L'épiscopat français à l'époque concordataire (1802-1905): Origines, formation, nomination by Jacques-Olivier Boudon

Abstract

L'episcopat franfais a l'6poque concordataire (1802-1905): Origines, formation, nomination. By Jacques-Olivier Boudon. [Histoire religieuse de la France, 9.] (Paris: Editions du Cerf. 1996. Pp. 589. 290 E) Placed at the head of the very distinctive body that the Catholic clergy constituted in French society, the episcopate represented an elite all the more powerful as under the regime of the Concordat of 1801 the bishops exercised a more effective authority over their clergy than their predecessors could enjoy under the Ancien Regime. It was a role and a place that can be all the better studied as that same Napoleonic regime had made of the bishops a category of high functionaries appointed and remunerated by the state; their career, consequently, can be traced in the files set up on them by the central administration, as on all the servants of the state.The materia prima, so to speak, of this book by M. Boudon is that legion of 515 ecclesiastical personalities who were raised to the episcopacy in France from 1802 to 1905. First the author has studied the social origins and education of his subjects. The very great majority of them came from the urban world, and thus from the lower and middle bourgeoisie.The contribution of the nobility, which was large at the beginning of the century (still 47% under the Empire), fell rapidly after 1830 to end at no more than 4.5% under the Third Republic. From 1830 on there were also some men coming from rural society, but as late as 1900 that element remained a minority (16%).The future bishops were born in very religious families, as was natural, and most of them did their classical studies in a Catholic college. The great majority of them (68%) received their clerical formation from the Sulpicians, either at Paris or in the provinces, but the number of degrees that they earned in theology is strangely very low (13%). In the second part the author tries to determine what it was in the priests' early career that could have prepared them for the episcopacy. No doubt the fact of having participated in the administration of a diocese was important. As under the Ancien Regime, the position of vicar-general is one of those that led to the episcopacy (in fact, in 43% of the cases considered). But it happened in a rather different way; while previously the episcopacy had appeared as a career in itself, which the younger sons of the nobility could try to obtain by underhand means after a few years of apprenticeship, in the nineteenth century it was rather the last stage reserved for the most meritorious of the cures of important parishes, and thus for mature men. Being a professor in a seminary was also a way of access. The intervention of the state in the choice of subjects obliges the author to study the options taken by them in the controversies touching on politics, especially that of Gallicanism or Ultramontanism. On the whole, Gallicanism remained dominant up to the Second Empire. At the end of the century it was to perpetuate itself by slipping into the skin of liberalism, which itself came out of the Ultramontanism of the mid-century (Montalembert, Dupanloup).The selection of candidates does not seem to have been influenced by their activities in the area of studies and publications.The publications on apologetics and the art of preaching counted for more.The role of historical knowledge was weak, and that of theology was not much more important. Under the Consulate and the Empire, more than under any other regime, the appointments of bishops depended especially on political considerations. In other words, they expressed Napoleon's will to have men devoted to himself. For this purpose he relied on certain dependable advisers-Portalis, the minister of cults, and Cardinal Fesch, the grand almoner, who in turn listened to M. Emery, the superior of the Sulpicians. The restored Bourbons tried to reconstruct the old Church of France, mainly in the consideration accorded to the aristocratic origins of the candidates. …