues; Gayot de Pitaval, Causes célèbres et intéressantes, 9:250– 469; Richer, Causes célèbres et intéressantes, 11:215–464; [Masse], Amours et intrigues des prêtres français. 89. McManners, Church and Society, 1:366. 90. Lignac, De l’homme et de la femme, 59–60. 91. Dulaurens, L’arétin moderne, 158. 92. “Les prêtres, en bonne règle, ne doit faire des enfants qu’à des femmes mariées.” Rousseau, Confessions, 115. 93. Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, 2:668. 94. Ragan, “Enlightenment Confronts Homosexuality,” 8–29. 95. Merrick, “Sodomitical Inclinations,” 290–91; Merrick, “Commissioner Fou- cault, Inspector Noël.” 96. McManners, Church and Society, 1:366. 97. Merrick, “ ‘Brutal Passion’ and ‘Depraved Taste.’ ” 98. [D’Holbach], Le christianisme dévoilé, 137; Voltaire, Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, 617. On treatments of sodomy in Enlightenment France, see Ragan, “The Enlight- enment Confronts Homosexuality.” 182 notes to pages 59–66 99. Bergier, Encyclopédie méthodique: Théologie, 1:282; Bergier, Le déisme réfuté, 196. 100. See, for example, Nonnotte, Les erreurs de Voltaire, 2:14–15, 162; Beurier, Con- férences, 527–28, 543; [Bouyon and Bernard], De l’état religieux, 836–37. 101. Gouget, Question politique, 157–58, 160. 102. Bergier, Le déisme réfuté, 196. See also Feller, Catéchisme philosophique, 626; and Harel, La vraie philosophie, 138. 103. Barruel, Les helviennes, 100–103. 104. Harel, La vraie philosophie, 135.

. Priests into Citizens 1. Bernet de Boislorette, Réclamation du droit, 8, 12; Aumônier scandaleux; Bernet de Boislorette, Lettre de l’abbé Bernet de Boislorette. See also Bernet de Boislorette, Pétition à l’Assemblée nationale. 2. The Assembly ultimately decided to preserve the term “priest” in the procès -verbal. Archives parlementaires [henceforth AP], 37:594–95. Note that Bernet de Boislorette’s name is spelled “Burnet” in the AP and Moniteur universel. 3. On patriotic priests, see Sepinwall, Abbé Grégoire; Hermon- Belot, L’abbé Grégoire; Plongeron, Conscience religieuse en Révolution; Plongeron, Théologie et politique; Plon- geron, L’abbé Grégoire. 4. McManners, French Revolution and the Church, 38; Sepinwall, Abbé Grégoire, 113; As- ton, Religion and Revolution in France, xii, 162; Tackett, Religion, Revolution, and Regional Culture; Langlois, “Rupture entre l’Eglise et la Révolution”; Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred, 3; Van Kley, “Christianity as Casualty.” 5. Tackett, Religion, Revolution, and Regional Culture; Plongeron, Réguliers de Paris; Van Kley, Religious Origins; Tackett and Langlois, “Ecclesiastical Structures and Cler- ical Geography”; Gibson, Social History of French Catholicism, 39. 6. See, for example, A P, 2:275; AP, 5:316; A P, 5:677; A P, 5:680. 7. Souchon printed his speech in Deux cahiers oubliés. Chopelin, “Débat sur le mariage des prêtres.” 8. A P, 5:677. 9. A published account of the debates appeared in Mariage des prêtres, ou Récit. Cour- nand’s speech alone appeared under the title Motion faite dans l’Assemblée générale. For accounts of Cournand’s motion in the periodical press, see Desmoulins, Révolutions de France et de Brabant, Dec. 12, 1789; Moniteur, Dec. 18, 1789; Nouvelles ecclésiastiques, July 31, 1790. See also Burstin, Révolution à l’oeuvre, 90–92. 10. Bassville, Cri de la nation, 2–3. 11. Morel, Coup d’oeil, 89; Basire, Opinion de Claude Basire, 15; Neufchâteau, Rapport, 7; Jallet, Le mariage des prêtres, 45. The epithet of a “nation within the nation” was also applied to France’s Jewish population; see Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews. 12. Les prêtres devenus citoyens, 61, 72; Casaux, Histoire du célibat, 14–15; Gravier, Preuves de l’abolition du célibat, 4, 15; Basire, Opinion de Claude Basire, 16, 11–12; A P, 68:463–64; notes to pages 66–73 183 Vantier, Réflexions sur le célibat, 12; Lindet, Robert-Th omas Lindet, 77; Labroue, “Eveques Torné et Pontard,” 230. 13. Motion faite dans l’Assemblée, 15–16. 14. Cérutti, Les soixante articles, 3:31. 15. Lettre de la Révérende Mère, 3–5; Bassville, Cri de la nation, 6. 16. Juste remontrance, 20. 17. Suite des Nouvelles ecclésiastiques, July 31, 1790. 18. Journal ecclésiastique, 3:188. 19. [Maultrot], Discipline de l’Eglise, 6–7. 20. Réponse du curé de campagne, 19, 44. 21. Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Archives de la Bastille, ms 10264; Prêtres trouvés en flagrant délit, viii, xii, xx–xxiv; [Darimayou], Chasteté du clergé dévoilée; “Prostitution,” Encyclopédie méthodique: Jurisprudence, 10:681–84; Benabou, Prostitution et police des moeurs, 120–53; Cheek, “Prostitutes of ‘Political Institution.’ ” 22. Lefèvre de Meaux, Lettres sur le célibat, 19–20. See also, Teillard, Plaintes et doléances, 21–22. 23. Religion sans prêtres, 57. 25. Vantier, Réflexions sur le célibat. 24. Jallet, Sur le mariage des prêtres, 27, 32. 26. Sade, Justine, 1:134–60. 27. Some of the plays pertaining to clerical sexuality and marriage that were performed from 1789 to 1793 included Gouges, Le couvent; Fiévée, Les rigueurs du cloître; Curé amoureux, ou Le mariage des prêtres; Boutet de Monvel, Les victimes cloîtrées; Plancher de Valcour, Le mariage du curé; Flins Des Oliviers, Le mari directeur; La journée du Vatican; Marchant, Amours de Dom Gerle; L’office du mort; Rétif de La Bretonne, Le curé patriote. See also Bérard, Le théâtre révo- lutionnaire. 28. Blanchet, Funestes effets, 30. 29. Ibid., 35; Demangeon, Prêtres séditieux, 16; Les prêtres devenus citoyens, 72. 30. Bassville, Le cri de la nation, 9–10. 31. Le mariage des prêtres, 60–61. See also Bernet de Boislorette, Lettre de l’abbé Bernet de Boislorette, 93; Observations préliminaires sur la religion, 9, 17–18. 32. As Robespierre declared, “Ecclesiastics can only be considered as civil servants [fonctionnaires publics], salaried by the nation.” A P, 16:408. 33. A P, 16:3; Révolutions de Paris, June 5–12, 1790; “Motion de Robespierre pour le mariage des prêtres (31 mai 1790),” in Lacroix, Actes de la Commune de Paris, ser. 2, 7:676–77. 34. Lefetz to Robespierre in Papiers inédits trouvés chez Robespierre, 1:117–19; Le Bon to Robespierre, in Papiers inédits trouvés chez Robespierre, 3:237–41. On June 13, 1790, Robespierre wrote to Camille Desmoulins and included one of the many letters he had received from ecclesiastics agitating for the marriage of priests, asking Desmoulins to print it in his journal. Letter reproduced in Roussel (pseud. de Prousinalle), Histoire secrète du tribunal révolutionnaire, 318. 184 notes to pages 74–80 35. Harvard Houghton Library, ms Fr 325 (128), letters from members of the clergy to Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, concerning secularization and celibacy [1789]. 36. Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris (bhvp) 1207, Mirabeau, “Projet de discours sur le mariage des prêtres” (three drafts of manuscript notes for Mirabeau’s undelivered speech on the marriage of priests, 1790); Mirabeau, “Quarante- troisième note du comte de Mirabeau pour la Cour,” in Bacourt, Correspondance de Mirabeau, 2:103. 37. Pius VI, Charitas, April 13, 1791, in Carlen, Papal Encyclicals, 2:183. On patterns of ecclesiastical oath taking, see Tackett, Religion, Revolution, and Regional Culture. 38. Thiébault, Seconde adresse, xcvii–xcviii. 42. Lesuire, Mariage des prêtres réfuté, 2. 39. Vrai mariage des prêtres. 43. Gravier, Preuves de l’abolition du célibat, 7. 40. Clergé réconcilié avec la nation, 37. 44. Mariage des prêtres, ou Récit, 33. 41. Gratien, Instruction pastorale, 34. 45. A P, 11:587–94. 46. Casaux, Histoire de l’établissement du célibat, 51–55. 47. “Observations d’un prêtre sur le célibat ecclésiastique,” in Mariage des prêtres, ou Récit, 68. 48. A P, 34:290–91. 49. Feuille villageoise, May 24, 1792. 