Recruitment to the Clergy in Nineteenth-Century France: "Modernization" and "Decline"?

Author(s): Edward T. Gargan and Robert A. Hanneman

Source: Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Autumn, 1978), pp. 275-295
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/203228
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Journal of Interdisciplinary History, IX:2 (Autumn 1978), 275-295.

Edward T. Garganand RobertA. Hanneman

Recruitment to the Clergy in Nineteenth-
Century France: "Modernization" and
"Decline" ? Boulard has suggested that the condition of the
clergy can best be approached by specifying its recruitment suc-
cess and failure during the nineteenth century. Most examinations
of problems of the clergy are in agreement that the mutations of
nineteenth-century society adversely affected the numbers of
those being ordained.1 The consensus includes acceptance of the
idea that changes involving urbanization, growth of secular edu-
cation, universal military service, industrialization, the secular
trend in real wages, and government financial support or its with-
drawal affected the recruitment to the clergy. For both the clergy
of the nineteenth century and their historians, these changes con-
stituted significant aspects of modernity within which the clergy's
ability to sustain their numbers had to be worked out. This
particular view of modernity was not dependent upon the present
day debates concerning modernity and the ambiguity and ambi-
vilance surrounding its value as a concept.2 But there is need to
explore whether or not the features of modernization identified
by the nineteenth-century clergy as contributing to their gains
and losses actually were correlated with the levels and rates of

Edward T. Gargan is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Robert A. Hanneman is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology, University
of Wisconsin, Madison.

I Fernand Boulard, Essorou declindu clergefranfais?(Paris, 1950); idem, Premiersitineraires

en sociologie religieuse (Paris, 1966); Fernand Boulard and Jean Remy, Pratique religieuse
urbaineet regions culturelles(Paris, 1968). All modern scholarship is dependent upon the
formative work of Gabriel Le Bras, esp., etudes de sociologiereligieuse(Paris, I955-I956),
2 v. For an account of the experiences of France's secular clergy throughout the nineteenth
century see Edward T. Gargan, "The Priestly Culture in Modern France," Catholic His-
toricalReview, LVII (1971), I-20. The best work on the clergy ordained between I895 and
1939 is that of Joseph Roge, Le simplepretre (Paris, 1965). A neglected and valuable classic
study is Joseph Brugerette, Le pretrefrancais et la societecontemporaine(Paris, 1933-1938),
3 v.
2 The character of this debate is available in Michael Armer and Allan Schnaiberg,
"Measuring Individual Modernity: A near Myth," AmericanSociologicalReview, XXXVII
(1972), 301-306; Alex Inkeles, "Understanding and Misunderstanding Individual Mod-
ernity," in Lewis A. Coser and Otto Larsen (eds.), The Uses of Controversyin Sociology
(New York, 1976).
276 I E. T. GARGAN AND R. A. HANNEMAN
ordination. The intention of this article is to approach this ques-
tion from two directions: the first by an examination of the
clergy's views on the changes occurring in nineteenth-century
society which they perceived as threatening to their future; the
second by a selection of indicators which fit these conceptions
(whatever their limitations) and a testing by correlation analysis
of their association with ordination rates throughout the century.
At the conjuncture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
the subjective situation of the French clergy was miserable, so-
cially, psychologically, and politically. Significantly, the nine-
teenth-century clergy were in more agreement than disagreement
with their critics about the gravity of their plight. This consensus
is well illustrated in Chalendar's collection of texts. Chalendar
skillfully excerpts the parliamentary debates of these two crucial
decades of the Third Republic when France's deputies heatedly
discussed the priest's experience in the seminary, his success and
failure in the parish, his relation with his bishop and the laity, his
questionable education, his recruitment, his response to a univer-
sal theological crisis, and his reaction to financial and political
pressures. In these impassioned exchanges, the defenders of the
clergy, like their opponents, did not fail to draw blood. More
significant than the wounds inflicted is the striking fact that the
two parties were in accord on the origins of the clergy's malaise.3
Another source bearing witness to this collective trauma is
provided by Remond's account of the ecclesiastical congresses of
Reims (1896) and Bourges (I900).4 At the first of these congresses
some 700 clergymen, following the inspiration of Abbe Jules
Lemire, the Christian Democratic deputy, met to discuss their
common condition. Their expressions of anxiety echoed, contin-
ued, and extended the discussions in the Chamber as they searched
for ways to cope with their feelings of intellectual limitation,
separation from their society, and estrangement from the schools
of the Third Republic; with their fear of the impact of their service
in the army; and with the acute stress that they encountered when
confronting the theological questions so often grouped under the
pejorative cover of Modernism. Courage and hope were not ab-
sent during their tense discussions on how to extract themselves
3 Xavier de Chalendar (ed.), Les pretres au journal officiel, 1887-1907 (Paris, 1968), 2 v.
4 de Reims et de Bourges, 1896-19oo
Rene Remond, Les deux congresecclesiastiques (Paris,
I964), see esp. 178.
FRENCH CLERGY 277

