In Exitu Israel, An Historical Novel Volume 1 (of 2)

Excerpt

There is a side to the History of the French Revolution which is too generally overlooked—its ecclesiastical side. Under the ancien régime, the disadvantages of an Establishment produced a strong party of liberal Catholics prepared for a radical change in the relations between Church and State. It was this party which organized that remarkable Constitutional Church, at once Republican and Catholic, which sustained Religion through the Reign of Terror, and which Pope Pius VII and Napoleon I combined to overthrow.

My object in writing this story is to illustrate the currents of feeling in the State and Church of France in 1789, currents not altogether unlike those now circulating in our own. It was my good fortune, during a recent visit to Normandy, to collect materials for a history of a representative character of that eventful period,—one Thomas Lindet, parish priest of Bernay. In writing his story, I do not present him to the reader as a model. He had great faults; but one can forgive much on account of his enthusiastic love of justice, and faith in his cause.