Church and State after the Dreyfus Affair: The Separation Issue in France

302 Pages·1974·30.6 MB·English

by  Maurice Larkin M.A.

Church and State after
the Dreyfus Affair
By the same author
GATIIERING PACE: CONTINENTAL EUROPE, 187o-1945
Church and State after
the Dreyfus Affair
The Separation Issue in France
MAURICE LARKIN, M.A., Ph.D. (Cantab.)
Senior Lecturer in HistolJ', Univeni!)' '!f Kent at CanterbUIJ'
Palgrave Macmillan
©Maurice Larkin 1974
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1974
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission.
First published 1974 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in New York
Dublin Melbourne johannesburg and Madras
SBN 333 14703 0
ISBN 978-1-349-01853-6 ISBN 978-1-349-01851-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-01851-2
Contents
List of Illustrations vi
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction I
I Grass-roots Catholicism and the Secular Drought 6
2 The View from Rome 29
3 The Concordatory Regime 47
4 The Dreyfus Affair-Before and After 63
5 Memoires d'outre-Combes So
6 The Separatist Minority I02
7 TheNewViewfromRome II7
8 Le Festin de Pierre I30
9 Catholics and the Separation I46
10 Some More Principles 170
I I AN egotiated Settlement 1 I8o
I2 Eminences Grises et Cardinaux Verts I9I
Postcript : Divorce and Cohabitation-A Brief
Synopsis 207
Appendix: Loi du 9 Decembre I905 concernant la
Separation des f:glises et de l'f:tat 227
Sources 242
Notes 254
Index 285
List of Illustrations
Fig. I Percentage of population taking Easter
Communion in the dioceses of Albi, Annecy and
Chartres (I898-I964)
Information kindly supplied by Canon Fernand
Boulard 8
Map I Religious observance in France in I 877
Based on Pierre Sorlin, La Societe Franr;aise, vol.
I: I84<J-I9I4(Arthaud, I969)p.2I9-an
adaptation of an original map by Jacques
Gadille, La pensee et 1' action politique des
eveques franr;ais au debut de la Illm e
Republique (Hachette, I967) IO
Map2 Religious observance (Easter Communion) in
France in the late I96os
Reproduced from Fernand Boulard and Jean
Remy, Pratique Religieuse Urbaine et Regions
Culturelles (Editions Ouvrieres, I968) Carte C,
'La France Religieuse en trois grandes regions' II
Fig. 2 Ordinations to the priesthood per diocese, I83o-
I950
Based on Fernand Boulard, An Introduction to
Religious Sociology: Pioneer Work in France,
trans. M. J. Jackson (Darton, Longman & Todd,
I960) I2
Acknowledgements
It was a commonplace of nineteenth-century fiction that crimi
nals about to be hanged saw in their mind's eye a succession of
faces of those who had helped and hindered them along the road
to perdition. So it is when a book reaches completion and its
defects reflect the prophecies and warnings of wiser men.
The central part of this book started life as a Ph.D. thesis for
the University of Cambridge, when I was particularly fortunate
to have Professor Sir Denis Brogan and M. Adrien Dansette as my
supervisors. I wish to give them my very grateful thanks and
also the many others who have helped me then and in the later
stages of this cautionary tale. I must particularly mention M.
Yvon Bizardel, Mrs J. E. C. Bodley, Mile Genevieve Boegner,
M. Marc Bonnefous, Canon Fernand Boulard, M. Denys Cochin,
Fr Joseph Dehergne, S.J., Fr Pierre Delattre, S.J., M. Marcel
Faucon,His late Eminence Cardinal Feltin,M. Jacques Gadille, the
late M. Paul Grunebaum-Ballin, Mile d'Haussonville, the Abbe
Patrick Heidsieck, Professor Douglas Johnson, M. Jean Jolly, Fr
Angelo Martini, S.J ., M. Jean-Marie Mayeur, Mile Louise Violette
Mejan, Dr Peter Morris, M. Pierre Sorlin, Fr Pierre Touveneraud,
the Abbe de Vigan, Mr J. M. K. Vyvyan, Dr James E. Ward, and
the indefatigable Mrs Waring and her band of typists. Nor can I
sufficiently thank my parents for their constant help and encour
agement.
As with all work abroad, finance might have been a major
problem. The initial postgraduate research was kindly made
possible by Trinity College, Cambridge, with an Exhibition and
the Earl of Derby Studentship. The British Institute in Paris sub
sequently awarded me a Leverhulme Scholarship, and I was
thereafter the recipient of several research grants from the
University of Kent, for which I am very grateful. More recently
the British Academy provided me with a generous Visiting Fel
lowship in the spring of I 972.
viii Acknowledgements
As everyone knows, the wives of academics lead the life of
Eurydice. Seeing little but their husbands' backs, they must often
feel nostalgia for the pleasures of the Underworld. With more
cause than most for such longings, my wife has shown a patience
and endurance that has become something of a local legend.
june 1973 M.J.M.L.
The extract from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by
James Joyce, is reproduced by kind permission of Jonathan
Cape Ltd and the Executors of the James Joyce Estate.
Introduction
Many historians still speak of 'the Dreyfusian Revolution'. They
see the Affair and its aftermath as an episode which consolidated
the Republic and set the stage for 'a new deal in French politics'.
It broke up right-wing subversion and emancipated the younger
generation from the influence of clerical education. Once this
was done - and the Catholic Church disestablished - the way
was open for the serious business of economic and social devel
opment.
It could be argued, however, that the so-called Dreyfusian
Revolution was not a revolution at all, but a counter-revolution,
a revival of old concerns which deflected France from the path
of social progess.1 Far from clearing the decks for social reform,
it littered them with the old bric-a-brac of the constitutional
and clerical issues. The mid-r89os had seen a certain smoothing
out of French politics along economic and social lines. Many
monarchists, both Catholic and agnostic, were tired of sup
porting lost causes and were glad enough to join forces with
conservative Republicans against left-wing demands for a grad
uated income tax and old-age pensions. 1893 found some fifty
Socialists in parliament; and politics were now increasingly con
cerned with the sort of issues that divided most democratic
countries at the turn of the century. French politics had come of
age -or so it seemed.
The Affair and its aftermath, however, destroyed this situa
tion. From 1899 to 1906 parliament was realigned once more
on the issues that had divided it in the eighties - religion and the
regime. The conservative Republicans were split in two. Those
who regarded the Church as an integral part of the social status
quo, feared that reprisals against it would weaken the whole
social structure; and they therefore voted with the Catholics
and the extreme Right against the Government's programme of
Republican defence. Others, however, who conceded the need
for this programme, found themselves in the uncongenial com-
c.s.-I•