Women always played an important role in the Church in France. Both before and after the Revolution they were more likely to regularly attend Sunday and Easter services than men were. But after the Revolution women became crucial to the survival of Catholicism in France.
Before the Revolution of 1789
Before the Revolution male and female attendance to Sunday church services was commonplace. Though there were small variations most of the population before the Revolution regularly attended Church services and held to the Catholic faith. Women in particular had found a place in the Church that served as an outlet for their emotions. There was no shortage of women seeking to join religious orders though the majority chose marriage and family life. 1
Within the home women were expected to be obedient and diligent, completing their tasks and assisting their husbands. In Church women were given the opportunity to get involved, to participate in charities and offer their time as they pleased. They could be proactive if they chose. For many women after their husbands and families their first loyalty was to the Church which made the task of revolutionaries who wished to set up new forms of worship all the more difficult. For many religion was an aspect of everyday life, from baking crosses of bread to praying to St. John the Baptist during childbirth or doing the laundry in streams considered to be blessed by the Virgin Mary. Church organizations also offered retreats for women, allowing them to get away from their daily lives for a while. Education through the Church was almost all that was available to girls in rural regions thus ensuring the continued faith amongst women.2
The Revolution And The Feminisation of Religious Practice
During the Revolution and the following Terror many priests, jurors or otherwise, found themselves in danger of arrest or in fear for their lives. Yet many refused to let go of their faith. A few examples of this are found in Religion and Revolution in France 1780-1804, such as this
“At Jouy-Sure-Morin, a hundred men armed with muskets chanted menacingly before the representative on mission, Morisson, ‘We want our religion! We’ll die to uphold it!’”(Aston 2000)
These sorts of displays were common and when priests were imprisoned they often received visitors from amongst their followers. 3
Yet it was women who truly kept the religion alive, particularly in rural areas. It is because of this that some scholars have accepted that the Revolution saw the “feminisation of religious practice”.(Aston 2000) This means that while many men who were involved in the Revolution turned from old practices women held to them. They hid relics and sacred images around their homes and in place of priests and bishops nuns took over the running of church services. Laywomen catechized their own children in the absence of priests. Some even risked during the Terror to hide non-jurors in their homes ‘while more than one refractory priest was freed by women forcibly pulling him from his captors’.(Aston 2000) 4
Conclusion
Though not solely responsible much of the credit for continuing the faith through the difficult years of the terror goes to the women of France who refused to let go of their faith. While many attempts to dechristianize the nation were made none could hold up against the overwhelming force of faith of the everyday woman. Even after The Revolution and Terror ended the effects could be felt throughout the social structure of France. The women of the Revolution became champions of the faith and this continued into the 19th century. Church attendance for women was up and down for men. Women were consistently more receptive to the demands of the Church despite their husbands’ wishes and through them the Catholic faith survived.5
1Aston, Nigel. Religion and Revolution in France 1780-1804. Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000.
2Nigel Aston, Religion and Revolution in France 1780-1804, (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 42-44.
3Nigel Aston, Religion and Revolution in France 1780-1804, (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 238-240
4Nigel Aston, Religion and Revolution in France 1780-1804, (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 240-241
5Joseph Byrnes, Catholic and French Forever, (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), 87.
France in the Age of Les Misérables 