50. Schneider, “Discours sur le mariage des prêtres, lu à la Société des amis de la Constitution, séante à Strasbourg, le 11 octobre 1791, par un prêtre fonction- naire (Euloge Schneider),” in Heitz, Notes sur la vie, 20. In response to Schnei- der’s anti-celibacy remarks, Jean-Paul Krug, a parish priest, labeled him an impudent, insolent drunkard, seducer, and libertine. See Krug, Lettre de l’abbé Krug, 1. 51. Révolutions de Paris, July 21–28, 1792. See, for example, La Gorce, Histoire religieuse, 3:42; Basire, Opinion de Claude Basire; Dubourg, Adresse à l’Assemblée Nationale; Bibliothèque municipale de Troyes, Carteron 122–VI; Journal des clubs, Nov. 26, 1790; Révolutions de Paris, July 30–Aug. 6, 1791. 52. A P, 19:431–32. 53. A P, 30:436–37. 54. A P, 34:291. 55. Contrat de mariage de Vinchon; Mathiez, “Un prêtre marié,” 567; McManners, French Revolution and the Church, 114; Journal des clubs, July 30, 1791; Révolutions de Paris, July 23–30, 1791. 56. Fournial, “Mariage du curé de Mornand,” 138–39. 57. Révolutions de Paris, Oct. 1, 1791; Chronique de Paris, Sept. 28, 1791; Feuille de correspondance, Oct. 1, 1791; Moniteur universel, Oct. 13, 1791. 58. Nine- tenths of married nuns wed in 1793–94. Graham, “Married Nuns before Cardinal Caprara,” 323; Langlois, Le catholicisme au féminin, 60; Graham, “Revolutionary notes to pages 80–89 185 Bishops and the Philosophes,” 481; Murphy, Religieuses dans la Révolution française, 244–46. 59. Offrande d’un nouveau genre, 9. 60. Feuille villageoise, Dec. 1, 1791; Tolin, Grande réforme à faire, 46. Despite Tolin’s insistence on his inclination toward celibacy, he later married. Grégoire, Histoire du mariage des prêtres, 65. 61. BHVP 1207, Mirabeau, “Projet de discours sur le mariage des prêtres.” 62. Desan, Family on Trial, 26–27. 64. Jallet, Sur le mariage des prêtres, 33, 35–36. 63. Le voeu de la nature, 10. 65. Lindet, Robert - Thomas Lindet, 19–22. 66. Encyclopédie méthodique: Jurisprudence, 10:18. 67. Dialogue entre un père, 2. 68. A P, 38:531; Desan, Family on Trial, 55. 69. Bonneville, Le nouveau code conjugal, 9–10, 14. 70. Révolutions de Paris, no. 108, July 30–Aug. 6, 1791; Révolutions de Paris, no. 159, July 21–28, 1792. 71. A P, 38:188. 72. A P, 38:623, 629–30. 73. A P, 47:544–46. 74. See, for example, A P, 35:672, 696; A P, 56:222; A P, 57:28. 75. Feuille villageoise, Oct. 17, 1792. 76. Desan, Family on Trial, 60–67. 77. Dolivier, Discours de Pierre Dolivier, 22. 78. Ibid., 6–7; Le triomphe des bonnes moeurs; Dommanget, Enragés et curés rouges. 79. Lavau, Légitimité du mariage des prêtres, 3–5, 8–9, 12. 80. Gratien, Instruction pastorale, 43. 82. Machault, Instruction pastorale, 77. 81. Mayet, Opinion de M. Mayet, 5, 8–9. 83. Clément, Devoirs des citoyens fidèles, 33. 84. These bishops included Jean- Baptiste Gratien, constitutional bishop of Rouen; Claude Fauchet, constitutional bishop of Calvaldos; and Nicolas Philibert, constitutional bishop of the Ardennes. Fauchet also defended clerical celibacy in Fauchet, De la religion nationale, and in his Journal des amis on Feb. 23, 1793. A P, 59:81; Gratien, Instruction pastorale. 85. Brugière, Nouveau discipline de Luther, 10, 11, 25; Journal ecclésiastique, Dec. 1790, 394–95. Brugière’s stance on clerical marraige was criticized in Lettre d’un prêtre catholique. 86. Réimpression de l’ancien Moniteur, May 13, 1792; Aubert, Discours par le premier marié; Chronique de Paris, Nov. 23, 1793; Réclamation adressée aux évêques de France; Brugière, Mémoire apologétique, 21–25. 87. Réclamation adressée aux évêques, 5, 13–14. 88. Journal des amis, Feb. 23, 1793. 89. See, for example, Herluison, Le fanatisme du libertinage, 31–33. 90. Roussevillle, L’ultimatum de la philosophie, 5. 91. an f/19/884; Sauzay, “Un mariage de prêtre en 1793.” 186 notes to pages 90–96 92. A P, 68:391–92. 93. The deputies calling for the punishment of bishops who opposed the marriage of priests included Louis Legendre, Jean Jacques Bréard, Charles Delacroix, Georges Danton, Joseph Marie Lequinio, and Didier Thirion. A P, 69:188–89; Décret du traitement; Décret qui ordonne la déportation; Journal du soir, July 19, 1793. 94. Pontard, Journal de P. Pontard, June 15, 1793, 172; af iv 1898 d. 5 p. 74; af iv 1901 d. 11 p. 89–101. 95. Labroue, “Eveques Torné et Pontard,” 229–32. 96. A P, 73:651. 97. A P, 70:233–34. 98. A P, 72:33.

. A Social Crime Part of this chapter appeared as “Celibacy is a Social Crime,” French Historical Studies 26, no. 4 (2013): 601–28. Copyright 2013, Society for French Historical Studies. All rights reserved. I thank Duke University Press for permission to reprint it here. 1. Palmer, From Jacobin to Liberal, 32. 2. Jullien, Une mission en Vendée, 252–57. 3. The revolutionary calendar retroactively labeled the proclamation of the French republic, on September 22, 1792, the beginning of Year I. 4. The de- Christianization movement included the vandalizing, pillaging, and closing of Catholic churches; the persecution of clerics; the substitution of a republican calendar for the Christian Gregorian one; and the creation of revolutionary and civic cults, such as the cult of reason and Robespierre’s cult of the Supreme Being. On de- Christianization and priestly marriages and abdications during Year II, see Vovelle, : Révolution contre l’Eglise, 101–15; Maréchaux, “Les prêtres mariés sous la Révolution française”; Vovelle, Religion et révolution; Les prêtres abdicataires; Fenster, “Abdicating Clergy in the Gironde”; Byrnes, Catholic and French Forever, 13–46. 5. Le créole patriote, Sept. 17, 1793; Décret relatif au traitement des prêtres, Sept. 17, 1793, in A P, 74:297. 6. A P, 74:650; Réimpression de l’ancien Moniteur, Sept. 24, 1793. 7. The Law of Suspects of Sept. 17 provided that anyone identified as an “enemy of liberty” or anyone lacking a certificate of patriotism civisme[ ] could be arrested and prosecuted in revolutionary tribunals for treason against the republic. The law of Oct. 21 (30 vendémiaire) decreed that any priest who had been condemned to deportation for his incivisme and was found on French soil would be put to death. On Nov. 15 married priests were excluded from this law, except for those who were found guilty of incivisme after being denounced by three citizens whose patriotism was affirmed by popular societies or revolutionary authorities. A P, 74:159–61; Bézard, Rapport et projet de décret, 3, 7. notes to pages 96–102 187 8. Bézard, Rapport et projet de décret, 5, 7–8. 9. Higgonnet, Goodness beyond Virtue, 195. 10. an f/19/883. 11. Torné, Compte rendu à la société républicaine, 37. 12. an f/19/893. Vaugeois was the former vicaire épiscopal of the abbé Grégoire, bishop of Blois. 13. Massot, Discours contre le célibat, 17. 15. Edelstein, Terror of Natural Right. 14. Journal de Pierre Pontard, Sept. 1793. 16. A P, 72:662–63. 17. Edelstein, Terror of Natural Right, 26–42. 18. Jullien, “Rapport sur Lorient commune Montagnarde,” in Une mission en Vendée, 205; Kennedy, Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution, 162; Brégail, “Mariages de prêtres constitutionnels en 1793,” 221; Meriel, La Constitution civile du clergé à Falaise, 85; A P, 72:231; A P, 75:60; McManners, French Revolution and the Church, 112; Révolutions de Paris, 16:228–29; A P, 80:503–4; Moniteur universel, March 24, 1794. 19. an af/ii/128 dossier 979. 20. These représenants included Châteauneuf- Randon in the Ardèche; Jean-Baptiste Michaud in the Indre and Cher; Charles Delacroix [Lacroix] in the Ardennes and Meuse; Chaudron- Roussau in the Aude; and Mallarmé and Bouillerot in Tarn, Gers, and Haute- Garonne. See Sciout, Histoire de la constitution civile du clergé, 3:56–64, 686–87. See also Lottin, Ville d’Orléans, 2:326, 336; La république une et indivisible. 