1. See Augustin de Barruel, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du jacobinisme , on the influence attributed to philosophers, freemasons, and to the illuminati, on the revolution of France. Facsimile edition, trans. J. Walker (New York: Delmat, Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1974).

2. Pierre de la Gorce, Histoire réligieuse de la Révolution Française (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1919).

3. The classic version of the republican story has been recounted by Jules Michelet, Histoire de la Révolution Française , (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1978), 1: 308. Hamel, the paradigmatic Robespierrist of historiography, is much less generous to the antagonists of his idol.

4. See Jean Jaurès, Histoire socialiste de la Révolution Française , ed. Albert Soboul (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1969); vol. 1, La Constituante , particularly the chapters on the confiscation of the land of the church and the Civil Constitution.

5. Good examples are John McManners, The French Revolution and the Church (New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1969); and Timothy Tackett, Religion, Revolution and Regional Cultures in Eighteenth-Century France (The Ecclesiastical Oath of 1791) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). Jaurès, McManners, and Tackett are included here in the same group only by virtue of their similarly atomistic readings of the church policies of the Revolution which, according to all three of them, contained some sound ideas as well as enormous blunders or injustices. Neither of these chronicles represents a holistic narrative of the conflict of the church and the Revolution.

6. Edgar Quinet, Le christianisme et la Révolution Française (Paris: Fayard, 1984).

7. An interesting characterization of Le cercle social can be found in Hans Maier, Revolution und Kirche—Studien zur Frühgeschichte der christlichen Demokratie (1789-1901) (Freiburg in Breisgau: Verlag Rombach, 1979), pp. 130-137.

8. Alphonse Aulard, Le culte de la Raison et le culte de L'Être Suprème (1793-1794), Essai Historique (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1904), p. vi. In fact, Quinet made the explicit statement ( Le christianisme , p. 173) that he was not a Protestant nor did he believe that France would or should become Protestant. However, one representative contemporary commentator, Novalis, indeed experimented with the equation of the radical climax of the Revolution with Protestantism: "Soll die Revolution die französische bleiben, wie die Reformation die lutherische war? Soll der Protestantismus abermals widernatürlicherweise als revolutionäre Regierung fixiert werden? . . . Historisch merkwürdig bleibt der Versuch jener grossen eisernen Maske, die unter dem Namen Robespierre in der

Religion den Mittelpunkt und die Kraft der Republik suchte" (emphasis added). "Die Christenheit oder Europa," in Novalis, Werke , ed. Ernesto Grassi (Munich: Rowohlts Klassiker, 1961), p. 47.

9. Quinet, Le christianisme , pp. 66-67, 71, 86.

10. Ibid., p. 102.

11. Ibid., pp. 103-106.

12. Ibid., pp. 230-231.

9. Quinet, Le christianisme , pp. 66-67, 71, 86.

10. Ibid., p. 102.

11. Ibid., pp. 103-106.

12. Ibid., pp. 230-231.

9. Quinet, Le christianisme , pp. 66-67, 71, 86.

10. Ibid., p. 102.

11. Ibid., pp. 103-106.

12. Ibid., pp. 230-231.

9. Quinet, Le christianisme , pp. 66-67, 71, 86.

10. Ibid., p. 102.

11. Ibid., pp. 103-106.

12. Ibid., pp. 230-231.

13. Maier, Revolution und Kirche , p. 124.

14. The major documents of this controversy are Aulard, Le culte de la Raison et le culte de L'Étre Suprème ; Alphonse Aulard, Christianity and the French Revolution , trans. Lady Frazer (Boston: Little, Brown, 1927); and the famous essay by Albert Mathiez on the Cult of the Supreme Being in The Fall of Robespierre and Other Essays (New York: Knopf, 1927). See also Albert Mathiez, "L'Église et la Révolution Française," Revue des Cours et Conferences 33, no. 1 (Paris, 1931-1932); and his L'origine des cultes révolutionnaires (Paris, 1904). A most recent work of questionable value, Pierre Pierrard, L'Église et la Révolution (Paris: Nouvelle Cité, 1988) takes sides against Mathiez and the later Aulard and, with an unsubstantiated reference to Solé's opinion, denies that the process of dechristianization had indeed the backing of wider strata of the populace; P. 97.

