The Unseen Terror
Page 21
reaction was to prevent this happening. So in some of the Paris sections which were dominated by sans-culottes, like the one around the Luxembourg Palace,
Th
e End of the Bishop of Saintes
141
they decided to arm a death squad and let it loose. No one in authority saw fi t to stop them.36
* * *
On Monday 17 September 1792, ‘the fourth year of Liberty and the fi rst of Equality’, at nine in the morning, Charles Girardin, notary and justice of the peace of the canton of Port d’Envaux came with his bailiff to make an inventory of de La Rochefoucauld’s property in the former château at Crazannes, intending to put everything under seal so that no one could tamper with it and his heirs would fi nd all as it should be.37
Girardin found Pierre Bouchoir, who had been the bishop’s agent, who said on oath that he had not removed anything from the château. Th en he
began drawing up the inventory, joined by the procurator of the commune of Crazannes whose name was Bron. Girardin noted that his inventory
‘proved only that the furniture of Mgr de La Rochefoucaud was near miserable on account of its simplicity’. He describes the objects he found as
‘more than half used, so much so that for each of the cupboards the formula varied no more than: after opening, nothing was found in it’. Girardin decided that no seals were necessary.
Th
e only thing which might be claimed to be of any value in the château was ‘the foot or support of a pendulum plated in brass, as well as the top of the pendulum’. Everything was left in the care of Bouchoir as before, and the necessary report was drawn up and signed by all present. Girardin said that he had come to the château to make an inventory in the bishop’s summer residence just 15 days after his death to safeguard the interests of anyone who might inherit his goods, but it may well be that the department or the district or the municipality of the Canton or all three were looking for evidence of luxury in the bishop’s lifestyle to denounce him with, and were disappointed not to fi nd anything at all valuable beyond two pieces of a clock mechanism.
In a bas-relief in the wall of a side-chapel in the south aisle of Saintes Cathedral, s ans-culottes and National Guardsmen in uniform precede and follow two bishops standing in a fraternal embrace wearing their soutanes.
One of the sans-culottes carries a hand-axe which he is about to use on the two bishops, and a National Guardsman has a drawn sabre. Th e inscription
under the bas-relief says that Bishop de La Rochefoucauld was beatifi ed on 16 October 1926.
chapter 10
A Tribulation of Oath Takers
Claude Legrix kept a journal of events in Saintes from the time he became a canon of the cathedral in 1781. He presented a good deal of information about contemporary events in the town, and has a clerical eloquence as opposed to Marillet’s lawyer’s style.
Th
e early entries exude ancien régime confi dence, as in the case of the blessing of a great new bell for the cathedral on 4 January 1781. He was there with the dean and the other canons, and the bell’s godparents were the Marquis de Monconseil and his daughter, the Comtesse de la Tour du Pin. He tells us that in September the entire vault of the cathedral roof was fi nished. But on the last day of 1788, uncertainty creeps in, with the meeting in the Hôtel de Ville, presided over by de La Tour du Pin as military commander of the province, to discuss the great dissatisfaction in the Saintonge with the arbitrary way that Intendant Reversaux had been arranging his projects and raising taxes. Th
e clergy, nobility, and third estate delegates of
the Saintonge, meeting together, voted to ask the king for a more equitable means of the province being taxed. Legrix himself welcomed all this, and was a prominent supporter, like de La Tour du Pin, of the early stages of revolutionary change, and accepted the risks. He did not expect his world to cave in on him, and was not as realistic as Marillet when push came to shove.
It did cave in, and three years later, Legrix, Taillet and Dean Delaage were in exile in Spain, living on their wits and other people’s charity. Th e dean died
there, whereas Legrix moved to Germany and then to England and came back to the Charente-Inférieure in 1802 to be a canon at La Rochelle.
He reports the founding of the Society of the Friends of the Constitution in Saintes on 9 December 1790, under the control of the administrators of the department, the district, and the municipality, who were its principal members, though ‘many other citizens of diff erent classes’ were also members.1 He does not say, as Marillet did, that it was dominated by Bernard and his supporters, but it was quite clear that opinion in the town was being politicized, and the new government was going to assert its 142
A Tribulation of Oath Takers
143
authority on the ground by means of it, and by its intention to make the clergy into functionaries of the nation.
For Legrix and the dean and chapter the assertion of control by the State began when, in accordance with the National assembly’s decree of 27 November 1790, all church functionaries were obliged to take the oath to maintain the Civil Constitution of the Clergy if they wanted to remain in offi
ce. M. d’Étourneau, teacher of philosophy at the College of Saintes, and M. Marsais, Curé of Barzan, who had lived in Saintes for three or four years, came to take it in the presence of offi
cials of the municipality on 30
January 1791.2
Since Bishop de La Rochefoucauld had refused to take the oath, and was regarded by the municipality as dismissed from offi
ce, the electoral assem-
bly of the department, summoned by Jacques Garnier to meet in what had been his cathedral, began the process of replacing him.Only 300 of the 800
qualifi ed to vote came to exercise their new power over the Church. On 28 February, it took all day and three votes to elect Isaac-Etienne Robinet, 10. Saintes: Cathédrale de Saint-Pierre.
