Dechristianization of France during the French Revolution

Policies of the revolutionary authorities

The programme of dechristianization waged against Catholicism, and eventually against all forms of Christianity, included:

• destruction of statues, plates and other iconography from places of worship
• destruction of crosses, bells and other external signs of worship
• the institution of revolutionary and civic cults
• the enactment of a law on 21 October 1793 making all nonjuring priests and all persons who harbored them liable to death on sight

An especially notable event that took place in the course of France's dechristianization was the Festival of Reason, which was held in Notre Dame Cathedral on 10 November 1793. The dechristianization campaign can be seen as the logical extension of the materialist philosophies of some leaders of the Enlightenment such as Voltaire, while for others with more prosaic concerns it provided an opportunity to unleash resentments against the Catholic Church (in the spirit of conventional anti-clericalism) and its clergy.

Civic religions of the French Revolution

The civic religions of the French Revolution were a series of state-sponsored deistic and atheistic belief systems introduced during the French Revolution and intended to replace Catholicism as the new moral and social framework of the French First Republic. Emerging from the radical policy of dechristianization, these religions sought to ground republican citizenship in rational, civic, and patriotic principles. The most prominent of these were the atheistic Cult of Reason (Culte de la Raison), which was succeeded by the deistic Cult of the Supreme Being (Culte de l'Être suprême) established by Maximilien Robespierre. During the Directory, these were followed by the semi-official Decadary Cult (Culte décadaire) and the private initiative of Theophilanthropy (Théophilanthropie). These movements aimed to inculcate civic virtue through secular morality, public festivals, and symbolic art. None succeeded in displacing established religious practice, and official support was terminated by Napoleon Bonaparte under the Concordat of 1801.

Rationale

The French Revolution's initial religious policy was not to abolish religion but to subordinate the Gallican Church to the state through measures like the 1790 Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Following the overthrow of the monarchy in 1792, a more radical dechristianization campaign emerged, championed by factions such as the Hébertists. This campaign involved closing churches, destroying religious iconography, and persecuting priests. Public life was systematically secularised through the introduction of the French Republican Calendar, which replaced the Gregorian calendar's system of Sundays and Christian feast days with a ten-day week (décade). In this context, revolutionaries created civic religions designed to provide a new, shared moral framework for the Republic.

Civic religions

Cult of Reason

The Cult of Reason (Culte de la Raison) was an atheistic and anthropocentric civic creed promoted by radical figures like Jacques Hébert, Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, and Antoine-François Momoro. It rejected the existence of a god, venerating instead the abstract concept of Reason as the pinnacle of human achievement. Churches were converted into "Temples of Reason", and its most famous ceremony was the Festival of Reason at Notre-Dame de Paris in November 1793, where an actress personified the Goddess of Reason. The cult was opposed by the deist Maximilien Robespierre, who viewed its atheism as socially destructive and "aristocratic". It was officially suppressed following the execution of its leading proponents in March 1794 and rapidly disappeared from public life.

Cult of the Supreme Being

In response to the Cult of Reason, Maximilien Robespierre introduced the deistic Cult of the Supreme Being (Culte de l'Être suprême). Formally established by the National Convention in May 1794, it was based on the belief in a creator god and the immortality of the soul, which Robespierre considered essential for social order and republican virtue. The cult's sole major celebration was the massive Festival of the Supreme Being, held in Paris on 8 June 1794 and orchestrated by the artist Jacques-Louis David. The event, which prominently featured Robespierre, was seen by his rivals as an attempt to create a personal dictatorship and contributed to his political isolation. The movement was entirely dependent on its founder and was abandoned immediately following his execution in the Thermidorian Reaction in July 1794.