from the burden of the past and the weight of their particular
present. Four years later, in the first year of the twentieth century,
this collective self-examination continued at Bourges. The great-
est excitement during this congress was caused by the discourse
of the Abbe Louis Birot (I863-I936), Vicar General for Bishop
Eudoze-Irenee Mignot of Albi. He asked his fellow priests: "Do
we love our country? Our time?" Or, he proposed, did France's
clergy give their allegiance to another France, another time, and
country? And he further suggested that the clergy were hypno-
tized by dreams of the past, paralyzed by regrets. He concluded
more severely: "We have not pardoned modern society for cre-
ating itself without and even despite us." We must, he urged,
love the things, institutions, and works of our time. Birot's ques-
tions offered his confreres and subsequent historians essential,
indispensable clues to the clergy's tribulations and trials.
Members of the hierarchy responded quickly and acerbically
to the two congresses. The bishop of Nancy, Monseigneur
Charles-Francois Turinaz, in his Les perils de lafoi et de la discipline
dans l'Eglise de Franceattributed all the problems to Americanism,
Kantianism, and Modernism. And Monseigneur Louis Isoard of
Annecy wrote to Rome to warn of the dangers which threatened
the clergy from within as well as without. Members of the clergy
were at once citizens, priests, and laics; but this single identity
showed a frightening tendency to dissolve, or rather to be rent
asunder, into its constituent parts. Isoard also perceived a chal-
lenge to the bishops' governance and the will to weaken dogma
and doctrine in order to satisfy the modern generation.5
Whatever its source, then, opinion on the state of the clergy
in late nineteenth-century France was unanimous. Men hostile to
the clergy and men who defended it, priests themselves in collec-
tive dialogue and bishops in dismay agreed that the situation was
critical. How did this crisis, which preceded the special troubles
attending the separation of church and state of I904-1907, come
about?
One explanation much favored by the hierarchy, by Catholic
apologists, by the political Right in the Third Republic, and by
historians in our day, is that a hostile, modernizing, anti-clerical,
semi-pagan world inevitably rejected the influence of the church

5 Ibid., 220-221, 213-214.

278 I E. T. GARGAN AND R. A. HANNEMAN

and its priests. But the clergy at Reims and Bourges proposed
other causes to account for the painful isolation of their lives.
They accused themselves of intellectual mediocrity and suggested
fundamental reforms in the minor and major seminaries; they
hungered for more cosmopolitanism of mind but wondered how
they could meet the needs of the simple rural faithful without
resorting to religious devotions that were questionable both the-
ologically and psychologically. From their viewpoint, the central
problems lay in the behavior and spirit of church and clergy.
Their agony was not to be attributed to others, to an unkind or
wicked world. They took the blame on themselves.
Historians who have examined the difficulties experienced by
the Catholic community in France throughout the nineteenth
century have been in remarkable agreement in their identification
of the long-term trends which discouraged belief, practice, and
recruitment to the clergy. This convergence is especially evident
in the suggestions that industrialization, urbanization, secular ed-
ucation, army experience, and the rural exodus reduced the pop-
ulation of believers and shrank the pool of candidates for ordi-
nation. Each of these trends has been used as a measurable index
of the more global concept, "modernization." Nineteenth-cen-
tury opinion in support of this explanation is not lacking. The
testimony of dedicated bishops and preachers, the observations of
journalists, and the self-analysis of the clergy give support to the
conclusions drawn by historians who propose, as does Larkin,
that a secular mix virtually synonymous with modernity abraded
away the landscape of a rural and fertile community of believers.6
These impressions cannot be dismissed or taken at face value. The
prevalence of these ideas does make it desirable to test quantita-
tively whether the variables selected by the clergy do explain what
was happening to their recruitment. The success or failure of
recruitment was a sensitive indicator and recognized by all who
concerned themselves with the clergy's fortunes and misfortunes.
At a minimum, the ordination rate measures the ability of the
institutional church to reproduce itself as an organization.
For France's clergy and hierarchy, the rise or decline in the
number of ordinations offered the clearest and most specific index
of their situation. The church's partisans interpreted all adverse
movements in the number of ordinations as due largely to ex-