144 Th
e Unseen Terror
curé of Saint-Savinien, ‘aged about sixty’, as constitutional bishop of the Department of the Charente-Infèrieure.3
Robinet received 212 of the 300 votes, and his competitor in the third round of voting was Le Rol – called Le Roy in the minutes – curé of Saint-Sauveur in La Rochelle, whose imposing church soon became the meeting place of the popular society there. Th
e election was announced immedi-
ately by the sound of a salute of cannon and the bells of the cathedral and the churches of the suburbs being rung on the orders of the municipality. Th
e assembly sent an offi
cial down the Charente to tell Isaac-Etienne
Robinet the news and ask him to come to Saintes the next day to take offi
ce. He accepted his election, but could not arrive until 4 March.
After his hurried consecration by Talleyrand, who had just resigned his own bishopric of Autun, Robinet arrived with an escort of regular troops and a contingent of the National Guard from his former parish. Th e bells were rung,
but there were no other ceremonies. Robinet stayed for two or three days with a relation, and not many people called to congratulate him.4 Th e register of the
decisions of the District of Saintes has an entry for 20 March which says that, at the request of the bishop of the department, the council gave the order to empty Bishop de La Rochefoucauld’s furniture from the Palace.5
Very soon after, the principal and senior staff of the college, the former Jesuit boys’ school behind the deanery, where Marillet’s son was a boarder, were dismissed and replaced by clergy who were willing to take the oath.
Th
e newly elected teachers were installed in their places in the impressive college chapel,6 including Forget, now vice-principal, who had already sworn the oath. So on Sunday 20 March 1791, the staff took the oath in the presence of the administrators of the department, the district, and the municipality in the cathedral.7
Th
e cathedral was a church like any other now, the bishop was an elected offi
cial of the department, the chapter was abolished, and the education of the bourgeoisie was in safe Republican hands. Jacques Garnier, now the attorney-general of the department, made a speech on 15 April 1791 to the Directory in the Hôtel de Monconseil.
Garnier told his colleagues that Robinet had agreed to work with them and had chosen the 12 clergymen who were going to be his deputies (known as episcopal vicars) according to the new law. He would be providing services in the cathedral church which would not upset any new order apple carts.
Another law, passed in Paris on 21 August, said that there should be only one parish in towns of no more than 6,000 people, and any other churches should be suppressed and joined to the principal church. Th e population in
A Tribulation of Oath Takers
145
the centre of Saintes was no more than that number, and the four churches of Saint-Michel, Saint-Maur, Saint-Pierre, and Sainte-Colombe were in the process of being closed. Th
e ci-devant curés of these four parishes were dangerous opponents of the new order and they were not going to be left in offi ce. Th
e
parishes in the suburbs of Saint-Eutrope and Saint-Vivien had clergy who had taken the oath, so they would be able to carry on and their churches remain open until such time as the council had made a decision about them.8
Tight control was on the way, and it was obvious that the people holding the reins were not going to let Robinet have much choice in his actions.
He had a small moment of glory in La Rochelle – which was in his diocese because it included the whole department – when the academy there gave him a speech of welcome. Th
e Protestant Maire Garesché was warm in his greeting
also, referring to the clearing away of Gothic bric à brac from the Church.
La Rochelle academy, however, was not the Catholic Church in La Rochelle. Robinet could not be reassured for long by being taken up by the church’s natural enemies, in a place where antagonism against it was nearer the surface than in Saintes. Robinet was rejected by the Catholics remaining loyal to Bishop de Coucy, who was in constant touch with them from his exile in Pamplona, and considered himself still in offi ce.
Robinet had been curé of Saint-Savinien since 1777 after being vicaire at Barbezieux, so he just qualifi ed for election under the new rules. Robinet appears to have been a popular fi gure in his parish on the Charente, and even Archdeacon Taillet, who knew him, recognized that he ‘had enjoyed a certain reputation for honesty and goodness’, but added the criticism that he was ‘very relaxed in his principles’.9 In the eyes of traditionalists Robinet had become a usurper and an intruder, who had made the lawful bishop suff er.10 Th
ere was a rumour that Robinet had only accepted the
off er to help ‘his poor and grasping relations who welcomed the increase in dignity as well as the money they hoped would come their way’.11 Taillet’s history of the church in Saintes is a proper source for an assessment of Robinet, provided we can look through the obvious distaste for him and his appointees with which its pages are fi lled.