Decadary Cult

Established under the Directory, the Decadary Cult (Culte décadaire) was a secular civic religion designed to structure republican life around the ten-day week (décade) of the French Republican calendar. Citizens were legally required to observe the tenth day, the décadi, by attending civic festivals that replaced traditional Christian Sunday worship. These events aimed to instill republican virtues through patriotic ceremonies, readings of laws, and speeches on civic duty. Mandated nationally in 1798, the cult was unpopular and widely resisted by the general populace, who remained attached to the traditional seven-day week and Catholic traditions. It was effectively abandoned after the Concordat of 1801 restored Catholicism's status, and the Republican calendar itself was abolished by Napoleon in 1805.

Theophilanthropy

Theophilanthropy (Théophilanthropie, meaning "Friends of God and Man") was a deistic creed that emerged during the Directory as a private initiative. Founded by Jean-Baptiste Chemin-Dupontès and supported by the Director Louis Marie de La Révellière-Lépeaux, it sought to provide a rational moral framework based on the belief in God, the immortality of the soul, and civic duties. Its simple ceremonies, consisting of moral readings and hymns, often took place during the official décadi observances. As a voluntary, semi-private society, it stood apart from the state-mandated cults. However, it was viewed with suspicion by both Catholics, who saw it as a heretical sect, and radical republicans, who found it bourgeois and sentimental. The movement lost influence after the Concordat of 1801 and was formally prohibited in 1803.

Legacy of the civic religions

Although the civic religions of the French Revolution were short-lived and failed to displace Catholicism, they represented a key experiment in the creation of secular civic ritual, symbolic politics, and republican pedagogy. Historians such as Mona Ozouf and Michel Vovelle have analyzed them as part of the Revolution's broader attempt to "transfer sacrality" from the traditional monarchy and church to the new republican state.

The Revolution and the Church

In August 1789, the state cancelled the taxing power of the Church. The issue of Church property became central to the policies of the revolutionary government. Declaring that all Church property in France belonged to the nation, confiscations were ordered, and Church properties were sold at public auction. In July 1790 the National Constituent Assembly published the Civil Constitution of the Clergy that stripped clerics of their special rights—the clergy were to be made employees of the state, elected by their parish or bishopric, and the number of bishoprics was to be reduced—and required all priests and bishops to swear an oath of fidelity to the new order or face dismissal, deportation or death. French priests had to receive papal approval to sign such an oath, and Pope Pius VI spent almost eight months deliberating on the issue. On 13 April 1791, Pius denounced the constitution, resulting in a split in the French Catholic Church. Over 50% became abjuring priests ("jurors"), also known as "constitutional clergy", and nonjuring priests as "refractory clergy".

In September 1792, the Legislative Assembly legalized divorce, contrary to Catholic doctrine. At the same time, the state took control of the birth, death, and marriage registers away from the Church. An ever-increasing view that the Church was a counter-revolutionary force exacerbated the social and economic grievances, and violence erupted in towns and cities across France.

In Paris, over a 48-hour period beginning on 2 September 1792, as the Legislative Assembly (successor to the National Constituent Assembly) dissolved into chaos, three Church bishops and more than 200 priests were massacred by angry mobs; this constituted part of what would become known as the September Massacres. Priests were among those drowned in mass executions (noyades) for treason under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Carrier; priests and nuns were among the mass executions at Lyons for separatism, on the orders of Joseph Fouché and Collot d'Herbois. Hundreds more priests were imprisoned and made to suffer in abominable conditions in the port of Rochefort.

Insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793

After the insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793, there was a decisive turn away from the revolution's original principles of religious freedom, and in the late summer of 1793 dechristianization evolved into what Jonathan Israel describes as a "repressive, vandalistic, inquisitorial movement". A major spasm of dechristianization broke out during the autumn with many of the acts of dechristianization in 1793 being motivated by the seizure of Church gold and silver to finance the war effort. In November the département council of Indre-et-Loire abolished the word dimanche (English: Sunday). The Gregorian calendar, an instrument decreed by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, was replaced by the French Republican calendar which abolished the sabbath, saints' days and any references to the Church. The seven-day week became ten days instead. It soon became clear, however, that nine consecutive days of work were too much, and that international relations could not be carried out without reverting to the Gregorian system, which was still in use everywhere outside of France. Consequently, the Gregorian calendar was reimplemented in 1795.