6 Maurice Larkin, Churchand State afterthe Dreyfus Affair (London, 1974), 6-28.
FRENCH CLERGY | 279

ogenous causes-to modernity.7 The number of ordinations fell

precipitously from 1830 to 1840 (from 2,357 to I,095), and al-
though it had considerably recovered by I868, each short-term
decline renewed alarm and anxiety concerning the future of the
clergy.
Figure 2, showing ordinations as a proportion of all males
ages I5 to 24, depicts these moments, but at the same time, as
shown in Fig. I, over the period from I840 to 1900 the absolute
number of ordinations remained about the same. It is this situation
which encouraged simultaneously despair and hope in the clergy
about their situation and about French society. Contemporary
belief in the correlation between ordinations and the changes
taking place in French society can be tested by examining the
correlations between the levels, changes, and rates of change in
the yearly number of ordinations and the corresponding move-
ments in urbanization, births, secondary and higher education,
military service, state support for the church, conditions in in-
dustry, and the increase in average wealth over the period I820
to I950. Remond has stressed that even the progressive clergy at
the Congress of Reims feared the industrial revolution, greatly
distrusted the city, were suspicious of capital concentration, and
regarded the rural exodus as a plague.8
Urbanization and its presumed dislocating experiences were
frequently cited as an important cause of the erosion in the number
of believers, pratiquants, and men ordained. Zero order corre-
lations between several measures of urbanization and the
proportion of males who were ordained into the clergy in each
year seem to confirm the traditional explanation for the declines.
The correlation between ordinations and the proportion of the
population living in communes of 2,000 or more is -.09, in urban
areas of Io,ooo it is -.28, and of Ioo,ooo or more it is -.28.9 But
although this result supports the conventional wisdom regarding

7 Louis-Victor-Emile Bougaud, Le Grandperil de l'Sglise de Franceau XIXe siecle (Paris,

1878). On Bougaud, Vicar-General of Orleans, see Gargan, Priestly Culture, 13.
8 Remond, Les deux congres, 72. Similarly, he notes that at the congress a military
chaplain deplored the conviction that "The barracks in the eyes of many is a veritable
sewer" (69). The problems Catholics encountered in overcoming a mentality rooted in a
rural past are incisively discussed in imile Poulat's article, "La decouverte de la ville par
le catholicisme francais contemporain," Annales, XV (1960), 1168-1179.
9 The data sources for this and subsequent correlations are given in Appendix III.
Appendix I reports correlations calculated for 1820 to I9I0, the ones given above. Ap-
pendix II presents the correlations for I820 to I950.
Fig. 1 Number of Clergy, Number of Ordinations, and Central Government Religi
i820 to I950
60-'
NUMBER OF CLERGYr

55-

o EXPENDITURE

p /
a OI50~~
?
vvr /e T
/J I vvv Ivi \v 1
I vuv T
I vvv I
. vv l~ , _, ~ ~/''/>_-~ ~
-
cZ 45I t I I \ t \
z5
3 / \
J b

5 .^r I '-J
r' , , , !
c1 LL
. ,-
0< , ,
CD40

/ r A. / NUMBER OF ORDINATIONS
! t

/I 2 /

' ON
30-

IAln Rn an n kR P 0 I 1

r~~~~
-5 i ~~~~~~
r,
1848 1858
1838
4~~3n 1888 1870 1888 1890 1900 1910 1920
ou
IwLv ,,oV-TI
Year
FRENCH CLERGY 28I

the disorienting impact of urbanization on the church, the com-

munity of believers, and its clergy, there are problems with it.
The difficulty is that in order for the association between the
percentage of the population urban and the percentages of young
men ordained to be non-negative it would demand, for example,
that in the period I846 to 1936 the proportion of young men
entering the clergy double, as did the proportion of the population
which was in urban areas. An extrapolation to our time would
require Luther's priesthood of all believers. Even the most sincere
critic of urbanization's dechristianizing effects might be uneasy at
the prospect of a France where, in 1976, 5,000 ordinations a year
would be necessary to match urbanization.
Intimidated by this prospect, one must ask more rigorously
whether year to year absolute changes in urbanization were as-
sociated with absolute yearly changes in ordination. That is, when
the proportion of population urban increased during a year, did
the proportion of the target population ordained decline? This
differs from the previous question in that the effects of long-run
trends are removed and concern focuses on the association beween
changes in ordinations and changes in urbanization. From this
perspective there is no association or only a slight positive asso-
ciation. The correlations for absolute changes are +.22 for com-
munes of 2,000 or more, +.io for places of Io,ooo or more, and
+.12 for cities of oo00,000 or more. Despite an increase in urban-
ization and a decline in ordination between 1820 and 1950, there
was no direct and close connection between changes in the two
trends.
The pace of urbanization was regarded as the most disturbing
aspect of the process. Contemporaries predicted that the rate of
change in urbanization unfavorably influenced the rate of ordi-
nation and threatened the future of the clergy's membership more
than the actual size and density of the population in the larger
cities. The morally corrupting conditions of the growing cities,
and especially Paris, were considered so distressing for the practice
of faith and vocations that the bishop of Peking, Monseigneur
Laplace, was reported in I903 as jokingly offering to send some
of his missionaries to the aid of Paris.10 But rates of change in