21. Sciout, Histoire de la Constitution civile, 3:46–52; an af/ii/98. 22. Gardère, “Histoire religieuse de Condom,” 342. 23. an af/iv/1914 dossier 12 pièce 185; an af/iv/1904 d. 3 p. 70–73; an af/iv/ 1897 d. 3 p. 37. 24. Gardère, “Histoire religieuse de Condom,” 342. 25. Maréchaux, “Les prêtres mariés,” 109–11. 26. A P, 77:692. 27. Bérard, Entretien du citoyen S.B., 49. 28. Journal de Pierre Pontard, Sept. 1793, 22. 29. Sepinwall, Abbé Grégoire. For Grégoire’s views on priestly celibacy and marriage, see Grégoire, Histoire du mariage des prêtres. 30. Ozouf, “Regeneration,” in Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution, 785. 31. an ad/xviii/48; Bias- Parent, Bias Parent, ministre du culte catholique; Bossut, “Bias Parent, curé Jacobin.” 32. Desmé de Chavigny, Saumur pendant la Révolution, 236–38; Bois, Les fêtes révolu- tionnaires à Angers, 17. 33. A P, 86:189–90. 34. Kennedy, Jacobin Clubs, 210. 35. “Le premier lien politique, / C’est d’être père, d’être époux, / C’est le premier tribut civique: / O noms saints d’époux et de père.” “Sans famille est- on 188 notes to pages 102–110 citoyen? / Est- on citoyen sans être homme?” AP 78: 269–71; Fontanier, “Hymne vraiment républicain,” ix–x; Vinatier, “Intellectuel du Cantal.” 36. A P, 78:77–79, 691–95. 37. A P, 32:316–19. 38. Langlois and Le Goff, “Vaincus de la Révolution”; Fenster, “Married Clergy of the Gironde,” 73; Vovelle, , 133–34; Cobb, Les armées révolutionnaires, 2:683; Vovelle, Revolution against the Church, 126, 187; Maréchaux, “Les prêtres mariés,” 193. 39. an af/iv/1916 d. 17 p. 195. 40. an af/iv/1914 d. 13 p. 51. 41. See, for example, an af/iv/1909 d. 2 p. 312. 42. A P, 80:155. 43. Feuille du salut public, Oct. 26, 1793. 44. Affiches d’Angers, Oct. 18–19, 1793. 45. LeBrun et al., Histoire d’Angers, 178; Soland, “Etude sur le théatre angevin,” 230–31; Bois, Les fêtes révolutionnaires, 17, 20, 48; Coquille d’Alleux, Le prêtre réfrac- taire. On the Cadière- Girard affair, see also Choudhury, “ ‘Carnal Quietism;’ ” Kuznicki, “Sorcery and Publicity”; Darnton, Forbidden Best- Sellers, 91. 46. La journée du Vatican. 47. Léger, La papesse Jeanne; Mercure universel, Jan. 29, 1793; McKee, The Rôle of the Priest, 68; Brunet, La papesse Jeanne, 120. Other Pope Joan plays during the period included Fauconpret, La papesse Jeanne; Carbon de Flins, Papesse Jeanne (unpublished; see the Journal de Paris, Feb. 8, 1793, for an account of the performance on Feb. 5 at Théatre du vaudeville). On the Pope Joan legend, see Boureau, La papesse Jeanne. 48. Rousseau, A bas la calotte, 97; Chastenet de Puységur, L’intérieur d’un ménage ré- publicain, 19; Maslan, Revolutionary Acts, 204–5. In addition to the plays discussed here, other plays on the subject of clerical marriage included Pompigny, L’époux républicain; Pompigny and Gouges, Le prélat d’autrefois; Volméranges, Le mariage du capucin; Luminais, La dévote ridicule; L’esprit follet. 49. Radet and Desfontaines, Au retour; Journal de Paris, Nov. 6, 1793; Hyslop, “The- ater during a Crisis”; Maslan, Revolutionary Acts, 245. 50. Radet and Desfontaines, Encore un curé. 51. A P, 79:137–38. 55. an f/19/891 dossier Sourtiat. 52. an f/19/884 dossier Lacombe. 56. an f/19/873 dossier Barrière. 53. A P, 79:419. 57. an f/19/886. 54. an f/19/873 dossier Badin. 58. A P, 80:490; an f/19/872–93. 59. For more information on clerics’ wives, see chapter 5; the archives of Cardinal Caprara at the Archives nationales (af/iv/1895–1916, 1920); Graham, “Mariages des ecclésiastiques députés.” 60. McManners, French Revolution and the Church, 112. 61. an f/19/873 dossier Blondez. 62. an f/19/882 dossier Harcart. notes to pages 110–121 189 63. See, for example, an aa/62/1550. 64. A P, 86:154. 65. an f/19/874 dossier Boullefroy; an f/19/892 dossier Terasse. 66. Gazette nationale, Nov. 17, 1793 in Réimpression de l’ancien Moniteur, 18:452; an f/7/ 4637 p. 75. On the politics of marrying a foreigner during the Revolution, see Heuer, Family and the Nation. 67. an f/7/4637; Moniteur universel, Oct. 10, 1793; Cobb, “Un aspect de l’esprit sans- culotte.” 68. an af/iv/1897 d. 3 p. 93; an af/iv/1897 d. 3 p. 74. 69. an af/iv/1897 d. 3 p. 35–36. 71. an af/iv/1897 d. 3 p. 106. 70. an af/iv/1897 d. 3 p. 38. 72. an af/iv/1897 d. 5 p. 39. 73. an af/iv/1898 d. 2 p. 58. 74. an af/iv/1901 d. 11 p. 47; an af/iv/1898 d. 3 p. 134. 75. an af/iv/1898 d. 2 p. 24. 76. an af/iv/1897 d. 5 p. 49. 77. See, for example, an af/iv/1897 d. 3 p. 19; an af/iv/1898 d. 2 p. 63. 78. an af/iv/1901 d. 11 p. 54. 79. an af/iv/1897 d. 3 p. 44; an af/iv/1901 d. 11 p. 47; an af/iv/1901 d. 11 p. 64. 80. an af/ii/123 dossier 937. 81. Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred; Aston, Religion and Revolution, 191. 82. Jainchill, Republican Origins of French Liberalism, 57–58; Réimpression de l’ancien Moni- teur, 25:501. 83. Hesse, Other Enlightenment, 105. 84. Floury, Le gardien de la liberté; Dommanget, La déchristianisation à Beauvais. 85. The festive calendar was established by the law of 3 brumaire, Year IV (Oct. 25, 1795). On the fête des époux, see Verjus, Le bon mari, 275–308. 86. Affiches d’Angers, 4 floréal, Year IV (April 23, 1795); Affiches d’Angers, 12 floréal, Year IV (May 1, 1795); Bois, Les fêtes révolutionnaires, 89–90. 87. See, for example, Viville, Discours prononcé le  floréal; Mulot, Discours prononcé le dix floréal; Letourneux and Neufchâteau, Discours prononcé, le  floréal; Bouch- eseiche, Discours du citoyen J. B. Boucheseiche; Chappe, Discours pour la fête; Fête des époux; Hymne pour la fête des époux; Chapuis, Discours prononcé au temple; Lesbrussart, Discours prononcé au temple, 3–4; Neeb, Discours prononcé au temple, 3–5. 88. Dorsch, “Discours prononcé à la fête des époux” in Dorsch, Recueil de discours patriotiques, 1, 7. 89. Chotard, Sur le mariage des prêtres, 14. 90. Sepinwall, Abbé Grégoire, 131–32; Hermon- Belot, L’abbé Grégoire; Dubray, La pensée de l’abbé Grégoire; Dean, L’abbé Grégoire. 91. On the Constitutional Church, see Dean, L’église constitutionnelle; and Dean, L’abbé Grégoire. 92. Gratien, et al., Lettre encyclique, 13–17; Sepinwall, Abbé Grégoire, 146–47. 190 notes to pages 121–133 93. Letter from Henri Grégoire to the conseil épiscopal of Blois, Oct. 8, 1795, Bib- liothèque de la Société de Port-Royal (bspr) gr 2165. 94. Letter from Clément to Jean- Denis Lanjuinais, June 21, 1795, bspr gr 383. 95. Letter from Bellote to Grégoire, June 21, 1795, bsrp gr 376. 96. Coquille- Deslongchamps, Réponse à la lettre encyclique. 97. bspr gr 1281; bspr gr 255; bspr gr 76; bspr gr 1434. 98. Letter from Vévier to Grégoire, Sept. 12, 1795, bspr gr 1261. 99. Garbet, Rétraction d’Antoine Garbet. See also Marguerit, Adresse de V.- A.- F. de Marguerit. 100. Annales religieuses, 2:571–72; Hamart, A la plus grande gloire. 101. Annales de la religion, 1:579. 102. Morard, Mémoire à consulter. 103. Grand assassinat (I thank Howard Brown for first alerting me to this print); an f/7/3685; La clef du cabinet, June 27, 1797; Ami des lois, June 28, 1797; Bourdin, “Révolution et superstition”; Marsden, “The Murder of Anne Durif.” 104. ad Indre- et- Loire, L243; ad Indre- et- Loire, L127; ad Indre- et- Loire, L125, folios 53–55; an af/iii/547 plaquette 3654 pièce 19. 105. an f/7/7428; Godechot, “Internal History of France,” 9:292. 106. an af/iii/35 d. 126, p. 43. 107. an f/7/7428. 108. Bruslon, Première lettre pastorale; Bruslon, Mandement du curé de Faye, 3, 6. 109. Letter from Pierre Suzor to Grégoire, Jan. 8, 1796, bspr, gr 688; Letter from Suzor to Grégoire, April 8, 1796, bspr, gr 687. 110. Bruslon, Lettre encyclique, 5. 111. an f/7/7428 dossier 6533; an f/7/7328 B4 dossier 6822. 112. Arrêté des consuls. 113. Langlois and Tackett, “A l’épreuve de la Révolution,” 276; Dean, L’église constitutionnelle; Boulay de la Meurthe, Négociation du Concordat.