15. The most important modern research on rituals and ceremonies in the Revolution can be found in Mona Ozouf, La fête révolutionnaire, 1789-1799 (Paris: Gallimard, 1976); and Jean Starobinski, 1789: Les emblêmes de la raison (Paris: Flammarion, 1973). The paradigmatic work of historical sociology on the issue of the conflict of Revolution and Church is Charles Tilly, The Vendée (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964). After his enormous research, the multidimensionality of the rebellion of Vendée can no longer be denied. But I still remain unconvinced by the main thesis that questions the centrality of the religious issue in the movement and reduces its role to that of an independent variable. The thesis could only be maintained if the analyst secured a "metaposition" for himself from which he could dismiss the explicitly stated central intent of the actors as "ideology" or self-delusion. But such a position is hermeneutically impossible.

16. A good example of the more recently prevailing lack of interest in the merit of this issue can be found in François Furet and Mona Ozouf, Dictionnaire critique de la Révolution Française (Paris: Flammarion, 1988), chap. "Dechristianisation."

17. Tackett, Religion, Revolution and Regional Cultures , pp. 7-8.

18. The complexity of the situation of the church on the eve of the Revolution is lucidly presented by Louis S. Greenbaum's unpretentious and important book: Talleyrand, Statesman-Priest: The Agent-General of the Clergy and the Church of France at the End of the Old Regime (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1970).

19. The argument of the royal power, used as a threat rather than a blueprint for action, has been described by Greenbaum, Talleyrand , pp. 83, 88. The argument of the revolutionaries was summed up succinctly by Maier, Revolution und Kirche , p. 106.

20. The problem of appel comme d'abus is a widely discussed issue. A good description of the meaning and function of this legal term can be found in Robert Genestal, Les origines de l'appel comme d'abus (Paris, 1951).

21. For the key category of the necessary holiness (and duality) of the royal person,

see E. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). Quinet, Le christianisme , pp. 214-216, and Maier, Revolution und Kirche , p. 80, add important considerations to the discussion of the issue.

22. The peculiarity of the team of revolutionary experts has been persistently emphasized in the literature. Already Michelet stressed the Jansenist convictions of Camus, La Révolution Française , 1: 311; de la Gorce made the allegation that Barnave's preeminent role as one of the first advocates for the confiscation of the wealth of the church had been motivated by his Protestantism, de la Gorce, Histoire réligieuse , 1: 142-143; both de la Gorce, Histoire réligieuse , 1: 201, and Tackett, Religion, Revolution and Regional Culture , p. 17, remark that Durand de Maillane, an expert on canon law, as well as Treilhard were, as leading members of the Ecclesiastic Committee of the Constituent Assembly, epitomes of the old tradition of légistes , the legal experts of court or parlements, who were traditional enemies of the church. The role played by Mirabeau, a professed libertine, and Talleyrand, a renegade, are common knowledge. Yet the problem was not their bias but their unique brand of reason.

23. My description of the situation of the church, concerning both its "parliamentarianism" and well-organized bureauracy as well as its internal problems, relies on Greenbaum, Talleyrand , pp. 2, 3, 26, 27, 38, 58, 59.

24. An almost identical description, albeit a different characterization, of the Civil Constitution of the church, can be found in Tackett, Religion, Revolution and Regional Culture , pp. 8-16, and in de la Gorce, Histoire réligieuse , 1: 197-199.

25. Tackett, the most conscientious scholar of the church-related issues in the cahiers de doléances , gives an extremely illuminating statistical sample of 202 cahiers of the Third Estate, Religion, Revolution and Regional Cultures , p. 13. It is perfectly clear from this representative sample that the major grievances about the situation of the clergy felt by the members of the Third Estate were the issues of the tithes (47 percent demanded their total or partial abolition); the wish to acquire at least part of the church land (27 percent); the demand for the abolition of the casuel (47 percent); the demand for social mobility within the church, i.e., the opening of clerical posts to talent (44 percent); and the requirement that prelates fulfill their "social function" (40 percent). Although this was indeed strong support for the work of reform, it was at the same time no encouragement for extreme radicalism. In analyzing this problem, the methodological warning of the eminent historian, Henri Sée, about the "source value" of the cahiers of the clergy, "La rédaction et la valeur des cahiers de paroisse," Revue Historique 103 (1910): 292-306, should be heeded.

26. The statement is quoted in Michelet, La Révolution Française , vol. 1, 311.

27. The most detailed description of the naive proposal by Dom Gerle in the Constituent Assembly to declare Catholicism the national religion is to be found in de la Gorce, Histoire réligieuse , 1: 159-162.

28. On the question of "popular sovereignty" see K. D. Erdmann, Volkssouverenität und Kirche. Studien über das Verhältnis von Staat und Religion in Frankreich vom der Generalstände bis zum Schisma (Cologne, 1949).