Anti-clerical parades were held, and the Archbishop of Paris, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gobel, was forced to resign his duties and made to replace his mitre with the red "Cap of Liberty". Street and place names with any sort of religious connotation were changed, such as the town of Saint-Tropez, which became Héraclée. Religious holidays were banned and replaced with holidays to celebrate the harvest and other non-religious symbols. Many churches were converted into "temples of reason", in which deistic services were held. Local people often resisted this dechristianisation and forced members of the clergy who had resigned to conduct mass again. Maximilien Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety denounced the dechristianizers as foreign enemies of the revolution and established their own religion. This Cult of the Supreme Being, without the alleged "superstitions" of Catholicism, supplanted both Catholicism and the rival Cult of Reason. Both new religions were short-lived. Just six weeks before his arrest, on 8 June 1794, the still-powerful Robespierre personally led a vast procession through Paris to the Tuileries garden in a ceremony to inaugurate the new faith. His execution occurred shortly afterward, on 28 July 1794.

Concordat of 1801

By early 1795, a return to some form of religion-based faith was beginning to take shape, and a law passed on 21 February 1795 legalized public worship, albeit with strict limitations. The ringing of church bells, religious processions and displays of the Christian cross were still forbidden. As late as 1799, priests were still being imprisoned or deported to penal colonies. Persecution only worsened after the French army led by General Louis Alexandre Berthier captured Rome in early 1798, declared a new Roman Republic, and also imprisoned Pope Pius VI, who died in captivity. However, after Napoleon seized control of the government in late 1799, France entered into year-long negotiations with Pope Pius VII, resulting in the Concordat of 1801. This formally ended the dechristianization period and established the rules for a relationship between the Catholic Church and the French state.

Victims of the Reign of Terror totaled somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000. According to one estimate, among those condemned by the revolutionary tribunals about 8 percent were aristocrats, 6 percent clergy, 14 percent middle class, and 70 percent were workers or peasants accused of hoarding, evading the draft, desertion, rebellion, and other purported crimes. Of these social groupings, the clergy of the Catholic Church suffered proportionately the greatest loss.

Anti-Church laws were passed by the Legislative Assembly and its successor, the National Convention, as well as by département councils throughout the country. The Concordat of 1801 endured for more than a century until it was abrogated by the government of the Third Republic, which established a policy of laïcité on 11 December 1905.

Toll on the Church

Under threat of death, imprisonment, military conscription, and loss of income, about 20,000 constitutional priests were forced to abdicate and hand over their letters of ordination, and 6,000 to 9,000 of them agreed or were coerced to marry. Many abandoned their pastoral duties altogether. Nonetheless, some of those who had abdicated continued covertly to minister to the people.

By the end of the decade, approximately 30,000 priests had been forced to leave France, and several hundred who did not leave were executed. Most French parishes were left without the services of a priest and deprived of the sacraments. Any non-juring priest faced the guillotine or deportation to French Guiana. By Easter 1794, few of France's 40,000 churches remained open; many had been closed, sold, destroyed, or converted to other uses.

Victims of revolutionary violence, whether religious or not, were popularly treated as Christian martyrs, and the places where they were killed became pilgrimage destinations. Catechising in the home, folk religion, syncretic and heterodox practices all became more common. The long-term effects on religious practice in France were significant. Many who were dissuaded from their traditional religious practices never resumed them.

Destruction of monasteries

The revolution saw the widespread dissolution and destruction of many French monasteries, as revolutionary authorities sought to suppress religious institutions and confiscate their wealth. Many monastic buildings were seized, looted, repurposed for secular use, or demolished entirely. Orders such as the Benedictines, Cistercians, Franciscans, and Carmelites were particularly affected.