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The Civil Constitution of the Clergy

1790 · Paris (Paris, France)

In July 1790 the French National Assembly enacts the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, reorganizing the French church under the state: dioceses redrawn to match the departments, bishops and priests elected, and clergy salaried by the nation. Pius VI condemns it, the required oath splits the French clergy into jurors and refractories, and the schism shapes French Catholicism for a decade.

Tagged: Catholic

The Event

Date
1790 (exact)
Era
Revolution and the Nineteenth Century; Standard periodization of Catholic history
Location
Paris; today Paris, France
Traditions
Catholicism
Streams
Catholic
Key figures
Pius VI
Key texts
Civil Constitution of the Clergy

Connections

Illustration for Clement XIV suppresses the Jesuits History Event Clement XIV suppresses the Jesuits 1773 follows the revolutionary state's wider settlement with the old church order

Primary Sources

  • Civil Constitution of the Clergy, National Constituent Assembly, 1790.

Secondary Sources

  • Chadwick, Owen. A History of the Popes, 1830-1914. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.
  • Duffy, Eamon. Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
  • Hastings, Adrian, ed. A World History of Christianity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999.
  • MacCulloch, Diarmaid. A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. London: Penguin, 2009.
  • O'Malley, John W. Trent: What Happened at the Council. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

Provenance: HIST-1336; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.

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