French History Advance Access originally published online on August 27, 2008
French History 2008 22(4):425-445; doi:10.1093/fh/crn041
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Louis XVI’s chapel and the French Revolution (1789–1792)
* The author is currently completing his AHRC-funded PhD thesis, ‘Court Ceremony, Louis XVI and the French Revolution 1789–1792’, at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge. He may be contacted at aac39{at}cam.ac.uk
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Abstract |
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The close association of Christianity with the late Bourbon monarchy's style of governance has often been interpreted as a burdensome legacy, which impacted greatly on the period preceding the French Revolution. In recent years, historians have referred to the ideological, juridical and intellectual assaults on the religious foundations of the French crown, throughout the eighteenth century, either as a process of ‘desacralization’ or as the religious origins of the French Revolution. This article, though inspired by this school of thought, takes a different approach by examining the less well-known ceremonial and ritual components of this form of kingship, with particular reference to the king's chapel. Louis XVI's ecclesiastical household was both the centre of royal patronage for the Gallican Church and the chief regulatory authority of the monarch's personal religious devotion. Its actions, transformation and fate during the Revolution are instructive in two ways. First, its survival during the first three years of the revolutionary troubles highlights its fundamental and constraining influence over the French monarchy. Secondly, the gradual, though determined, effort to undermine the pact between throne and altar that it represented exemplifies a lesser known aspect of the national deputies’ anticlerical agenda.