Io Abbe Charles Calippe (ed. Emile Poulat), Journal d'un pretre d'apres-demain(Paris,
I96I), 41. Poulat is citing La Verite francaise, Jan. 12, 1903.
282 E. T. GARGAN AND R. A. HANNEMAN

urbanization and ordination are not associated. That is, the per-
centage rate of change in the proportion of the population urban
is not associated with the percentage rate of change in ordination.
The correlations for rates of change are respectively +.25, +.09,
and +.09. The pace of urbanization in the nineteenth century had
no effect on the rate with which ordinations were increasing or
decreasing. Urbanization had little direct impact on what was
happening to the recruitment of the clergy.
What of the other social trends identified with modernization
and considered as adversely affecting the clergy? France's declin-
ing birthrate in the nineteenth century, for example, has, along
with urbanization, been held responsible for difficulties in attract-
ing young men to the priesthood. In both cases, historians have
proposed that secularization linked to modernization reduced the
population of dedicated believers making up the pool of potential
vocations. And bishops and clergy were not alone in fearing the
implications of France's declining birth rate, which was largely
attributed to secular values.
Durkheim in 1899 described France's insufficient natality as
"une maladiecollective." For Durkheim the cause was "above all
a moral one" which he attributed to values supportive of the
embourgeoisment and secularization of French society. This
moral defect was, he wrote, due to the weakening of the sentiment
"de la solidaritesociale." Durkheim held the petite bourgeoisie (a
class from which vocations came) particularly culpable for sub-
ordinating everything to their own personal ends. "It seems to
him that he does not need many children in order to be happy.
On the contrary, the burdens they entail can only inconvenience
him in the satisfaction of his desires. And so he artificially limits
his natural fecundity." Deepening his analysis, Durkheim ob-
served that this behavior was motivated by the desire "to raise
themselves above their equals, to acquire greater wealth, more
power, more esteem . . ." Durkheim clearly reinforced religious
opinion on the relation between France's demographic crisis and
the condition of the nation.11
This universally held view is not borne out when the trends
in birth rates and ordination rates from 1820 to 195o are plotted.
Figure 2, comparing these rates, reveals that, although the birth
II Imile Durkheim,Journal Sociologiqtte(Paris, 1969), 238-239. Durkheim was reviewing
in L'Anne Sociologique,III (I899), 558-561, Arsene Dumont's Natalite et democratie(Paris,
1898).
Fig. 2 Levels of the Birth Rate and of the Ordination Rate in France, I820 to I

80- A

70-

a 60- \ BIRTH RATE

50 -25

' 20- \

0--
I40oII0 U \0

i'

! i I I i ! i i i i
1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920
Year
284 I E. T. GARGAN AND R. A. HANNEMAN

rate declined, this constant downward trend is not reflected in a

similar movement in ordinations. This revision of the conven-
tional belief is reinforced by noting that the correlation between
the level of the birth rate and the level of ordinations is + .50. The
correlation between absolute changes is +. I1, and between rates
of change only +.o9.
The lack of correlation of ordination with urbanization and
birth rates places in question the utility of constructing facile
historical connections between the indicators of modernity iden-
tified by the clergy and subsequent historians and the specific
history of this significant group in nineteenth-century French so-
ciety. This prudence is even more desirable when correlation
analysis is widened to include other facets of modernization such
as secular and public education, universal military service, gov-
ernment support, average wealth, and the performance of indus-
try. When these large societal changes are correlated with ordi-
nations, significant doubt is raised concerning the deleterious
effect of modernization on the numbers of the French clergy.
Throughout the nineteenth century Catholics fought to pre-
serve the autonomy and independence of church-related schools.
The suspicion and hostility toward the public schools' official
"neutrality" in matters of religion was characteristicallyexpressed
in an 1894 sermon delivered to pilgrims returning from Lourdes.
"Do not be deceived my brethren," the preacher cautioned, "it
is an inappropriate term which cloaks a base intention, say rather
that they are the centers of irreligion and of atheism. The child
who only receives the instruction which they give lives without
faith, the name of God is never on his lips except to insult or
offend, the Church never sees him in its temples, the priest does
not know him, or if he keeps some outward appearance of reli-
gion, at fifteen it is all ended, and thereafter one encounters only
a blasphemer or a sectarian."12
During the Third Republic primary public education grew,
but secondary education leveled off from I88o to 1919. Catholic
12 "Sermon pour un pelerinage locale. A N.-D. de Lourdes: Lourdes et la foi," L'Ami
du clergeparoissial[Supplement a l'Ami du clerge],VIII (1896), 588. L'Ami du clerge,a weekly
bulletin founded in 1878, had a wide circulation and provides an excellent entrance into
the collective mentality of the parish clergy. For the struggle over education see Mona
Ozouf, L'Ecole, I'Egliseet la Republique,1871-1914 (Paris, 1963); R. D. Anderson, Education
in France, 1848-1870 (Oxford, 1975); A. Prost, Histoire de l'Enseignementen France, 1800-
1967 (Paris, 1968).
FRENCH CLERGY | 285