. Married Priests in the Napoleonic Era 1. “Rapport de Talleyrand,” May 29, 1801, in Boulay de la Meurthe, Documents sur le Concordat, 3:228; Greenbaum, Talleyrand Statesman Priest. 2. Lacombe, Talleyrand the Man, 169–72. 3. Ibid., 132, 174–76. 4. Xavier Maréchaux has calculated that 2,727 married priests corresponded with Caprara, and Michel Vovelle has identified2 ,959. According to Claude Langlois and T.- J.- A. Le Goff, 3,715 married clerics petitioned Caprara. See Maréchaux, “Les prêtres mariés sous la Révolution française,” 150–51; Langlois and Le Goff, “Vaincus de la Révolution,” 288. 5. On married priests’ correspondence with Caprara (an af/iv/1895–1916), see Charon- Bordas, Inventaire des archives; Charon- Bordas, Légation du Cardinal Caprara; Mathiez, “Prêtres révolutionnaires devant le Cardinal Caprara”; Langlois and notes to pages 133–142 191 Le Goff, “Vaincus de la Révolution”; Maréchaux, “Les prêtres mariés”; Vovelle, : Révolution contre l’église, 133–54. 6. On the Concordat of 1801, see Boulay de la Meurthe, Négociation du Concordat; Mathieu, Le Concordat de ; Walsh, The Concordat of ; Dean, L’église constitutionnelle. 7. “Observations de Spina sur le projet II,” in Boulay de la Meurthe, Documents sur le Concordat, 3:680. 8. Letter from Bernier to Consalvi, Sept. 10, 1801, in Boulay de la Meurthe, Doc- uments sur le Concordat, 3:499. 9. Letter from Bernier to Consalvi, July 31, 1801, in Boulay de la Meurthe, Docu- ments sur le Concordat, 3:313–18; “Conférence entre les plénipotentiaires,” July 22, 1801, in Boulay de la Meurthe, Documents sur le Concordat, 3:290; Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy, 478, 483–85; Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West, 199. 10. Letter from Bernier to Consalvi, July 31, 1801, in Boulay de la Meurthe, Doc- uments sur le Concordat, 3:314, 317. 11. Desan, “French Revolution and Religion,” 569. 12. Portalis, Concordat de , 280. 13. Portalis, “Lettre circulaire du citoyen Portalis,” in Recueil de pièces, 257. 14. Maréchaux, “Les prêtres mariés,” 243–44. 15. Ibid., 235; Maréchaux, “Reconstruction of Catholicism after the Revolution,” 256. 16. an af/iv/1907 d. 7 p. 34. 17. Maréchaux, “Les prêtres mariés,” 204–10. 18. Ibid., 274; Langois and Le Goff, “Vaincus de la Révolution,” 291–92. 19. According to Langlois and Le Goff ’s study of a sample of petitions from 609 married clerics, 1.8 percent of secular clergymen and 4.3 percent of regular clergymen married a nun; 21.9 percent of nuns married either a regular or secular cleric. See Langlois and Le Goff, “Vaincus de la Révolution,” 302. On married nuns’ correspondence with Caprara, see Langlois and Le Goff, “Vaincus de la Révolution”; Langlois, Le catholicisme au féminin, 81–82; Graham, “Married Nuns before Cardinal Caprara.” 20. an af/iv/1898 d. 3 p. 40. 21. Maréchaux, “Reconstruction of Catholicism,” 253. 22. an af/iv/1914 d. 10 p. 145. 23. an af/iv/1897 d. 5 p. 32; an af/iv/1897 d. 5 p. 28. 24. an af/iv/1912 d. 5 p. 30. 25. an af/iv/1913 d. 8 p. 1–3; an af/iv/1911 d. 2 p. 146; an af/iv/1909 d. 13 p. 127; an af/iv/1916 d. 18 p. 62; an af/iv/1912 d. 3 p. 144; an af/iv/1897 d. 3 p. 42. 26. an af/iv/1913 d. 8 p. 1–3; an af/iv/1911 d. 2 p. 146; an af/iv/1909 d. 13 p. 127; an af/iv/1916 d. 18 p. 62; an af/iv/1912 d. 3 p. 144; an af/iv/1897 d. 3 p. 42; an af/iv/1911 d. 2 p. 65; an af/iv/1916 d. 18 p. 36; an af/iv/1897 d. 3 p. 99. 192 notes to pages 142–151 27. an af/iv/1911 d. 2 p. 135–36; Jolyclerc, Apologie des prêtres mariés. 28. an af/iv/1897 d. 4 p. 40. 29. Divorce was only reestablished in 1884 under the Third Republic. 30. Consequently, her husband filed for divorce by incompatibility of temperament. an af/iv/1898 d. 8 p. 81. 31. an af/iv/1898 d. 3 p. 81. 32. See, for example, an af/iv/1898 d. 2 p. 73; an af/iv/1898 d. 8 p. 51; an af/ iv/1898 d. 3 p. 57. 33. an af/iv/1897 d. 4 p. 42. 34. an af/iv/1898 d. 2 p. 64. 35. an af/iv/1898 d. 3 p. 44. 36. See, for example, an af/iv/1916 d. 19 p. 56. 37. See, for example, an af/iv/1911 d. 1 p. 130; an af/iv/1914 d. 12 p. 189. 38. an af/iv/1914 d. 10 p. 14. 40. an af/iv/1894 cahier 55 p. 52. 39. an af/iv/1916 d. 18 p. 53. 41. an af/iv/1911 d. 2 p. 118. 42. an af/iv/1911 d. 1 p. 26–29. 43. an af/iv/1911 d. 2 p. 20–21; an af/iv/1912 d. 3 p. 21; an af/iv/1916 d. 17 p. 66; an af/iv/1916 d. 18 p. 135. 44. an af/iv/1911 d. 2 p. 20–21; an af/iv/1908 d. 11 p. 56; an af/iv/1898 d. 6 p. 101; an af/iv/1911 d. 2 p. 17; an af/iv/1911 d. 2 p. 65. 45. an af/iv/1914 d. 12 p. 81. 46. an af/iv/1912 d. 5 p. 47. 47. an af/iv/1909 d. 2 p. 163; an af/iv/1910 d. 15 p. 66; an af/iv/1904 d. 4 p. 51; an af/iv/1897 d. 1 p. 60; Archives départementales de la Marne J 2744. 48. an af/iv/1914 d. 12 p. 157. 52. an af/iv/1911 d. 1 p. 8–11. 49. an af/iv/1913 d. 7 p. 121. 53. an af/iv/1914 d. 13 p. 184. 50. an af/iv/1916 d. 17 p. 175. 54. an af/iv/1907 d. 7 p. 50. 51. an af/iv/1901 d. 11 p. 76. 55. an af/iv/1908 d. 11 p. 394. 56. an af/iv/1904 d. 4 p. 60; an af/iv/1912 d. 5 p. 30. 57. an af/iv/1916 d. 18 p. 53; Maréchaux, “Les prêtres mariés,” 270. 58. an af/iv/1914 d. 13 p. 184. 59. See, for example, an af/iv/1909 d. 2 p. 348; af/iv/1912 d. 3 p. 124–25. 60. an af/iv/1912 d. 5 p. 83. 62. an af/iv/1914 d. 11 p. 35. 61. AV IV 1914 d. 11 p. 35. 63. an af/iv/1905 d. 3 p. 1. 64. an af/iv/1913 d. 7 p. 207. 65. See, for example, an af/iv/1908 d. 10 p. 206; an af/iv/1914 d. 11 p. 211; an af/iv/1912 d. 3 p. 184; an af/iv/1916 d. 17 p. 255. 66. an af/iv/1916 d. 17 p. 196. 69. an af/iv/1905 d. 3 p. 1. 67. an af/iv/1913 d. 7 p. 207. 70. an af/iv/1902 d. 4 p. 35. 68. an af/iv/1898 d. 6 p. 83. 71. an af/iv/1912 d. 3 p. 124–25. 72. an af/iv/1909 d. 13 p. 134; an af/iv/1914 d. 10 p. 120; an af/iv/1909 d. 2 p. 312. notes to pages 151–164 193 73. an af/iv/1912 d. 5 p. 52. 74. an af/iv/1905 d. 3 p. 1; an af/iv/1905 d. 1 p. 196. 75. an af/iv/1914 d. 13 p. 99–106. 77. an af/iv/1909 d. 2 p. 5–6. 76. an af/iv/1909 d. 2 p. 146. 78. an af/iv/1906 d. 1 p. 155–63. 79. an af/iv/1906 d. 1 p. 92–93. 80. See, for example, an af/iv/1910 d. 3 p. 81; an af/iv/1909 d. 2 p. 272–74; an af/iv/1909 d. 2 p. 252; an af/iv/1916 d. 17 p. 169–76. 81. an af/iv/1909 d. 2 p. 36. 86. an af/iv/1909 d. 2 p. 192. 82. an af/iv/1909 d. 2 p. 218. 87. an af/iv/1896 d. 2 p. 250. 83. an af/iv/1909 d. 2 p. 348. 88. an af/iv/1894 cahier 51 p. 51. 84. an af/iv/1909 d. 2 p. 348. 89. an af/iv/1898 d. 3 p. 32–41. 85. an af/iv/1909 d. 2 p. 332. 90. an af/iv/1894 cahier 52 p. 37. 91. Nouvelles ecclésiastiques, Dec. 7, 1802. 92. Agier, Du mariage, 55, 105; Bonnet, Rendre les révolutions utiles, 1:153. 93. Portalis quoted in Nouvelles ecclésiastiques, Nov. 9, 1802. 94. Je cherche le bonheur, 11–12, 35. 95. Poncet de la Grave, Considérations sur le célibat, 37, 7. 96. Pons, Réflexions philosophiques et politiques, 402–45. 97. Je cherche le bonheur, 30. 98. See, for example, Moreau de la Sarthe, Histoire naturelle de la femme, 203; Nouveau dictionnaire d’histoire naturelle, 21:7. 99. [Henry], Correspondance de deux ecclésiastiques, 197–99. 100. See, for example, Pons, Réflexions philosophiques, 412–13, 430; Je cherche le bonheur, 30. 101. [Le Coz], Catéchisme sur le célibat, 3:261–82; L’ami de la religion, Dec. 12, 1833. 102. Poncet de la Grave also proposed declaring unmarried men between the ages of twenty- five and seventy ineligible to hold public officeConsidérations ( sur le célibat, 18). See also Correspondance de deux ecclésiastiques, 123; [Le Coz], Catéchisme sur le célibat, 106. 103. Chateaubriand, Génie du christianisme, 61. 104. See, for example, Je cherche le bonheur, 54–55; Foulaines, Harmonie des cultes catholiques; Dubroca, De l’institution du célibat. 105. Bonald, Législation primitive, 29. 106. Chateaubriand, Génie du christianisme, 67–69. 107. Article 1133 of the Civil Code of 1804. 108. Annales du barreau français, 9:210–98; Portalis, Circulaire du ministre des cultes, Jan. 12, 1806, in Portalis, Discours, 571–72. 109. an B/15/207; Journal du Palais, 321–29; letter from Portalis to the archbishop of Bordeaux, Jan. 14, 1806, in Le publiciste, Feb. 14, 1807; Mémoire pour Barthelemy Charonceuil. 110. Portalis, Concordat de , 572–73. 111. Englund, Napoleon: A Political Life; Hales, Napoleon and the Pope; Shusterman, Religion and the Politics of Time, 299–300. 194 notes to pages 164–173 112. Atkin and Tallet, Priests, Prelates and People, 75–77; Sutherland, French Revolution and Empire, 332–33. 113. Ford, Divided Houses, especially 1–16; Langlois, Le catholicisme au féminin; Gibson, “Le catholicisme et les femmes”; Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred, 197–216. 114. Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy, 597–99. 115. Maréchaux, “Les prêtres mariés,” 255. 116. L’ami de la religion, 16:265–67; 18:155–56; 7:299–300; 8:247–49, 347–48.

