Civic Catechisms and Reason in the French Revolution

Adrian Velicu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780754669982
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317165699
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

At the heart of the French Revolution there lay a fundamental paradox: how to liberate the minds of the people whilst simultaneously ensuring their loyalty to the new regime. It is an exploration of the facts and implications of this tension that forms the basis of this study, which reconstructs the intellectual world of the Revolution. The new radical regime attacked the old institutionalized forms of Catholic worship and instruction, yet retained the catechetical outlook with its dogmatic mindset as an important feature of political education. Catechisms not only conveyed information in an accessible manner, they also revealed the intellectual tendencies of those who favoured the genre. Civic catechisms were meant to play an important part of revolutionary instruction; they were the only category of texts repeatedly mentioned in the National Assembly and in various pieces of legislation, including education bills, and there were calls for a 'national catechism'. The status of the catechisms changed throughout the Revolution, and this study also investigates the degree of continuity of purpose across the period, as well as the catechisms' place alongside other texts such as speeches and bills. An important contribution to the literature on the intellectual history of the French Revolution, this book will also be of interest to scholars of rhetoric, education and the intellectual history of the eighteenth century, as well as to revolutionary studies in general.

Chapter 1
Catechisms: A Retrospective

Two clarifications are in order before proceeding to sketch a historical background to the catechetical genre and its educational role. First, since the present work does not intend to deal with questions of Christian doctrine, this particular survey touches only lightly on questions of theology. The discussion follows the main changes in the history of the genre. Second, when approaching the eighteenth century, the focus is on France because this overview aims to serve the subsequent analysis of the catechetical element during the Revolution.

Catechesis, namely instruction in the basic principles of a faith, emerged at an early stage in the history of Christianity. Initially the word meant a system of religious education and, in time, the text employed for the purpose. The etymology of the term suggests the method: the Greek katéchein means to instruct orally. This had not only to do with the scarcity of texts before the age of print, but also with preserving the secret teaching, according to which it was forbidden to put the creed into writing lest it should be found by those hostile or indifferent to the new religion.1 The sense of initiation into a faith that was still secret was also indicated by the name employed by those who explained in more detail the significance of the sacraments during Easter week, the mystagogues; the term was taken over from the Greek where it designated the individuals who initiated others into the Eleusinian mysteries.

The obligation of learning the tenets by heart was already present at this initial stage of Christianity since it enabled the individual to fulfil one of the commands, namely to pray at all times. The period of instruction varied from the forty days of Lent (occasionally three weeks) to a lifetime, although the usual period during early Christianity was about three years. The reason for extending the period of instruction close to the moment of death was to minimize the opportunity for sinning after baptism; the emperor Constantine the Great was one of the best-known examples of this practice.2

Despite the strictness suggested by the need for oral instruction, by that of memorizing and by the hierarchy of the disciples, a certain amount of debate did occur at the Catechetical School of Alexandria in the second and third century. Apparently, the instruction contained a good deal of exegetical work and involved an exchange of opinions not only with fellow-Christians. The fact that one of the School heads was Clement, known for his attempts at harmonizing Greek philosophy and Christian principles may have had something to do with the willingness to engage in argument, not exactly a distinguishing feature of later catechetical instruction. In fact, the ‘School’ was not a catechetical establishment as such, but more of a philosophical or theological institution.3

‘Catechesis’ started to acquire a somewhat clearer outline as an established genre through the texts of Irenaeus and Tertullian. It was a matter of expounding the history of salvation and interpreting the Old Testament in a Christological sense. Their work was produced approximately during the latter half of the second century and the first decades of the third when the Alexandrian School flourished under the leadership of Clement and Origen. Scriptural interpretation and refuting heresies characterized the religious instruction at this time. This polemical aspect would fade away in the catechisms that appeared after the Middle Ages.

The sequence of the elements to be taught varied, although there were signs of a gradual standardization. The Lord’s Prayer and the Creed appear to have been present in most texts already before the fourth century. Some of the catechetical texts of the fourth century, for instance Cyril of Jerusalem’s, John Chrysostom’s or Theodore of Mopsuestia’s, differed in the way they stressed either the sacraments or the creed. The emphasis and the order were justified partly by the fact that in some cases the experience of the sacraments preceded their explanation. The catechumens passed through three levels as they advanced in their work and were allowed to attend only certain parts of the religious service, depending on the degree of their initiation. This hierarchy entailed different levels of teaching. For instance, during Easter week, when Ambrose would expound the creed for the catechumens, he would particularly dwell on the sacraments for the benefit of the neophytes.