schools prospered during this period, particularly the secondary

schools. Their enrollment increased both absolutely and relative
to that of public schools. This growth has been aptly summa-
rized by Larkin with the observation, "By 1899, 43 percent of the
entire male secondary population was taught in schools run by
religious orders." This success may explain why, although the
greater the proportion of the population receiving secondary ed-
ucation the lower the level of ordinations (-.23), neither changes
(+.o5) nor rates of change (+.o9) in secondary education are
notably associated with changes in ordinations. The Institut cath-
olique was created in 1875 to protect believers from the secular
temptations and dangers presumed to exist at the Sorbonne. Nine-
teenth-century believers were persistently critical of France's
higher education, but the proportion of the population receiving
university degrees is moderately associated with the proportion
of the target population ordained (+.33). However, absolute
changes and rates of change in university degrees have little pos-
itive association with ordinations (+.12 and +.11 respectively).13
If secular education threatened belief and recruitment to the
clergy, so, it was feared, did universal military service. Larkin,
commenting on the shock to the community of believers, writes,
"Even more disruptive was military service, which became quasi-
universal following the legislation of I872 and I889."14 Yet,
although the proportion of the population that was in France's
army and navy is negatively associated with the proportion of
young men who were ordained (-.40), the changes and rates of
change in the trends are not associated (+.Io and +.12 respec-
tively). The proportion of the population in the army at any one
time is not an ideal measure of the impact of the military in
secularizing society, but it is notable that the proportion of the
population that was in service did not markedly increase in the
years noted by Larkin (see Fig. 3).
As the nineteenth century closed, the cumulative results of
France's economic growth over the century supported the Belle
Epoque atmosphere. Catholic believers however, more closely
identified with agrarian and rural France, found themselves to be

13 Larkin, Churchand State, 83, citing Robert Anderson, "The Conflict in Education,"
in Theodore Zeldin (ed.), Conflictsin FrenchSociety (London, 1970), 59. On the history of
the Institutcatholiquesee Alfred Baudrillart, L'Institutcatholique(Paris, I930).
14 Larkin, Churchand State, 20.
Fig. 3 Military Personnel per Ioo,ooo Population and Ordinations per ioo,ooo M

2500

2000 - I

ORDINATION RATE

o00T

1500-

'*'
,I 1
"^A'1!'-" H'I
\
1000\
MILITARY PARTICIPATION RATE

'
400 , I i I, , i t I I I
1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920
Year
FRENCH CLERGY 287

outsiders in this changing situation, a feeling compounded by the

Third Republic government's hostility to the church, which was
linked to it by the Concordat of I80I-I802. When the economy
began to take off in 1895, believers and their church were headed
for the crisis that began with the Dreyfus affair (1894) and ended
with the separation of church and state (I906). To believers in
France of le Republiqueradicale, all aspects of modernity seemed
to be coalescing to challenge belief and the existence of the church.
Yet, when relevant variables indicating the social changes that
were under way are correlated with the increase and decline in
ordinations, the correlations do not strongly support the fears
expressed by the faithful.
Correlations between the levels, changes, and rates of change
in ordination, industrial production, and real wages indicate that
conventional explanations linking the impact of developments in
these spheres with faltering mobilization of candidates for the
priesthood are problematic.15 Whatever the attractiveness of the
priesthood, it was not detrimentally affected by the increases in
the standard of living for wage earners-a development viewed
as part of the secular process threatening vocations.
The precise impact of structural changes in French society on
ordinations and the church's relations with French society are not
easily confirmed. But by the close of the nineteenth century, the
political estrangement of believers from the Third Republic (de-
spite Leo XIII's call in 1892 for ralliement) was leading to the
separation of church and state and the end of the state's respon-
sibilty for the support of the church. This traumatic moment has
understandably been taken as an obvious explanation for the de-
cline in vocations to the priesthood. This explanation was and has
been strengthened by the view that throughout the nineteenth
century, when the state's support of the culte lessened, so did the
numbers of those entering the clergy. Figure I, which includes
the number of clergy, number of ordinations, and government
expenditures for the church, indicates that in the period I880 to
I905 a serious decline in state support had little apparent effect on
the number of ordinations. And somewhat surprisingly, the dra-
matic growth in government expenditures for the church's needs
in the period 183I to I868 did not significantly increase ordina-

