EUGENE AND THE HISTORY OF FRANCE: THE END OF NAPOLEON’S ANTI-RELIGIOUS POLICIES

On 4 April 1814, Napoleon was forced to abdicate and the Bourbon monarch was restored under King Louis XVIII. The historian and biographer, Jean Leflon describes the reaction to the fall of Napoleon in France and especially in Provence:

“The fury of the people against Napoleon and his faithful followers was, nonetheless, a fiery one; it even surpassed in intensity the rapture which was then befuddling minds enthused by the king’s return. Impassioned demonstrations in behalf of the legitimate dynasty were added to and intensified by others that were sharply aggressive toward the Usurper and his partisans. Frenzied mobs overturned statues of the Emperor, smashed imperial emblems on the facades of public monuments, harried anyone known to be loyal to his cause and forced generals and military and civil officials to acclaim the Bourbons. Napoleon, himself, passing through Provence on his flight to the island of Elba, ran the greatest risk.

… Feeling she had been victimized by the Corsican’s megalomania, Provence blamed him for all these ills and turned upon him, letting loose an exasperation which had been intensifying for years; the Bourbons, on the other hand, making capital of the people’s hopes that the Bourbon dynasty would end all these miseries and restore peace and prosperity, assumed the role of deliverers.  (Leflon II, pages 3-4)

This was also the time when Eugene was recovering from his near-death experience from typhus. Leflon continues:

Eugene de Mazenod’s personal reactions in 1814 and 1815, like those of his fellow-Provencals, were not all of equal intensity; however, they were all equally inspired by a fiery hostility to the Napoleonic regime. The same inequality would persist in successive reactions while his deep-rooted feelings would continue to spring from that same hostility. It should be clearly under stood, nevertheless, that from the very outset, if one is to judge from existing documents, the young priest stayed clear of all political arenas and remained on priestly terrain… Undoubtedly, he was not indifferent to the claims of Provence and of his royalist friends…  but he left these purely temporal debates to others and, at that time of general reformation, devoted all his efforts to a work of spiritual regeneration which Napoleon’s anti-religious policies made imperative and which his downfall now made possible.    (Leflon II , p. 5 – 6)

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1 Response to EUGENE AND THE HISTORY OF FRANCE: THE END OF NAPOLEON’S ANTI-RELIGIOUS POLICIES

  1. Eleanor Rabnett, Oblate Associate says:

    even reading Leflon I recognize the pattern of Eugene’s Oblation during these times.

    As fiery and passionate as Eugene was, his having to dedicate his limited strength to recovering from the typhus during all of this upheaval. A blessing in disguise perhaps.

    I think of the utter violence of the Revolution, the welcome that Napoleon first received and the violence (of a different sort) with his going to Elba. And then the Bourbons, perhaps fueling the fire so to speak of the French people. And I look at history and the many revolutions that have taken place among peoples and nations, many of them violent but some of them quiet.

    Phrases such as ‘our hope is in God’ and ‘trust in God’ which have been said across the centuries come to mind. In 1813 Eugene had preached the now famous Lenten Homily at the Church of the Madeleine. Seeing his flock as looking through the eyes of Jesus on the Cross. Then getting ill and having to recover (his youth group being very much a part of that recovery). He was able to focus more deeply on God and as he recovered to focus on how he felt called to continue to work with the poorest and most abandoned. But he would not do it alone. I think of the letter that he was to write to Tempier; “read this letter at the foot of your crucifix, disposed to hear only God…” – this was to be his focus.

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