The Damiens Affair and the Unraveling of the ANCIEN REGIME, 1750-1770

383 Pages·2014·12.543 MB·English

by  Dale K. Van Kley

THE
DAMIENS AFFAIR
AND THE UNRAVELING
OF THE ANCIEN REGIME
1750-177°

THE
DAMIENS AFFAIR
AND THE UNRAVELING
OF THE ANCIEN REGIME,
1750-1770
DALE K.VAN KLEY
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
Copyright © 1984 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Guildford, Surrey
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be
found on the last printed page of this book
ISBN 0-69/-05402-9
Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the
Harold W. McGraw Fund of Princeton University Press
This book has been composed in Linotron Garamond
Clothbound editions of Princeton University Press books are
printed on acid-free paper, and binding materials
are chosen for strength and durability.
Printed in the United States of America by Princeton
University Press, Princeton, New Jersey
Frontispiece: Damiens strapped to his mattress in the Tour de Montgomery
Inset left: Damiens being dismembered by four horses in the place de Grive
Inset right: Damiens' dismembered body being burned in the place de Greve
To my parents, John and Stella,
for Christmas, 1983

Contents
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
PART I THE DAMIENS AFFAIR
INTRODUCTION 3
1 DAMIENS 13
The Domestic Servant 1 3
Damiens' Religion 3 6
2 DAMIENS' MASTERS AS JUDGES 56
Les Affaires du Temps 5 6
Plots and Conspiracies 6 5
Jansenists and Jesuits 80
An Abortive Trial 90
PART II THE UNRAVELING OF THE
ANCIEN REGIME
3 DAMIENS' MASTERS AS MAGISTRATES:
The Refusal of Sacraments Controversy and
the Political Crisis of 1756-1757 99
Christus and Fiscus 99
Parlement against King and Bishops 104
Bishops against Parlement and King 127
The Political Crisis of 1756-1757 149
Christianization and Secularization 163
4 DAMIENS' MASTERS AS THEORISTS:
Constitutional Thought from 1750 to 1770 166
The Classical Synthesis 166
The Participatory Church 173
National Sovereignty and Integral Absolutism 184
Sacerdoce and Empire 202
A Literary Damiens 220
vii
CONTENTS
5 DAMIENS' PEERS 226
The Mauvais Discours Janseniste 226
The Mauvais Discours Divot 234
Political Folly 242
The Desacralization of the Monarchy 246
Lese-Majeste Verbale 255
CONCLUSION 266
NOTES 271
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 352
INDEX 357
Preface and
Acknowledgments
IT HAS LONG BEEN my conviction that the mixed religious,
ecclesiastical, and political disputes related to the papal bull
Unigenitus in eighteenth-century France should occupy a central
place in the ongoing discussions concerning the breakdown of
the Old Regime and the ideological origins of the French
Revolution. The present book represents another in a succes­
sion of attempts to trace the contours of that place. This task,
difficult enough for the "century of lights," is not made the
easier by the tendency of most "secular" historians to relegate
ecclesiastical or "church" history to a wholly separate and
irrelevant category of endeavor and of most ecclesiastical his­
torians to rest content with their ghettolike existence as long
as their dogmatic slumbers are not unduly disturbed. Hence
the title's scrupulous avoidance of anything that might smack
of religious or ecclesiastical history. It is a book first and
foremost about eighteenth-century France and only secondarily
about the French Catholic church. Of those predisposed against
such a view who have nonetheless taken the bother to read
this preface, I beg whatever indulgence they can muster and
at least the patience to hear me out.
But why Damiens ? Why remain entrenched in the century's
middle decades rather than storm the 1770s and 1780s to
demonstrate, say, the continuity between Jansenist-Gallican
modes of political discourse and those more immediately pre­
ceding the French Revolution. A hundred times in the be­
ginning stages of the present project I was tempted to abandon
Damiens to his fate and attempt—or more modestly begin to
attempt—something on the model of Bernard Bailyn's book
on the ideological origins of the American Revolution. But
aside from the facts that such a project is far vaster than the
one for which I had been originally funded and is probably
beyond my abilities in any event, I was for better or worse