15 These results are presented in Appendices I and II.

288 E. T. GARGAN AND R. A. HANNEMAN

tions. After the separation of church and state and the end of all
support ordinations did drop precipitously. But the previous
trends in times of high and low support indicate that factors other
than financial ones were important in the I906 episode.
Although constraints and opportunities offered by the state's
frugality or generosity did not overtly affect the numbers of
ordinations, political crises did expose the vulnerability of the
church to the changes in the political order. A steep decline in
ordinations followed the July Revolution of 1830 (see Fig. I).
This occurred again from the eve of the Franco-Prussian war, the
collapse of the Second Empire, and the Paris Commune until the
republican synthesis of I879-I882. Similarly, there was a notice-
able drop in ordinations in the aftermath of the Dreyfus affair, a
decline which preceded and then accompanied the separation of
church and state. The consequences of the revolution of 1830 are
readily explained by the bitter opposition to the union of Throne
and Altar during the Restoration. This most detested relationship
was ended by the July days, but all subsequent governments of
the nineteenth century arranged a detente which in one form or
another accomplished what the Restoration arrangement did so
blatantly. This was merely political good sense whatever the
polemics, as long as the Concordat and Ordinance bound the two
institutions together. Yet every change in the form of government
was unsettling and clouded the future for those in the church who
had worked out the existing and now threatened arrangement.
Here perhaps, is the reason why the primacy of politics asserts
itself at such moments.16
I6 Gabriel Le Bras, commenting in 1963 on a discussion of the religious factors in France's
foreign policy, offered reservations about the common assumption that the separation of
Church and State was absolute in contemporary France. His remarks can equally serve to
illustrate the pragmatism constant in the history of this relationship. "One statement in
the fine presentation of my colleague surprised me: that France is in a regime of the
separation of the Churches and the State. This I learned for the first time here today. For
no bishop can be nominated in France without the approval of the government: the Pope
never acts without this approbation. There have been about twelve rejections in the last
twelve years and the Holy See has never persisted in tile nomination. The Holy See can-
not even change the circonscription of the dioceses. Is it possible that a congregation
would dare transfer its mother house to Rome without asking the consent of the govern-
ment? Is the ambassador at Rome in order never to discuss anything with the Holy Father
on national questions? We can ask ourselves if we are not in the best of concordat regimes,
while we have limited concordats, aide-memoires,or precise agreements with the govern-
ment on particular points. I do not betray any secret of my modest function in telling you
this and I could add more." Remond (ed.), Forces religieuseset attitudespolitiques dans la
Francecontemporaine(Paris, I965), 339.
FRENCH CLERGY | 289

The political trauma, however, was never the sole issue for
those concerned with the success and failure of the church and its
clergy. The conferences of the clergy at Reims and Bourges rec-
ognized this when they posed their problem in terms of their
relationship to French society. The analysis of this relationship
has suggested that the perceived vulnerability of the church to the
social changes is not supported by the actual impact of the alter-
ations in French economy and society.
The changes in nineteenth-century France characterized by
shifting urban and rural populations, the educational composition
of French society, industrial growth, military participation, the
birth rate, and the growth in real wealth are all largely uncorre-
lated with the rate of ordinations. The conventional wisdom at-
tributing the clergy's difficulties to the social changes identified
with modernization is not sustained by the test of correlation
analysis. This test confirms the need for restraint in attributing to
modernization the problems besetting France's clergy. This is
what the Abbe Louis Birot suspected when, in I900, he asserted
to his distressed fellow clergy, "We have not pardoned modern
society for creating itself without and even despite us." 17
The low levels of the correlations in this inquiry require
another explanation suited to the findings. The correlations illus-
trate a situation where, despite the anxiety of the clergy, the
changes in their society interpreted as damaging to the mainte-
nance of their numbers cannot easily be held accountable for the
clergy's condition. In fact, despite the increases in urbanization
and educational attainment, the experience of universal military
service, modest industrial growth and accompanying changes in
real wages, the government's granting or withdrawal of financial
support, and the decline in the birth rate, the clergy maintained
an essential stability in both numbers and recruitment. The fluc-
tuations that exist are not correlated with the rate of changes in
significant aspects of nineteenth-century French society. Yet the
anxiety of the clergy was an increasing one and their analysis has,
in the main, been historically accepted.
The disparity between the real situation of the clergy, that is
the stability of their numbers, and that perceived adds a dimension
to the stress that characterized the French clergy's entrance into
the twentieth century. The clergy's ability to recruit sufficient

17 Remond, Les deux Congres, 178.

290 E. T. GARGAN AND R. A. HANNEMAN

numbers of candidates for ordination may in part be due to the

fact that many of the actual social changes in nineteenth-century
France, such as urbanization, were modest and incremental in
character, less traumatic and dislocating than perceived. In his
fundamental essay, "Paradoxes of the French Political Commu-
nity," Hoffmann has suggested that, in the century after the French
Revolution and particularly from 1878 to 1934, France created a
"republican synthesis" made possible by a stalemate society. This
was a society in which drastic social changes were absent, creating
what he terms "the paradox of immobility." And he further
argues that this system made possible "pitched ideological battles"
that did not threaten the social balance. It is possible that this
"immobility" also enabled the clergy to debate so intensely their
past, present, and future at a time when immobility characterized
their actual situation.18
From this paradoxical viewpoint the data and analysis sup-
port the picture of a clergy statistically holding their own, but
constantly threatened by a reversal of their fortunes. Historians
of modern France are not uncomfortable with the idea that its
history is ruled by paradox. Perhaps this rule also governed the
situation of France's clergy. They sustained their numbers in
nineteenth-century France, but their anxiety about their situation
destroyed any confidence in this achievement; instead they con-
structed a pessimistic self-fullfilling prophecy that would be re-
alized in the twentieth century.

