THE CHURCH, INSEPARABLE FROM MONARCHY

SACRALITY DISTINGUISHES KINGS FROM CHIEFS,* AND

FRANKISH KINGS ALLIED WITH POPES FROM THE START

*Belief in kings' sacred power was so ingrained that when Louis XVI was guillotined, revolutionary guards dipped their pikes in his blood and parts of his clothing were considered as were relics of saints.

   -- La Mort du Roi, "La guillotine et l'imaginerie de la Terreur" by Daniel Arasse, 1987, p. 81

 

As the first barbarians to accept Catholicism,* their heirs considered themselves "the Church's eldest daughter," so the leaders of more recent kingdoms. 

-- La France, la fille ainée de l'Église [the Church's Eldest Daughter]  by René Remond, "Sites of Memory," III, 3, dir. Pierra Nora, 1992 

*Other Christian kingdoms were Arian and did not recognize the papacy.

Saint Rémi baptizes Clovis, 9th century / zoom

    French kingship began with the baptism of the Frankish chief Clovis (toward 500).

La roi Dagobert sur le chantier [worksite] de la future Basilique de Saint-Denise...,15th century / zoom (please scroll down)

A 7th-century king oversees the building of the 12th-century basilica.

# # #

Later...

• Louis IX / Saint Louis built the Sainte-Chapelle to house what was thought the Crown of Thorns. The light shining through its extraordinary stained glass windows symbolized France's role as Christian beacon. 

-- Pascal Payen-Appenzeller, pastor and historian of Paris

Louis IX dépose la couronne d'épines [crown of thorns] à la Sainte-Chapelle (toward 1250), 15th-century illumination / zoom 
 

For remarkable pictures and an explanation of the architecture (in French), please click.

• The statues of the kings of Judea on the facade of Notre-Dame announce the kings of France:

Pamela Spurdon

• A literate clergy provides the bureaucracy necessary for stability: Its absence explains why the earlier Merovingian and Carolingian kingdoms fell apart.

-- Une histoire populaire de la France by Gérard Noisiel, 2018; excellent.

Rencontre [Meeting] de docteurs à l'University de Paris by Étienne Colaud, 1537 / zoom

• Proof that God prefers France was his sending Joan of Arc to fight the Christian English:

Joan of'Arc at Orleans Pushes Back the English by William Etty, toward 1830, zoom

Notice the white horse. 

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Sanctification, in France and England only

• Legend: At Clovis's baptism a dove* flies down from Heaven, holding in its beak a flask with an oil "that spread... a perfume of sweetness without equal." 

-- Gregory of  Tours, toward 570

*Symbol of the Christian spirit

Thereafter kings are considered sacred, so legitimate, only after their anointment by that oil at Reims.* 

*In Champagne, two days' march from Paris.

             Internet, now gone 

• The culmination of Joan of Arc's epic is not military victory, but persuading the  Dauphin to be crowned at Reims. That meant crossing through English-held territory. "God will protect you," she said. 

                              By Jules-Eugène Lenepveu, end 19th century / zoom 

Centerpiece of the Pantheon's three-part mural

For a comparaison with Dahomeyan royal funerals as access to the supernatural, please click. 

• Sanctification obliged the king to be Catholic: Henri IV, a Protestant, had to abdicate his faith and convert (in 1593).

         Abjuration de Henri IV, 25 juillet 1593 by Nicolas Baullery, 17th century / zoom

# # # 

By saying that authority comes from God, not the Church, 

heretics threatened both kings and popes. They opposed them together.

 

• A papal representative accompanied the French royal army when it attacked a town the Cathars* held. The phrase, "Kill them all! God will recognize his own," which meant that God would send slaughtered Catholics to Heaven, is attributed to him.

 *Thirteenth-century Christians who broke away from the Church. 

• The Pope celebrated the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre of Protestants in France (in 1572).

# # #

The "Alliance of Throne and Altar" was confirmed when the Pope let French kings appoint the clergy, which gave them control of Church wealth (in 1516):

• The Church became a bastion of monarchy...

The church of Saint-Paul Saint-Louis, first stone 1626 / Pamela Spurdon 

The architecture and decor of the first Baroque ("Jesuit") church in France suggests that obeying the king is necessary for salvation. At its summit, a king and crown.

• ...and of authority as a whole:

Ex-voto to Saint Genevieve by Nicolas de Largillière, 1696, at the church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont in Paris / zoom

• The Church became a conservative bastion: "We must throw ourselves at the feet of the bishops, they alone can save us now!" cried a famous philosopher, terrified of insurgents' discipline during the Revolution of 1848. 

-- Victor Cousin in Maxime du Camp's Souvenirs de l'année 1848 (1876)

Ma Commune de Paris

A crucifixion hovers over the trial of Communard insurrectionists (in 1871; full chapter here.)

Its support for elites explains the Left's visceral anti-clericalism, 

which is also part of the French identity:

   Pillage de l'évêché [bishopric] de Notre-Dame le 13 février, 1831 (detail), engraving of 1883 / zoom (please scroll down)

Un enterrement [burial] à Ornans (detail) by Gustave Courbet, 1849-1850 / zoom

Performance Nadège Maruta, photo Felix Sinpraseuth

"Cathedral," a step of the cancan, part of an underclass counter-culture that taunted authority.  

• French Catholicism can claim a number of heroes, such as the 17th-century saints Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac and the archbishop and monks murdered during the Paris Commune.

• But on the whole Church remained conservative. Stendhal describes all but a few seminarians as peasants joining the clergy to be sure of being fed and barely able to read Latin, and a noblewoman assuming that her spiritual advisor would accompany her to Paradise like a valet.

-- Le Rouge et le noir [The Red and the Black] (1830)

# # #

France is emphatically secular but...

• Its 750,000 churches provide a setting for daily life that constantly reminds of the Catholic past:

      Saint Elisabeth d'Hongrie

• A majority of saints are French or lived in France, the Jesuit philosopher Teilhard de Chardin is still read.

• France's worldwide association with Catholicism began when the Pope met Louis IX before he left on Crusade, and when Muslims of the time called all Crusaders Franks.

Internet, source not said

• Today more than one hundred French pilgrimages attract Catholics from everywhere:  

 Zoom

Exhibiting the holy tunic in Argenteuil (a town north of Paris) in 2016 attracted 200,000 pilgrims and led to creating cloth prints in Africa.

# # #

Catholicism underlies secular customs:

• The Panthéon, where heroes of the Republic rest (Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Josephine Baker...), is the secular equivalent to the Saint-Denis basilica, the royal mausoleum.

    Zoom

• The Bastille Day parade, heir to religious processions.

               Procession de la Ligue à la Cité, anonymous, toward 1590 / zoom

Internet, unknown photographer

# # #

"Europe and the world expect us to defend the spirit of the Enlightenment everywhere," said Emmanuel Macron after winning the Presidential election.

(In 2017)

France's faith in its universal mission
is the secular version of believing itself 

the beacon of Christianity and sword of God.

*     *     *

Next,

Small farms: ferocious repressions and art de vivre