29. For Arendt's remark, see On Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1952), pp. 112-114.

30. Tony Judt analyzed more recently the change of the Catholic vote in Le Marxisme et la gauche française (Paris: Hachette, 1986), pp. 274-278.

31. John L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (London: Secker and Warburg, 1952), p. 21 and passim.

32. Treilhard's dictum is quoted in de la Gorce, Histoire réligieuse , 1: 224.

33. Ferenc Fehér, The Frozen Revolution (An Essay on Jacobinism) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 74.

34. See Ozouf, La fête révolutionnaire ; and Starobinsky, 1789 .

35. Anne Louise Germaine Staël-Holstein, Des Circonstances actuelles qui peuvent terminer la Révolution et des principes qui doivent fonder la République en France (Geneva: Droz, 1979), p. 227.

36. Ibid., 236-237.

35. Anne Louise Germaine Staël-Holstein, Des Circonstances actuelles qui peuvent terminer la Révolution et des principes qui doivent fonder la République en France (Geneva: Droz, 1979), p. 227.

36. Ibid., 236-237.

37. Robespierre's words are quoted in Mathiez, "The Cult of the Supreme Being," in The Fall of Robespierre , pp. 100-101.

38. See the analysis of the allegedly aristocratic character of eighteenth-century materialism and atheism versus the "plebeian" idealism and moralization coupled with terrorism in Georg Lukács, "Der faschistisch verfälschte und der wahre Georg Büchner," in Deutsche Realisten, Gesammelte Werke , vol. 6 (Neuwied/Berlin: Luchterhand Verlag, 1968).

39. Mathiez, "The Cult of the Supreme Being," The Fall of Robespierre , pp. 86-89.

40. Robespierre's invective against Diderot quoted in Aulard, Le culte , p. 273.

41. Mathiez, "The Cult of the Supreme Being," The Fall of Robespierre .

42. Ibid., p. 89.

41. Mathiez, "The Cult of the Supreme Being," The Fall of Robespierre .

42. Ibid., p. 89.

43. See Payan's extremely interesting interpretation in Aulard, Le culte , pp. 282-88.

44. François Furet has been emphasizing, both throughout his crucial Thinking the French Revolution , and more recently in a seminar given at New York University, 12 October 1988, this new attitude that he, rightly, attributes not to the Jacobins alone but to the Revolution as a whole.

45. Mathiez, "The Cult of the Supreme Being," The Fall of Robespierre , pp. 88-89, emphasis added.

46. The problem of freedom and happiness (rather: freedom versus happiness) has been recently analyzed by Agnes Heller in "Freedom and Happiness in Kant's Political Philosophy," in manuscript.

47. I have analyzed in The Frozen Revolution , pp. 61-62, the strangely mixed character of the draft of the (never-enacted) Constitution of 1793, which was a supreme law, that is, a legal document, and a binding oath in front of the Creator, that is, an irrevocable religious commitment, at the same time.

48. Quoted in Aulard, Le culte , p. 273.

49. Mathiez, "The Cult of the Supreme Being," in The Fall of Robespierre , pp. 100-101, emphasis added.

50. Ibid., p. 96.

51. Ibid., pp. 97-98. Reinhart Koselleck bases his theory—in Futures Past ( On the Semantics of Historical Time ) (Cambridge, Mass., and London: MIT Press, 1985), pp. 49-50—that every revolution carries the germs of world revolution in itself, despite its eventual nationalistic self-limitation, on precisely this speech of Robespierre.

49. Mathiez, "The Cult of the Supreme Being," in The Fall of Robespierre , pp. 100-101, emphasis added.

50. Ibid., p. 96.

51. Ibid., pp. 97-98. Reinhart Koselleck bases his theory—in Futures Past ( On the Semantics of Historical Time ) (Cambridge, Mass., and London: MIT Press, 1985), pp. 49-50—that every revolution carries the germs of world revolution in itself, despite its eventual nationalistic self-limitation, on precisely this speech of Robespierre.

49. Mathiez, "The Cult of the Supreme Being," in The Fall of Robespierre , pp. 100-101, emphasis added.

50. Ibid., p. 96.

51. Ibid., pp. 97-98. Reinhart Koselleck bases his theory—in Futures Past ( On the Semantics of Historical Time ) (Cambridge, Mass., and London: MIT Press, 1985), pp. 49-50—that every revolution carries the germs of world revolution in itself, despite its eventual nationalistic self-limitation, on precisely this speech of Robespierre.