During the first three centuries catechetical instruction was, to a large extent, a preparation for baptism. In the early Church the ritual element played an important role and was integrated with the readings and the explanations. The acts of ritual renunciation and commitment were seen as a drama in the catechesis of Cyril of Jerusalem and Ambrose of Milan.4 As infant baptism became increasingly widespread beginning with the fourth century, the instruction occurred for the edification of the faithful and, in time, to enable them to be ‘confirmed’ in the faith by showing knowledge of the fundamentals.5 This caused further variations as the Milanese church introduced the Lord’s Prayer during the post-baptismal instruction, while in the African one it appeared shortly before Easter when baptism usually took place. With the expansion of missionary work, further differences emerged in the instruction due to the different kinds of audience. Augustine writes that those introduced to the faith for the first time need to be addressed differently from the disciples preparing for baptism. The work of religious edification would take various forms depending on the need to clarify matters affected by contemporary ‘heresies’ or on the necessity to decide other controversial issues. For example, the unity expressed by the creed was a reaction to the emphatic dualism of the Gnostics. As to variations, Augustine recommended the teaching of the Decalogue but presumably few other teachers did; the Decalogue became a standard element almost a millennium later.

Apparently, catechesis declined between the sixth and the thirteenth centuries. However, the view that no catechisms were produced during the Middle Ages has been challenged lately.6 An increasing number of texts aimed at clergymen and members of religious orders bear witness to a preoccupation with the religious instruction of both priests and laity. However, the texts urged not only priests, but also godparents and heads of households to instruct their children.7 The break-up of Christian initiation into baptism, confirmation and communion was bound to have an effect on the teaching of its symbolism.8 The nature of instruction changed as the adult catechumenate faded away in the Middle Ages due to infant baptism.9 By the sixteenth century the post-baptismal catechizing of children amounted mostly to learning three texts by heart: Our Father, Hail Mary and the Apostles’ Creed.10

Beginning with the Reformation, religious instruction by means of catechism was increasingly confined to the young and it acquired a more pronounced pedagogical dimension.11 Within Catholicism instruction followed other directions; the Trent Catechism suggested that adult baptism should be deferred for a while due to the process of baptizing large numbers of people in the colonies in the sixteenth century. One historian has made a distinction between catechumenate and catechesis, and has suggested that while the pre-baptismal version of the former was absent in the sixteenth century, the latter interested the Renaissance Christian humanists.12 The emphasis on education meant that ritual components of early catechism concerning, for instance, exorcism were left out in the new editions.

The anxiety caused by the thought of preparing for death was a further element that contributed to the proliferation of catechisms. As part of the concern with salvation there was also a new emphasis on proper confession. What has been called ‘the pedagogy of guilt’ clearly marked the catechetical productions of the fifteenth century. The sections on sins grew longer, whether they dealt with the seven deadly sins, the six sins against the Holy Spirit or numerous other categories amounting to several hundred, as was the case in Dietrich Kolde’s ‘Mirror of a Christian’ that went through almost fifty reprintings and editions in the decades before and after 1500. An anonymous ‘Mirror of Sinners’, issued in Augsburg in 1470, offered a guide to introspection which was an essential stage before penance.

There is thus evidence that the Reformation catechisms did not emerge as an entirely new form of religious literature. The stress on instructing the laity, but also the ignorant clergy, stimulated the production of a stream of pamphlets, books and illustrations that reinforced the teachings. Luther’s work was decisive in this area. Luther’s concern with introducing catechetical education in schools as well, not only in families, brought in the need for one standard text to be used on a widespread, institutional scale. As part of the renewed forcefulness of inculcating elementary religious knowledge, memorizing the contents became important. The Larger and the Smaller Catechisms appeared in 1529. Luther wrote the shorter text in the form of question and answer, an innovation in the genre and a steady feature of many subsequent catechisms.

The increasing willingness to write in the vernacular and the invention of printing in the fifteenth century were two of the decisive factors that contributed to a new kind of catechetical literature. One of the most influential authors was Jean de Gerson who wrote a catechism in French where, apart from the Creed and the Decalogue, he included a meditation on the ‘art of dying’, a topical subject matter in the Middle Ages that lingered on both in Catholicism and Protestantism.

Instructions were more and more often in verse which facilitated learning the text by heart; this change in the genre may be due to the predominantly young age of the students. The development of a young person was regarded at the time as falling into three periods: infancy (up to about seven years of age), childhood (up to thirteen) and adolescence (ending in the early twenties). The view that pupils acquired knowledge as ‘the common sense’ processed information received by the other five senses, led to the trust in repetition and rote learning.13 In his shorter catechism meant especially for children, Luther had pointed out the importance of rote learning. The view that verse was more easily memorized than prose also led to the re-writing of the main English catechetical texts in the seventeenth century, although a beginning had been made by a lesser-known author in the early 1580s.14

A distinction between the emphasis on faith and the need to teach basic religious notions derived from the Reformation claim that proper faith bypassed the teacher’s authority, entailing ‘personal trust’ in God. Language was necessary to learn the ‘Word of God’ and to express one’s faith, hence the need for knowledge of the Scriptures. Yet, ‘[t]he catechism was a handy device for imparting basic instruction in the meaning of life under God’.15 The ambition of catechetical instruction extended beyond dogma.

To continue now this brief historical survey mainly in France and in French-speaking texts, it is of interest to look at an...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Catechisms: A Retrospective
• 2 Reason: Usage and Meaning
• 3 In Two Minds: Constitutional Monarchy
• 4 Republican Questions
• 5 Republican Answers
• 6 After Thermidor
• Concluding Remarks
• Bibliography
• Index