Assemblies of the French Clergy

Quinquennial representative meetings of the Clergy of France for the purpose of apportioning the financial burdens laid upon the Church by the kings of France, and incidentally for other ecclesiastical purposes?the Assemblies of the French Clergy (Assembl?es du Clerg? de France) had a financial origin, to which, for that matter, may be traced the inception and establishment of all deliberative assemblies. Long before their establishment, however, the State had undertaken to impose on the Church her share of the public expenses. The kings of France, powerful, needy, and at times unscrupulous men, could not behold side by side with the State, or within the State, a wealthy body of men, gradually extending their possessions throughout the kingdom, without being tempted to draw upon their coffers and, if need were, to pillage them. During the Middle Ages the Crusades were the occasions of frequent levies upon ecclesiastical possessions. The Dime Saladine (Saladin Tithe) was inaugurated when Philip August (1180-1223) united his forces with those of Richard of England to deliver Jerusalem from Saladin. At a later period the contributions of the clergy were increased, and during the reign of St. Louis (1235-70) we find record of thirteen subsidies within twenty-eight years. It has been estimated that the latter monarch received altogether from the clergy the equivalent of 400,000,000 francs, in the present currency ($80,000,000). The modern era brought no decrease in the taxes imposed on the Church. Francis I, for example (1515-48), made incessant calls on the ecclesiastical treasury. The religious wars stirred up by Protestantism furnished the French kings with pretexts for fresh demands upon the Church. In 1560, the clergy held a convention at Poissy to consider matters of Church-reform, and occasion made famous by the controversy (Colloque de Poissy) between the Catholic bishops and the Protestant ministers, in which the chief orators were the Cardinal of Lorraine and Thedore Beza. At this assembly the Clergy bound themselves by a contract made in the name of the whole clerical body to pay the king 1,600,000 livres ($300,000) annually for a period of six years; certain estates and taxes that had been pledged to the Hotel de ville of Paris for a (yearly) rente, or revenue, of 6300,000 livres ($120,000). In other words, the clergy bound themselves to redeem for the king in ten years a capital of 7,560,000 livres ($1,512,000). The French monarchs, instead of settling their debts, made fresh loans based on this rente, or revenue, paid by the Church, as if it were to be something permanent. After lengthy discussions, the clergy assembled at Melun (1579-80) consented to renew the contract for ten years, a measure destined to be repeated every decade until the French Revolution. The "assemblies of the Clergy" were now an established institution. In this way the Church of France obtained the right of freely meeting and of free speech just when the meetings of the States-General (Etats-G?n?raux) were to be discontinued, and the voice of the nation was to be hushed for a period of 200 years. +