Epilogue 1. Literary Gazette, no. 391, July 17, 1824. 2. Courier, Collection complète des pamphlets politiques, 382. 3. Raynaud, Notice historique; Causes politiques célèbres, 2:291–390; Causes criminelles célèbres, 2:289–90. 4. Ibid. 5. Réalmont, Crime dans le presbytère; Counter, “Mingrat: Anatomy of a Cause Célèbre;” Causes criminelles célèbres, 354–58; New Monthly Magazine, 12:415. 6. “Celebrated Trials,” 212. 7. Précis historique sur Mingrat. 8. New Monthly Magazine, 12:415; Causes criminelles célèbres, 2:374; L’impunité de Mingrat. 9. Réalmont, Crime dans le presbytère, 110. 10. Réponse aux anonymes. 11. L’ami de la religion, 66:88–91. 12. Fouquier, Causes célèbres, 1: book 22, 1–5. 13. On the feminization of religion in modern France, see Ford, Divided Houses, especially 1–16; Langlois, Le catholicisme au féminin; Gibson, “Le catholicisme et les femmes en France au XIXe siècle”; Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred, 197–216. 14. Kselman, “Perraud Affair.” Patrick Weil has defined the three principles of laïcité as freedom of conscience, separation of church and state, and an equal respect of all faiths and beliefs. See Weil, “Why the French Laïcité Is Liberal.” 15. Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests. On the discovery of childhood as a distinct phase of human life, see Ariès, Centuries of Childhood. 16. See, for example, Wills, Why Priests? A Failed Tradition. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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INDEX

Italicized page numbers refer to illustrations. abdicating priests, 105, , 107–9, 132 Bernet de Boislorette, François- Etienne, adoptions by unmarried priests, 98, 99, 110 61–62, 182n2 Affiches d’Angers (newspaper), 78, 104–5 Bernier, Etienne, 128, 135 Agier, Pierre- Jean, 158 Bézard, François- Siméon, 95, 96 Albitte, Antoine Louis, 110 Bias- Parent, Etienne- Jean- François, 102 Ambrose of Milan, 15–16 Blin, François- Pierre, 77 ami de la religion et du Roi, L’ (journal), 165, Boerhaave, Herman, 49 169–70 Boisset, Marc, 161–62 Amis des lois (journal), 124 Bonald, Louis de, 161 ancient Greece and Rome, on celibacy, Bonaparte, Napoleon. See Napoleon 14, 159 Bonnet, J.- Esprit, 158 Annales de la religion (journal), 122 Bonneville, Nicolas de, 83 Annales religieuses, politiques, et littéraires (jour- Bora, Katharina von, 19 nal), 122 Boswell, John, 176n16 Aubert, Jean- François, 87–88 Bourbon Restoration, 143, 165 Augustine of Hippo: Confessions, 16; On the Bréard, Jean Jacques, 186n93 Good of Marriage, 16; On Holy Virginity, 16; Brissot, Jacques- Pierre, 43, 50; Le patriote Jansenists inspired by, 25, 26 françois, 78; Theory of Criminal Laws, 45 Brown, Peter, 12 bachelorhood. See lay bachelorhood Brugière, Pierre, 87–88 Barruel, Augustin, 59, 67 Brundage, James, 12 Basire, Claude, 84 Bruslon, Joseph- François, 124–27; Lettre Bassville, Nicolas- Jean Hugou de, 65 encyclique, 127 Benedictines, 45, 74, 89, 112, 157 Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de, 47 Bérard, Joseph- Balthazard, 101 Berger, Julie, 111 Cadière, Catherine, 54–55, 56, 105 Bergier, Nicolas- Sylvestre, 37–38, 45, 52, 59 Cahier de Gerville, Bon- Claude, 84 228 index cahiers de doléances, 64 counter- revolution, 96–99; equation Calvin, Jean, 20 of clerical marriage with, 94–100, 126; Caprara, Giovanni Battista: appointment foreign power, celibate priests viewed as papal legate, 132, 135; contents of pe- as loyal to, 65–66, 75, 86; republican titions sent to, 137–40, 142–44; number ideology during Terror regarding, 94, of petitions received by, 135, 137, 190n4; 102, 104–5, 106–7, 115–16 powers as legate, 137; priests seeking to Civil Code of 1804, 96, 161 remain married, petitions from, 146–58; Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 63, 73, recalled as papal legate, 163; renewed 75, 120, 130 debates over clerical celibacy and, 162 class differences between clerics, 26–27 Capuchins, 58, 111, 156 Clément, Augustin- Jean- Charles, 87 Carpentier, Jean- Baptiste Le, 100 clerical celibacy, 1–10, 170–73; aboli- Casaux, Charles, marquis de, 77 tion during French Revolution, 3; as Catholic Enlightenment, 31, 36, 37 crime, 3, 45, 90, 92, 99; equated with Catholicism. See Roman Catholicism counter- revolution, 96–99; female Cercle social, 83 celibacy versus, 3, 4–5; lay bachelor- Cérutti, Joseph- Antoine- Joachim, 66 hood versus, 3; modern debates on, 11, Chabot, François, 111–12 171–73; Roman Catholic requirements Chabozi, Etienne, 124,  regarding, 4, 17, 21–22; secular clergy, charivari, 89 focus on, 4; terminology for, 3–4. See Charonceuil, Barthélemy, 162–63 also Enlightenment France, clerical celi- Chastity of the Clergy Unveiled, The, 68–69 bacy controversy in; French Revolution; Chateaubriand, François- René de, 2, 161; history of clerical celibacy in Christian The Genius of Christianity, 160 West; Napoleonic era, reconciliation Chaudon, Louis Mayeul, Anti- philosophical of married clerics with church during; Dictionary, 37, 38 priests; Terror; unnatural, clerical Chevrier, François- Antoine, 43 celibacy viewed as Choudhury, Mita, 53–54 clerical concubinage: clerical wives church and state: conflicting views of cler- regarded as concubines, 21, 88, 126, 152; ical marriage under Napoleon, 135–37; in medieval period, 17–19; in Napole- in controversy over Jansenism, 26; onic era petitions, 144, 147, 148, 156; in official separation of,172 ; split between Old Regime France, 24; opponents of church and Revolution, 62, 63 clerical marriage on, 88 church fathers, 13–16; invoked in celibacy clerical marriage: coerced/sham, 3, 93, 99– controversy, 29, 37 100, 103, 112–16, 140–42, 157; denials of citizenship and patriotism, 6–8; early right to marry after legalization, 84–85; Revolution stressing link between duty, framed as, 81–91, 117–18, 171; early marriage and, 65–66, 75, 77, 81, 83–84, Revolution, promoted in, 64–67; in 86, 90–91; Enlightenment, concept Eastern Orthodoxy, 17; festivals of, 92, of citizen- priest in, 32–34, 35, 36, 38; 101–3; legalization of, 73–81; as medical equation of clerical celibacy with remedy for ills of celibacy, 49–50; index 229

patriotism, equated with, 94–100, 126; confession and confessionals: denial peaking in Year II, 92–93; popular of sacraments to clerical wives, 152; interest in, , 70–72, , 105–6, hearing about sexual desires and sins in, 119–26; priests’ views of their own 74; seduction and rape of women in, marriages during Terror, 103–5; prison, 24, 56–57, 70, 167, 169, 177n28; sexual as means of release from, 99–100, 112, liaisons in, 148 113; reasons for marrying, 9, 93, 103–4; Consalvi, Cardinal Hercule, 128, 131, 135 reasons of participants for, 9, 103–5; Constitutional Charter of 1814, 165 regeneration, as act of, 100–102, 108, Constitutional Church, 116, 120, 122, 126, 115–16, 120; renunciations of, 122–23; 127, 129 right, framed as, 64–65, 76–77, 79, 82, Constitution of 1789, 117 83, 118; salaries and pensions, 79, 84–85, Constitution of 1791, 79, 116 90–91, 95; sexual passions, as means of Constitution of 1793, 117 controlling, 51. See also Napoleonic era, Constitution of the Year III, 116–18 reconciliation of married clerics with Coquille, Horatius- Coclès (formerly church during Jacques- Antoine Coquille d’Alleux), clerical wives: backgrounds and circum- 104–5, 119 stances of, 109; in coerced/sham mar- Coquille- Deslongchamps, René, 122 riages, 113–14; concubines, regarded as, Counter- Enlightenment thinkers/anti- 21, 88, 126, 152; confession denied to, 152; philosophes, 31, 36–37, 53, 59 conjugal relationship, Napoleonic era Counter- Reformation, 21–22 petitions discussing, 148–50; difficul- counter- revolution: clerical celibacy ties finding,110 ; divorcées as, 109, 148; equated with, 96–99; priests associated financial concerns of, 143; foreigners with, 89, 94; in Vendée, 89, 94 as, 111; in Napoleonic era petitions, 139, Courier, Paul- Louis, 167, 169 152; nuns