Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction
- PART I CHRISTIANITY AND MODERNITY
- PART II THE CHURCHES AND NATIONAL IDENTITIES
- 14 Catholic Christianity in France from the Restoration to the separation of church and state, 1815–1905
- 15 Italy: the church and the Risorgimento
- 16 Catholicism, Ireland and the Irish diaspora
- 17 Catholic nationalism in Greater Hungary and Poland
- 18 Christianity and the creation of Germany
- 19 Anglicanism, Presbyterianism and the religious identities of the United Kingdom
- 20 Protestant dominance and confessional politics: Switzerland and the Netherlands
- 21 Scandinavia: Lutheranism and national identity
- 22 ‘Christian America’ and ‘Christian Canada’
- 23 Spain and Portugal: the challenge to the church
- 24 Latin America: the church and national independence
- 25 Between east and west: the Eastern Catholic (‘Uniate’) churches
- PART III THE EXPANSION OF CHRISTIANITY
- Select General Bibliography
- Chapter Bibliography
- Index
- References
14 - Catholic Christianity in France from the Restoration to the separation of church and state, 1815–1905
from PART II - THE CHURCHES AND NATIONAL IDENTITIES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction
- PART I CHRISTIANITY AND MODERNITY
- PART II THE CHURCHES AND NATIONAL IDENTITIES
- 14 Catholic Christianity in France from the Restoration to the separation of church and state, 1815–1905
- 15 Italy: the church and the Risorgimento
- 16 Catholicism, Ireland and the Irish diaspora
- 17 Catholic nationalism in Greater Hungary and Poland
- 18 Christianity and the creation of Germany
- 19 Anglicanism, Presbyterianism and the religious identities of the United Kingdom
- 20 Protestant dominance and confessional politics: Switzerland and the Netherlands
- 21 Scandinavia: Lutheranism and national identity
- 22 ‘Christian America’ and ‘Christian Canada’
- 23 Spain and Portugal: the challenge to the church
- 24 Latin America: the church and national independence
- 25 Between east and west: the Eastern Catholic (‘Uniate’) churches
- PART III THE EXPANSION OF CHRISTIANITY
- Select General Bibliography
- Chapter Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
The relationship between church, state and nation in nineteenth-century France was shaped in large measure by the legacy of the preceding revolutionary era. The French Revolution had begun with the blessing of the church but it ended in a seismic rupture. Whereas the clergé patriote of 1789 had looked to religion to bind the nation together, within a few years religion had developed into the single greatest source of national discord. The Jacobins proclaimed the Republic one and indivisible, but their onslaught on Catholic Christianity in effect turned France into not one nation, but two.
On one side of the fault-line lay those who continued to identify with the revolutionary idea of the sovereignty of the people, to be realised in the construction of a new kind of polity, the liberal or democratic nation-state. On the other were those who refused to embrace a social order which did not rest on religious foundations and who still thought of France as the Christian nation par excellence, the eldest daughter of the church, the creation of a Christian monarchy best exemplified by St Louis. The Revolution thus bequeathed to the nineteenth century a mythic vision of a culture war’ between les deux France which would last throughout the nineteenth century, and even beyond, though only after 1879 would it once again involve hostile action on the part of a republican state against the forces of organised religion.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Christianity , pp. 215 - 232Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005