18 Stanley Hoffmann, "Paradoxes of the French Political Community," in Stanley Hoff-

mann, et al., In Search of France (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), 1-117. The paradoxes of
French historical experience form the organizing principle of Theodore Zeldin's brilliant
France1848-1945: Ambition, Love and Politics (Oxford, I973), I.
FRENCH CLERGY | 291

Appendix I: Correlations for I820 Through I9I0

ORDINATIONS AS A PROPORTION OF MALES AGES I5-241

LEVELS ABSOLUTE RATES OF

CHANGES CHANGE

Percent of the population -.09 +.22 +.25

in communes of 2,000
or more
Percent of the population -.28 +.10 + .09
in places of Io,ooo or
more
Percent of the population -.28 +.12 +.09
in places of oo,ooo0 or
more
Live births as a propor- +.50 +.11 +.09
tion of the population
Percent of the population -.23 +.05 +.09
in public lycees and
communal colleges
Percent of the population +.33 +.12 +.I I
receiving university
degrees
Percent of the population - .40 +.O10 +.12
in the military
Index of industrial -.33 + .09 +.09
production
Index of real wages - .49 -.04 -.03
Central government ex- - .34 +.14 +.09
penditure for religion

I Pearsonian zero-order product moment correlation coefficients between lev-

els of each variable, absolute changes in each, and rates of change in each. In
many cases data are not present for every year for both variables. These cases,
and the sources of data, are dealt with in Appendix III.

All correlations reported are between the ordinations measure at

time t plus six years and other measures at time t. This lag maximizes
the level correlations in the direction expected from conventional expla-
nations. Lags from zero to ten years were explored and there is sub-
stantial stability in the level correlations across the various lags. When
the number of ordinations declines considerably in any one year this
decision does not reflect a situation where large numbers of seminarians
leave on the eve of ordination. It is more probable and historically
accurate to presume that the decision to leave or not to enter seminaries
occurred some years prior to a specific ordination class.
Three types of correlations are reported. Where Y is the number of
292 E. T. GARGAN AND R. A. HANNEMAN

ordinations as a proportion of all males ages 15 to 24 and X is any of

the other indicators, and t is time, these types are defined as follows:
Levels are the correlations between Xt and Yt+6. Absolute changes are
correlations between Xt+1 - Xt and Yt+7 - Yt+6. Rate of change
correlations are between (Xt+l - X6)/Xt and (Yt+7 - Yt+6)/Yt+6. In some
cases data were not available for each year from 1820 through I950 and
the years for which this is the case are reported in Appendix III. The
absence of some data at particular points in time may result in some
unavoidable biased representations of the associations for time series.
The number of personnel in the military has been deliberately removed
from the calculation during the war years. The inclusion of these years
seriously distorts the variation in the military personnel measure and
tends to overrepresent wartime conditions in the calculation of the cor-
relation coefficient.
Where missing data have been replaced by linear interpolation, as
with the urbanization data, the variance of the distribution of absolute
changes may be understated slightly, working against the hypothesis
of a significant association between absolute changes in itself and
ordinations.
FRENCH CLERGY | 293

Appendix II: Correlations for I820 Through I950

ORDINATIONS AS A PROPORTION OF MALES AGES I 5-241

LEVELS ABSOLUTE RATES OF

CHANGES CHANGE

Percent of the population -.47 +.04 -.09

in communes of 2,000
or more
Percent of the population -.56 +.Io +.07
in places of io,ooo or
more
Percent of the population -55 +.o6 +.04
in places of 1oo,ooo or
more
Live births as a propor- +.60 -.06 +.01
tion of the population
Percent of the population -.43 +.oI -.o0
in public lycees and
communal colleges
Percent of the population +.30 -.oo -.09
receiving university
degrees
Percent of the population -.45 +.05 +.07
in the military
Index of industrial -.56 +.I4 +.04
production
Index of real wages -.5I +.03 +.o1
Central government ex- +.53 +.07 +.oi
penditure for religion
I See footnote I to AppendixI.