as, 80, 114–15, 123–24, 139, 156, Courier de Provence (newspaper), 78 191n19; reasons for marrying, 9; widows Cournand, abbé, 64–67, 77, 80 as, 9, 106, 109, 153, 156 Courrier de Lyon (newspaper), 78 Code Napoléon. See Civil Code of 1804 Couturier, Jean- Pierre, 100, 102–3 coerced/sham clerical marriage, 3, 93, Crassous, Joseph Augustin, 99 99–100, 103, 112–16, 140–42, 157 Creuzé- Latouche, Jacques- Antoine, 117 Committee of Legislation, 78, 83, 84, 91, crime, clerical celibacy identified as, 3, 45, 95 90, 92, 99 Committee of Petitions, 78, 84 Committee of Public Safety, 92, 98, 99, d’Alembert, Jean Le Rond, and Denis 100 Diderot, Encyclopédie, 47, 175n6 companionate marriage, rise of, 7, 35, 51, Danton, Georges, 186n93 101 Darnton, Robert, 53, 54, 56 Concordat of 1801, 116, 128–29, 130, Dartigoeyte, Pierre- Armand, 98, 99, 134–35 100 Concordatory Church, 116, 137, 163–64 Day of the Vatican, The, 105 230 index de- Christianization campaign: clerical Dolivier, Pierre, 85–86 marriages resulting from, 9, 93; coerced/ domestic servants: clerical wives, 1, 9, 80, sham marriages, 112, 115–16; difficulties 86, 108, 109, 111–15, 142; in coerced/ of priests finding marriage partners and, sham marriages, 9, 109, 112–15, 123, 142; 110; Grégoire’s opposition to, 120; main impregnated, 111; as sexual temptations elements of, 186n4; regeneration, concept for priests, 74, 80 of, 101, 120; representatives on mission Dormoy, Claude- Ignace, 78 and other agents of, 103; Robespierre’s Dorsch, Joseph Anton, 119 antipathy toward, 115–16; unnatural sense Du Barry, Madame, 69 of clerical celibacy and, 9 Dufai, Antoinette, 80 Décret de l’Assemblée National qui supprime les Dufourny, Louis- Pierre, 111 ordres religieux et religieuses,  Dulaurens, Henri- Joseph, 57 Delacroix, Charles, 91, 186n93, 187n20 Duliepvre, Hyancinthe, 124–25, 126 Delaguelle, René- Louis, 99 Dumolard, Joseph- Vincent, 85 Delaunay, Joseph, 79 Durif, Anne, 124,  Démeunier, Jean- Nicolas, 39 depopulation thesis. See population Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholic schism with, concerns 17 Desan, Suzanne, 7 economic and financial issues: clerical Desfontaines, Georges, and Jean- Baptiste wives, financial concerns of,143 ; family Radet, Return, 106 economic strategies, role of clerical Desforges, Jacques, 29–30, 34, 39, 60; The celibacy in, 46; financial issues faced Advantages of Marriage . . . , 29 by clerics during French Revolution, Desmoulins, Camille, 78, 183n34 79, 84–85, 90–91, 95, 99, 110–11; in Des Rues, Claude Nicholas, 56 Napoleonic era petitions, 150; penalties d’Holbach, Paul-Henri Thiry, baron, 34, and taxes for celibacy proposed, 42–43; 36, 50; Christianity Exposed, 58 political- economic dimensions of Diderot, Denis, 2, 30, 50; Encyclopédie, 47, clerical celibacy controversy, 39–48; so- 175n6; The Nun, 54; Père de famille, 35; Supple- cioeconomic differences between clerics, ment to the Voyage of Bougainville, 35, 44–45 26–27. See also salaries and pensions Directory government, 118–19 Edelstein, Dan, 97, 98 divorce: clerical wives, divorcées as, 109, Ehrmann, Jean- François, 117 148; of Catherine Grand, 131; legalized Elvira, Council of, 15 during Revolution, 85, 142–43; of Leroy Encyclopédie, 47, 175n6 and Jabre- Duplessis, 123; of married Encyclopédie méthodique, 83 clerics seeking to reconcile with church, England: French rivalry with, 41–42; mar- 142–45; permission to remarry, divorced ried priests, reconciliation with church, clerics seeking, 156; pressure on divorced 135; wives and children of pastors in, women to marry, 9; reestablished under 42, 160 Third Republic, 192n29; restrictions Enlightenment France, clerical celibacy and abolition after Revolution, 143 controversy in, 2, 10, 29–60; financial index 231

penalties proposed for celibates, 42–43; foreign power, celibate priests viewed as medical arguments on, 46–53; nature, loyal to, 65–66, 75, 86 arguments based on, 30, 32, 35, 44–45, foreign wives, clerics marrying, 111 46–53; père de famille and bon curé, cultural Foucault, Michel, 8 emphasis on, 32–39; political- economic Foucault, Pierre Louis, 58 dimensions of, 39–48; reasons for, 31–32; Fouché, Joseph, 99, 102, 103 sexual scandal associated with celibacy, Fouquier, Armand, 170 53–60, ; Tridentine priest, concept of, Franchet, Antoine, 79–80 33; unnatural, clerical celibacy viewed as, Franciscans, 38, 52, 74, 78, 153 30, 32, 52, 59; vilification of celibates, move French Revolution: abolition of clerical toward, 36 celibacy and promotion of cler- Erasmus, Desiderius, 20, 175n6 ical marriage, 3, 73–81; abolition Essenes, 14 of monasticism and suppression of Etsi apostolici principatus, 135 religious orders, 70; church, break with, 8–9, 62, 63; family and father- family and fatherhood, 6–8; in early hood associated with good citizenship revolutionary period, 64, 65, 77, 78, 82; during, 6–8, 107, 118–19; family and economic strategies, role of clerical cel- fatherhood stressed in, 6–8, 64, 65, ibacy in, 46; in Enlightenment France, 77, 78, 82, 118–19; festivals of clerical 32–39; masculinity associated with, 5; in marriage, 92, 101–3; legalization of Napoleonic era petitions, 149–52, 154; clerical marriage, 73–81; marriage as- père de famille and bon curé, cultural em- sociated with good citizenship during, phasis on, 32–39; republican ideology 65–66, 75, 77, 81, 83–84, 86, 90–100; during Terror regarding, 94, 102, 104–5, opposition to clerical marriage during, 106–7, 115–16 67, 75–76, 87–88, 89–90, 119–22; pa- Fauchet, Claude, 83, 88, 185n84 triot clergy in, 61–63; popular interest Faure, Pierre- Joseph- Denis- Guillaume, 103 in clerical marriage during, , 70–72, Feller, François- Xavier, 52–53 , –; promotion of clerical mar- femininity. See gender; women riage in, 64–67; right, clerical marriage feminization of religion, 172 framed as, 64–65, 76–77, 79, 82, 83; Féroux, Christophe- Léon, 45 renunciations of clerical marriage festivals of marriage, 92, 101–3, 118–19 during, 122–23; unnatural, clerical Feuille de correspondance (newspaper), 78 celibacy viewed as, 62–63, 64–73, 79, Feuille du salut public (newspaper), 104 97, 98, 119. See also de- Christianization; Feuille villageoise (newspaper), 66, 78, 85 Terror finances.See economic and financial issues; Frey, Léopoldine, and brothers, 111 salaries and pensions flagellation, , 56 Galen, 48, 49 flight, Desforges’ attempts at, 29–30 Garat, Dominique- Joseph, 77 Fontana, Louis, 156 Gaston, Robert, 91 Fontanier, Pierre, 102, 146 Gâtier, abbé, 57 232 index

Gaudin, Jacques- Maurice, 1–2, 3; The early Christianity, 11, 12, 13–16; impor- Disadvantages of Priestly Celibacy, Proven by tance to debates about practice, 11–12; Historical Research, 2, 33–34 medieval Europe, 17–19; Old Regime gender: complementarity of, 100–101; femi- France, 22–28; Protestant Reformation nization of religion, 172; “naturaliza- and Counter- Reformation, 19–22; tion” of, 5–6; “third gender,” celibate scholarship on, 12 clergy as, 175n8. See also manhood and History of Dom Bougre, Porter of the Carthusians, masculinity; sexuality; women 54 Gérin, Marie, and family, 167–70 homosexuality, 57–59, 173. See also sodomy Gerson, Jean, 19 Huguenots, 23, 40 Girard, Jean- Baptiste, 54–55, 105 humoral theory, 48–49 Gobel, Jean- Baptiste- Joseph, 88 Hunt, Lynn, 7 good citizenship. See citizenship and Hus, Jan, 19 patriotism Goudar, Ange, 43–44 Interior of a Republican Household, The, 106 Gouget, Benoît, 45, 59 Inter plura illa mala, 137 Gouly, Marie Benoît, 99 Goussin, Constant- Joseph- Eugène, 84 Jabre- Duplessis, Dominique- Louis, 123–24 Grand, Catherine Worley, 130–31, 132 Jacobins and Jacobin clubs: coerced/sham Grand assassinat arrivée dans le bourg de clerical marriage and, 121; equation of Talendre . . . , 124,  clerical celibacy and counter- revolution, Gratien, Jean- Baptiste, 76, 87, 185n84 96, 97, 98–99; equation of patriotism Grégoire, Henri, 101, 120–22, 126–27 and clerical marriage, 94–95, 96, 97, Gregory VII, 18 100; on family and fatherhood, 7–8; fes- Gregory XV, 177n28 tivals of clerical marriage held by, 102; Gregory XVI, 165 support for clerical marriage, 9, 78, 89 Gregory of Nyssa, 14 Jallet, Jacques, 69, 82 Greuze, Jean- Baptiste, A Father Reading the Jansenists, 25–26; on clerical celibacy issue, Bible to His Children, 35 26, 64, 67, 69, 82, 87, 158; Jesuits and, 25, 55; Nouvelles ecclésiastiques (journal), 67, Harel, Elie, 38, 59–60 158, 179n32 Harmful Effects of the Virtue of Chastity in Jaubert, Pierre, 44 Priests, The, 72 Jauffret, abbé, 122 Hayer, Jean- Nicolas- Hubert, 52 Jerome, Against Jovinian, 16 Hébert, Jacques René, 80 Jesuits: Barruel’s Journal ecclésiastique, 67; Hé mais, oui- da, j’ai quitté ma soutanne,  Cérutti’s Feuille villageoise (newspa- Hesse, Carla, 118 per), 66; expulsion from France, 26; Heuer, Jennifer, 6, 7 Girard- Cadière case, 54–55; Jansenists Hippocrates, 49 and, 25, 55; Mirabeau’s Hic- et- Haec, 58 history of clerical celibacy in Christian Jews and Judaism, 14, 111, 159, 182n11 West, 10; controversy as element of, 12; John of Rouen, 18 index 233

