![]() ![]() ![]() Two classes of clergy emerged: those known as juring priests, who took the oath, and refractory priests who didn’t. In the early years, the newly created National Assembly wrote the Civil Constitution of the Clergy-essentially an oath for priests and bishops to prove their loyalty to the French state over the Vatican. This technically included Black men as well, but no one of the female gender (although many women, like Olympe de Gouges, worked hard to get the right to vote). Born out of a century-long tradition of enlightenment thought, the early years of the revolution promised a more secular, free, and democratic state for men only. On this Bastille Day, it’s worth exploring one of the strangest aspects of the French Revolution, the coup d’etat that ushered in the Age of Revolution: religion.įor historians, the French Revolution is full of contradictions. For humanists, the French Revolution marks the beginning of a new age of enlightenment, freedom, and rational thought. In the modern American consciousness, the French Revolution might evoke imagery of guillotines, Marie Antoinette, powdered wigs, and lots of angry French citizens. La fête de l'Être Suprême, au Champ-de-Mars (Festival of the Supreme Being) by Pierre-Antoine Demachy, c. ![]()
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