Robinet was not endowed richly with leadership qualities, and is a man to feel sorry for. Th
e Bernards and the Garniers made use of this elderly
and aff able man because they knew he could not stand up to them. Th ere
is an entry in the minutes of the District Council of Saintes which says that there was a discussion about how to deal with the incendiary comments made against Bishop Robinet by Pérronneau, soon to be dismissed from his parish at Dompierre, and Delany, curé of Brives, making him out to
146 Th
e Unseen Terror
11. Saint-Savinien-sur-Charente: Th
e Church.
be ‘a fool, a heretic and an excommunicate’. Th
e upshot of this was that
a gendarme was ordered to hold an enquiry and 50 men were needed to maintain order.12 Th
e Protestant historian M. D. Massiou, writing in the
1830s, says Robinet was ‘as much lacking in knowledge as in elevation of spirit; more feeble than perverse’.13 Robinet’s own reaction to his appointment was to say, ‘You are making me take a false step which will cost me my life.’14
A carefully wrapped-up dead sheep stinking to high heaven was delivered to Robinet one day with an explanatory note attached to it: ‘For such a fl ock, such a shepherd.’15 A pamphlet war was fed by the local press of P. Toussaints from his offi
ce in the rue Saint-Maur. One such production
claimed to have found ‘fi ve lies, three calumnies, and three blasphemies . . .’
in a piece only six pages long written by Robinet. ‘Although’, says its author,
‘I have not counted them all.’16
On 21 April 1791, Th
ursday in Holy Week, the new bishop, attended
by his episcopal vicars, visited several chapels at convents for women in the town, intending to take part in the Stations of the Cross with the sisters. As soon as he was seen coming, the grills in the doors were shut against him and the prayers stopped, not to be started again until he had gone. Robinet complained about the nuns’ behaviour to the municipality, but it made no diff erence. Th
e doors of the convents remained closed against him when
A Tribulation of Oath Takers
147
he paid more visits accompanied by municipal offi
cers. Robinet issued an
ordinance against the religious houses on 24 May, and the municipality used it as a cover for ordering strict control of the Abbaye aux Dames, the Poor Claires, and the Carmelites by named municipal offi
cers on the same
date.17 Robinet was a rubber stamp for the municipality. Th at was all Garnier and his colleagues intended him to be.
Marillet reports anecdotes about Robinet from the time they happened in May 1791.18 He says that Robinet copied a pastoral letter written by the constitutional bishop of Angoulême whose name was Joubert. Th is had been
written in Paris and was adopted by all the constitutional bishops as a kind of opening salvo to their taking offi
ce. Even Marillet admits that the letter
Robinet sent out was well written and witty ( avec esprit), but he adds that it was ‘full of false principles, false quotations, and evaded the main question and the diffi
culty which his theft of his offi
ce had caused’. He ordered that
it was to be read by all the parish priests from their pulpits on the Sunday after they received it. It would cause, Marillet anticipated, a great sensation among the farmers and the municipalities in the countryside because it was very constitutional and full of lively rebellion against the former bishops.
Marillet allows himself to presume that, by its very nature, it would provide Bernard and the procurator-general Héard with several more victims like François Glastron, curé of Les Essards near Saintes, who had already been sent to prison for non-compliance with new regulations.19 Th e test of loyalty
to Robinet had been that the curés were expected to go to him on Maundy Th
ursday to receive a year’s supply of holy oil for the anointing of those about to die, as they had always done in the time of the lawful bishops. Only nine out of all the clergy had done so in 1791. Th
e papal bull upholding the
bishops of the old order had produced its desired eff ect upon some priests’
consciences: 4 of them from the île d’Oléron, all of them with parishes on the île de Ré, and 20 from the department as a whole had withdrawn the oath they had taken.20
A man called Lacheury, on the orders of the treasurer of the National Guard, Commissioner Dière, gave a party for Robinet in the country. Mlle Ver de la Pommeraye, Mlle Lacheury, and other ladies and gentlemen from the Club were there. Th
ey sang a lot and,
after they had eaten, they stood
up to dance the farandole for Monsieur Robinet. Th
e disapproving Marillet
comments that Robinet ‘is a man who lowers himself: if he knows he has taken an offi
ce worthy of respect, then he must respect his offi
ce and have
respect also for himself ’.
148 Th
e Unseen Terror
Th
e next entry in Marillet’s journal says that Robinet announced his intention to go and see a priest called Abbé Caicy ( sic) at Lucerat. His council of episcopal vicars said that he ought not to see this man because he had not taken the oath. Daniel Casey was a theologian who had been curé of Bords, close to Saint-Savinien, but had resigned in 1783 upon being appointed as a diocesan offi
cial by de La Rochefoucauld, and received an income as titular abbot of Vauluisant.21, 22 Robinet replied that he wanted to make the visit because Casey had been a good friend. His council would only let him go, however, if he took one of their number with him.
So on the afternoon of 13 May, Robinet went to Lucerat accompanied by Gastumeau, one of his episcopal vicars, and another priest called Martin, the curé of Agonnay. When he knocked on the door, no one answered for a while and the servant, who had been told to say that Casey was not at home, did not appear at fi rst. When she did open the door, she said she knew nothing of the abbé’s whereabouts. When Casey heard a noise in his yard, he caught sight of Robinet and his companions through the open window of his upstairs study, and called out that he did not want to have anything to do with him, even quoting scripture at him. Robinet replied, ‘Th
at’s all right: to every one his
own way of thinking. But don’t let it break up an old friendship!’
‘In these circumstances,’ Casey replied,
all ties of friendship have already been broken because you bear the weight of all the censures of the church, because you are an intruder and a schismatic, and because you are the cause of all the misfortunes that have torn the church in two, as you have learned from the decree of Mgr de Larochefoucauld and the papal bull.