Jolyclerc, Nicolas, 142 160; clerical celibacy as cause of, 67; of Journal des amis, 88 lay bachelors, 45, 59; in literature, 53–54, Journal ecclésiastique, 67, 87 70; philosophes accused of, 59–60 Jovinian, 15–16 Lignac, Louis François Luc de, 48–49, 57, Julian III, 135 180n71 Julien, Jean, 95 Liguori, Alphonsus, 51 Jullien, Marc- Antoine, 92, 98 Lindet, Robert- Thomas, 82, 88 Jumel, Jean- Charles, 78 List of all the priests found in flagrante delicto with the prostitutes of Paris under the Old Regime, Karlstadt, Andreas, 19–20  Krug, Jean- Paul, 184n50 Louis XIV, 23, 24, 25 Kselman, Thomas, 172 Louis XV, 25, 69 Luther, Martin, 19 La Beaumelle, Laurent Angliviel de, 40 luxury, problem of, 41, 59 Lacombe, Dominique, 137 Lacombe, François, 89, 108 Machault, Louis Charles, 87 laïcité, 172 Mailhe, Jean- Baptiste, 84–85, 117 Langlois, Claude, 133, 190n4, 191n19 Mallarmé, François René, 115, 187n20 Laplanche, Jacques Léonard, 99 manhood and masculinity: citizenship and Lateran Councils I and II, 18–19, 177n16 civic virtue, gendered meanings of, 7–8, Lavau, Pierre- François, 86 94, 102, 171–72; family and fatherhood Law of Suspects, 186n7 associated with, 5; feminization of lay bachelorhood, 3, 43, 45, 59 religion and, 172; incompatibility with Lea, Henry Charles, An Historical Sketch of clerical celibacy, 35; republican ideology Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church, 12 during Terror regarding, 94, 102; sexual Leblanc de Beaulieu, Jean-Claude, 137 desire, changing concepts of, 5–6. See Le Bon, Joseph, 73, 100, 103 also family and fatherhood; gender Le Coz, Claude, 79, 137; Catechism on Ecclesi- Mare, Jacques- Nicolas- Michel, 148 astical Celibacy, 159–60 Maréchaux, Xavier, 103, 133, 139, 190n4 le Fort, Jeanneton, 56 marriage: companionate marriage, rise of, Legendre, Louis, 186n93 7, 35, 51, 101; early Revolution, linked to Léger, Pierre, Pope Joan, 105–6 good citizenship in, 65–66, 75, 77, 81, Legislative Assembly, 2, 61, 79, 84, 85 83–84, 86, 90–91; republican ideology Le Goff, T.- J.- A., 133, 190n4, 191n19 during Terror regarding, 94, 102, 104–5, Lequinio, Joseph Marie, 103, 186n93 106–7, 115–16; same- sex marriage in Leroy, Marie- Louise, 123–24 France, 173; secularization of, 85, 173. See lèse- humanité, 90 also clerical marriage; clerical wives Lesuire, Robert- Martin, The Marriage of masturbation, 19, 48, 54 Priests Refuted, or Celibacy Avenged, 76 Mathiez, Albert, 133 libertinism: anti- celibates labeled as, Maultrot, Gabriel- Nicolas, 2, 67 184n50; clerical celibacy as brake on, Maurice, Jean- Marie- Nicholas, 154–55 234 index

Mayet, Jean- Marie- Félix, 87 155, 161–63; nature, arguments based on, Maza, Sarah, 181n86 150–51, 154–55; number of petitions, McManners, John, 177n26 135, 137, 190n4; papal briefs on, 131, medical arguments regarding celibacy, 134–35, 137, 163; post- Concordat clerical 46–53, 72, 159, 172–73, 180n71 marriages, 153–57, 163; rehabilitation of Ménuret de Chambaud, Jean- Joseph, marriage, petitioners seeking, 139–40, 47–48 145–57; reintegration into priesthood, Mignien- Planier, Pierre- Jean, mémoire petitioners seeking, 139–40, 143–45; justificatif, 127 renewed debates over clerical celibacy Mingrat, Antoine, 167–70 and, 158–65; Rome, French occupation Mirabeau, Honoré- Gabriel de Riqueti, of, 163–64; separation from wives and comte de, 73–75, 82; Hic- et- Haec, 58 families, resistance to, 151–52; shortages Mirabeau, Victor Riqueti, marquis de, of priests, 164; Talleyrand marriage, L’ami des hommes, 41 130–32, 165; unnatural, clerical celibacy Moheau, Jean- Baptiste, Research and Consid- viewed as, 158, 159. See also Caprara, erations on the Population of France, 44 Giovanni Battista Moniteur universel (newspaper), 78 National Assembly, 61, 64, 72, 74, 75, 77, Montagnards, 92, 94, 98 78, 79 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron National Convention, 73, 87, 89, 90, 91, 95, de, 2, 30, 179n32; Persian Letters and The 98, 99, 108, 110 Spirit of the Laws, 40 National Guard, 61, 89, 90,  Morillon, Marie Adelaïde, 127 natural republicanism, 97–98 Muraire, Honoré, 83 natural rights: clerical marriage framed as, murders by clerics: Chabozi’s murder of 64–65, 76–77, 79, 82, 83, 118; defenders Durif, 124, ; Mingrat’s murder of of celibacy using language of, 87–88 Gérin, 167–70 nature and the natural: in Enlightenment celibacy controversy, 30, 32, 35, 44–45, Napoleon, 2; Civil Code of 1804, 96, 46–53; gender and sexuality conceived in 161; contributions to clerical marriage terms of, 5–6, 176n16; idealized natural debate, 2, 164–65; coup d’état, 128; man, concept of, 35; medical arguments religious policy as First Consul, 128 on celibacy, 46–53, 72, 159, 172–73, Napoleonic era, reconciliation of married 180n71; in Napoleonic era petitions, clerics with church during, 10, 130–65; 150–51, 154–55. See also unnatural, clerical Civil Code of 1804, 96, 161; deathbed celibacy viewed as retractions and petitions, 165; defenses Nicholas II, 18 of legitimacy of clerical marriage, 145– Nourry, Charles, 54 46; divorces and disavowals, 142–45; nouveau disciple de Luther, Le, 87 French state versus church view of cler- Nouvelles ecclésiastiques (journal), 67, 158, ical marriage, 135–37; information con- 179n32 tained in clerical petitions, 137–39; legal nuns: clerical celibacy debate seldom rights of priests to contract marriage, considering, 4–5, 80; as clerical wives, index 235

80, 114–15, 123–24, 139, 156, 191n19; paternal ideals expressed in, 35; Pope erotic fantasies associated with, 54; Joan plays, 105–6, 188n47 married, 80–81, 114–15, 123–24, 132, Plumard de Dangeul, Louis- Joseph, 43 137, 184n58, 191n19; as Napoleonic Pluquet, François- André- Adrien, Dictionary era petitioners, 132, 137, 156; popular of Heresies, 46 interest in marriage of, , 70–72, Pole, Reginald, 135 ; salaries and pensions of married political- economic dimensions of clerical canonesses, 79; slavery, celibacy com- celibacy controversy, 39–48 pared to, 66 Poncet de La Grave, Guillaume, 159, 160, 193n102 oath of loyalty, priests required to take, Pons, Jean, 159 75, 94–95 Pontard, Pierre, 90, 95, 97, 101 Onania (anonymous), 48 Pope Joan plays, 105–6, 188n47 On me raze ce matin, Je me marie ce soir,  population concerns: in Enlightenment Organic Articles, 136 period, 39–41, 42–43, 44, 45–46; Origen, 14 during French Revolution, 86, 89; in Oudin, Marie- Françoise, 127–28 Napoleonic era, 160 Ozouf, Mona, 101 Portalis, Jean- Etienne- Marie, 136–37, 158, 163, 172 Parish, Helen, 12 priests: abdicating priests, 105, , Parlement of Paris, 25, 29, 30 107–9, 132; citizen model, 32–34, 35, Pascal, Jacques François, 58 36, 38; class differences between clerics, patriote françois, Le (journal), 78 26–27; financial issues faced by clerics patriotism. See citizenship and patriotism during Revolution, 