![]() The French Revolution, like the religious revolutions of the sixteenth century (i.e. Such events led Tocqueville to pay closer attention to the “political” nature of the revolutionary movement, but his allusions to the revolution’s seemingly religious methods reflect the broader religious effects of the revolution itself. Surely, the revolution’s affronts to the Catholic Church, the forced marriages of priests and nuns, the resulting renegade refractory priesthood, the counter-revolutionary insurrections like those in the Vendée, and the dechristianization efforts best embodied by the secularization of the French republican calendar or the effacement of the Notre Dame of Paris, to name just a few, emphasize what especially counter-revolutionary figures often construed as the anti-religious character of the French Revolution. Was the French Revolution a religious “revolution”? Such a question is often dismissed and in many ways, rightfully so. Alexis de Tocqueville, L’Ancien régime et la Révolution, 1856. The former not only spread beyond the limits of France, but, like religious revolutions, spread by preaching and propaganda. Some further points of resemblance between the two may be noticed. The French Revolution, though political, assumed the guise and tactics of a religious revolution. ![]()
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