Appendix III: Sources for Time Series

The number of ordinations from I820 to 1950 is from Tableau XIV,
"Total annuel des ordinations (clerge diocesain) pour la France metro-
politaine," Boulard, Essor ou declin du clerg franfais? 465.
Two time series are taken from Brian R. Mitchell, European Histor-
ical Statistics 1750-1970 (New York, 1975). The number of births per
Io,ooo population is in ibid., o06, 121, and is drawn from various An-
nuaire statistique de la France volumes. Data are present for each year from
I820 to I950. The second series is the index of industrial production
presented in ibid., 355-358. Data are present for each year except 1914
through I918 and 1939 through I941. The data for 1919 and later years
have been rescaled so that all figures are expressed to I913 as the base
294 | E. T. GARGAN AND R. A. HANNEMAN

year. For the period 1820 to I913, Mitchell draws his data from F.
Crouzet, "Essai de construction d'un indice annuel de la production
industrielle franpaise au XIXe siecle," Annales, XXV (1970), 56-99.
From 1918 onward the data are taken from various volumes of the
Annuaire statistique de la France.
The proportion of the population living in communes of 2,000 or
more persons is taken from Tableau III, "Populations totale, urbaine,
rurale et agricole. Recensements de 1846 a 1962," in theAnnuaire statistique
de la France: Resume retrospecttf 1966 (Paris, 1966), 23. Linear interpola-
tions were used between the real data points of I846, I851, I856, i86i,
i866, 1873, I876, I88I, I886, I891, I90I, 1906, I9II, 192I, I926, 1931,
I936, 1946, and I954. No data prior to 1846 are used in the calculation
of the correlations.
The proportion of the population living in places of 1o,ooo or more
persons is taken from Arthur S. Banks, Cross-Polity Time-Series Data
(Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 68-69. Data are given for each year from
1820 to I913 and from I946 to I950. However, most data points are
linear interpolations or extrapolations from the data points of 1815,
I851, i86i, 1891, 1911, 1946, and 1954. As with other urbanization
data, this means of estimating data may introduce a slight bias against
finding correlations different from zero in the change or rate of change
calculations.
The proportion of the population living in places of Ioo,ooo or
more persons is from Tableau IV, "Distribution des communes et de
leur population suivant le nombre de leurs habitants. Recensements de
1836 a 1962," in the Annuaire statistique de la France 1966, 25. Linear
interpolation was used between the real data points of i856, I86i, i866,
1872, I901, I906, 1911, 1921, 1926, 1931, 1936, 1946, and 1954. No
data prior to 1856 are used in the calculation of correlations.
The proportion of the population in public secondary education is
taken from two sources. The years 1820 to 1830 inclusive are linear
interpolations between data given for the end-point years in Tableau VII,
"Enseignement secondaire public," in the Annuaire statistique de la France
1951 (Paris, 1951), 57-58. For the years 1831 through I880 data are
taken from Tableau 219, "Mouvement de eleves des lycees et colleges,"
in the Annuaire statistique de la France 1893 (Paris, 1893), 274. From i88i
to 1947 data are from the Annuaire statistique de la France 1951. Between
1820 and 1830 inclusive, only male students in the lycees and colleges
are counted, after I830 both males and females are included. Beginning
with i88i the "cours secondaires de jeunes filles" are included.
There were no data found on the number of university degrees
granted annually in France from 1820 through 1849. From I850 through
I899, data are taken from the Annuaire statistique de la France, XX, and
include academic and medical degrees. From I900 through 1939 data are
from A.S.F.1939, Tableau X, 30*. Incomplete data for 1907, 1914,
I916, 1917, and I9I8 are not used in the calculations. Data for I945
through 1950 were taken from the A.S.F. 1966.
FRENCH CLERGY | 295

Central government expenditure for the clergy was collected from

two sources. For the period 1820 through I880 data were taken from
Charles Nicolas, Les Budgetsde la Francedepuisle commencementdu XIXe
siecle (Le Havre, 1882). From 1881 through I9I0 data were taken from
"Execution de budget. Classement des depenses par grandes catagories,"
Annuaire statistique de la France 1966, Tableau III A, 490-491. After I9I0,
there were no separately budgeted central government expenditures for
the clergy. The figures used refer only to the central government and
do not include some rather small amounts of expenditure by Depart-
ments for the clergy.
The number of military personnel was drawn from Nicolas, Les
budgets de la France, 304-305, for the years 1822 through 1869 and 1872
through i880. The years of the Franco-Prussian war had available data,
but were excluded from the analysis as being atypical and particularly
misleading in the change and rate of change correlation calculations.
From i88i through I9Io, data were taken from the Annuairestatistique
de la France: Resume retrospectif 1926. Again the years of and around the
war were excluded, and the next data were for the period I921 through
1934, being drawn from the Annuaire statistique de la France 1939. The
years of World War II were excluded and the years 1947 through 1950
are from the Annuaire statistique de la France 1966.
The real wages measure is taken from E. H. Phelps Brown with
Margaret H. Brown, A Centuryof Pay: The Courseof Pay and Production
in France, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom,and the United States of
America, 1860-1960 (London, I968), 432-435. Series 3 of Appendix 3
was used with a slight modification so as to base all years on I890-
99 = Ioo. The resulting series is the index of "estimated average annual
wage-earnings in current francs," divided by an index of the cost of
living in Paris. Data are present for I860 through 1913, 1924 through
1938, and 1949 to 1950.