79, 84–85, 90–91, Paul and Pauline letters, 13, 50 95, 99, 110–11; foreign power, celibate pensions. See salaries and pensions priests viewed as loyal to, 65–66, 75, 86; Peter Damian, 18 influence of, 27; numbers of priests in Pétion de Villeneuve, Jérome, 84; Essay on pre- Revolutionary France, 26; numbers Marriage, 36 of married priests during French Revo- Petit, Gabrielle, 162–63 lution, 2, 80, 93–94, 103; patriot clergy, Philibert, Nicolas, 185n84 62; petitioners to Caprara in Napole- physiocrats, 41, 58 onic era, 132–57; priests’ views of their Pichon, Thomas- Jean, 43 own marriages during Terror, 103–5; Pius VI, 75, 130, 131 reasons for marrying, 9, 93, 103–4; Pius VII, 128, 132, 135, 137, 163–64 training, 23–24; Tridentine priest, Platey, Jean and Rosalie, 161–62 concept of, 33. See also clerical celibacy; plays, theatrical, 2, 188n47–48; about clerical marriage; de-Christianization clerical marriage, 70, 105–7, 183n27; campaign; French Revolution; Napo- anticlerical and anti- celibacy senti- leonic era, reconciliation of married ments in revolutionary theater, 105–7, clerics with church during; salaries and 188n47–48; on Mingrat murder, 169; pensions; Terror; and specific priests 236 index

Priests Become Citizens, or Abolition of Religious movement, 115–16; cult of the Supreme Celibacy (anonymous), 66 Being, 186n4; on ecclesiastics as civil Primat, Claude- François- Marie, 137 servants, 183n32; fall of, 116; interest in prison, clerical marriage as means of celibacy issue, 2; Jullien as protégé of, release from, 99–100, 112, 113 98; priest’s child named after, 104; sup- Protestantism: England, French rivalry port for clerical marriage, 73, 183n34 with, 41–42; Huguenots, 23, 40; Robinet, Jean- Baptiste, 43; Universal Dic- population issues and, 45; Reformation, tionary, 48 19–20 Roman Catholicism: Civil Constitution of Prudhomme, Louis- Marie, 78, 83–84 the Clergy and, 63, 73, 75, 120, 130; clerical marriage as break with, 105; Con- Rabaut Saint- Etienne, Jean- Paul, 61 cordat of 1801, 116, 128–29, 130, 134–35; Radet, Etienne, 132, 164 Concordatory Church, 116, 137, 163–64; Radet, Jean- Baptiste, and Georges Desfon- in Constitutional Charter of 1814, 165; taines, Return, 106 Constitutional Church, 116, 120, 122, 126, radical Enlightenment, 31 127, 129; Counter Reformation, 21–22; radical Revolution. See Terror Eastern Orthodoxy, schism with, 17; Reboul, Henri- Paul- Irénée, 44 French Revolution, break with, 8–9, 62, Récamier, Juliette, 132 63; marriage and procreation promoted regeneration, concept of, 100–102, 108, by, 45–46; official separation of church 115–16, 120 and state, 172; in Old Regime France, religion vengée, La (journal), 52 22–28; requirements regarding clerical Religion without Priests, 69 celibacy, 4, 17, 21–22; right to require religious liberty, arguments based on, 88 clerical celibacy, arguments for, 88. See religious/regular clergy, 4, 26, 41, 43, 49, also Napoleonic era, reconciliation of 66, 70, 132, 137, 156. See also nuns married clerics with church during Reneaulme de Lagaranne, Michel- Louis, Rome, Napoleonic occupation of, 163–64 47, 51 Rousseau, Jean- Jacques, 2, 30, 96; Confessions, representatives on mission, 98–100, 101–3, 57; Emile, 57; Julie, or the New Heloise, 57 110, 111, 112, 115, 187n20 Rousseville, Pierre- Henri, 89 revolutionary tribunals, 99, 111, 186n7 Révolutions de France et de Brabant (journal), 78 Sade, Marquis de, Justine, 79 Révolutions de Paris (newspaper), 78, 80, Saignet, Guillaume, 19 83–84 Saint- Pierre, Charles- Irénée de Castel de, Reymond, Henri, 137 33, 40, 44 rights: clerical marriage framed as, 64–65, salaries and pensions: denied to celibates, 76–77, 79, 81–83, 97, 117–18; defenders 99; of married clerics, 79, 84–85, of celibacy using language of, 87–88; 90–91, 95, 110–11; reasons of priests for and duties, 81–83, 117–18, 171 marrying and, 104 Robespierre, Maximilien: on coerced cler- Saury, Jean, 49–50 ical marriage and de- Christianization Schneider, Euloge, 78, 184n50 index 237 secularization of marriage, 85 Stendhal, 169 Sepinwall, Alyssa, 101 Stoicism, 14 Seven Years’ War, 41–42 Suzor, Pierre, 126–27 sexuality: changing conceptions of sexual desires of men and women, 5–6; ho- Talleyrand- Périgord, Charles- Maurice de, mosexuality, 57–59, 173; marital sexual 2, 128, 130–32, 134, 165 pleasure valorized, 51–52; masturba- Taylor, Charles, 8 tion, 19, 48, 54; medical Tell, Guillaume, 97 arguments on celibacy, 46–53, 72, 159, Terror, 3, 10, 92–116; abdicating priests, 172–73, 180n71; nature and 105, , 107–9; clerical wives in, 109–10; the natural, conceived in terms of, coerced/sham clerical marriages, 5–6, 176n16; sodomy, 19, 20, 54, 58–59 3, 93, 99–100, 103, 112–16; crime, sexual misbehavior of clergy: Enlighten- clerical celibacy viewed as, 90, 92, ment interest in/concern with, 53–60, 99; equation of clerical celibacy with ; Mingrat affair, 167–70; modern counter- revolution, 96–99; equation of sexual abuse crisis, 172–73; in Napole- clerical marriage and patriotism during, onic era clerical celibacy controversy, 94–100; opposition to clerical marriage 159–60; in Napoleonic era petitions during, 95–96, 110; peaking of clerical for rehabilitation of marriage, 147–49, marriage during, 92–93; republican 156, 157; Revolutionary period on, 64, ideology of marriage, citizenship, and 67–70, , 123; transfers in response to, family during, 94, 102, 104–5, 106–7, 167. See also confession and confession- 115–16. See also de- Christianization als; and specific practices campaign; French Revolution sham/coerced clerical marriage, 3, 93, Tertullian of Carthage, Exhortation to 99–100, 103, 112–16, 140–42, 157 Chastity, 14 Sicard, abbé, 122 theater. See plays, theatrical Siricius, 15 Thérèse philosophe, 54–56,  slavery, celibacy compared to, 66–67, 75, Thermidorian Convention, 116–17 108 Thiébault, Martin- François, 76 social and economic differences between Third Republic, 134, 172, 192n29 clerics, 26–27 Thirion, Didier, 186n93 social crime, clerical celibacy identified as, tiers état mariant les religieux avec les religieuses, 3, 45, 90, 92, 99 Le,  Société des amis de la Constitution. See Tissot, Samuel- Auguste- André- David, Jacobins and Jacobin clubs Onanism: or, A Treatise upon the Disorders sodomy, 19, 20, 54, 58–59. See also homo- Produced by Masturbation, 48, 49 sexuality Tolin, Jean, 185n60 Souchon, François, 64 Torné, Pierre- Anastase, 90, 96 Spina, Giuseppe, 134 Trent, Council of, and Tridentine decrees, spiritual incest, 54 21, 22, 23 Staël, Madame de, 132 Tridentine priest, concept of, 33 238 index

True Marriage of Priests, or Celibacy Avenged, Voltaire, 2, 30, 34, 37; Philosophical Dictionary, The, 76 34; Questions on the Encyclopédie, 58 Trullo, Council of, 17 Vovelle, Michel, 103, 133, 190n4 Voyer d’Argenson, René de, 58 underground literature, 53–56, 57–58 Unigenitus, 25 War of the Austrian Succession, 41 United Bishops, 120–21, 122, 127 widowed priests: eligibility for reinte- unnatural, clerical celibacy viewed as, 8; gration into priesthood, 139, 144, 145; in Enlightenment period, 30, 32, 52, 59; seeking dispensation to remarry, 156 in French Revolution, 62–63, 64–73, widows: as clerical wives, 9, 106, 109, 153, 79, 83; in modern debates, 171–72; in 156; as Napoleonic era petitioners, 139 Napoleonic era, 158, 159; during Terror, wives of priests. See clerical wives 97, 98 women: assumptions about failure to marry, 3; changing conceptions of sexual desire Vattel, Emmerich de, 34 of, 6, 53; confessionals, seduction and Vaugeois, Gabriel, 96–97, 187n12 rape in, 24, 56–57, 70, 167, 169, 177n28; vedette, La (newspaper), 78 domesticity, 7, 172; French Revolution Vendée rebellion, 89, 94 and role of, 7; political exclusion, 7, 81; Vestal Virgins, 14 pressure to marry, 9; feminization of re- Villiers, Marc-Albert de, 39 ligion, 172. See also clerical wives; domestic Vinchon, Remi, 79 servants; nuns Volland, Sophie, 50 Wycliffe, John, 19