ended the hostility directed at the Catholic Church in 1801 by signing a concordat with the pope.
According to the concordat, which legally lasted until 1905, the state paid clergy salaries and
nominated bishops. In return, the Church was granted control over education. Yet, the concordat
did not end the antagonistic struggle between the republicans
and the monarchists. At the end
of the 19
th
century, the fragmentation was so deep that the controversy turned in to the “war of
One France was the inheritor of the values of the secular First Republic and the
other was tied to the Ancien Regime based on the marriage of the Catholic Church and the
monarchy. With the foundation of the Third Republic in 1875, the anti-clerical republicans
started a final attack against the monarchists, particularly the clergy. The republican minister of
education, Jules Ferry, led the secularization of education by making schools “gratuite, laïque et
obligatoire (free of charge, secular, and obligatory).” In the late 19
th
and early 20
th
century,
assertive secularist state policies resulted in the closure of thousands of Catholic schools and
expulsion of 30,000 members of the clergy from France.
The law of 1905 consolidated the
general separation of church and state. The main power resource of the republicans in that
victory over the monarchists was their majority in the elected parliament.
voted by a 341 v. 233 votes in the Assembly and 181 v. 102 votes in the Senate. In addition to
the polarization of the republican and monarchists parliamentarians, public debates also showed
the conflictual character of the foundation of secularism in France: “The clergy, the catholic
press, and Pope Pius X condemned the law [of separation].”
The success of the republicans,
however, has “continued to be characterized by setbacks, compromises, and periodically
renewed challenges”
from the monarchists and their ideological descendents.
86
For French republicanism, see Mathy 2000and Safran 2003.
87
Poulat 1987; Ducomte 2001, esp. 3. The secular movement in France included different groups, such as the
Republican Party, the Ligue of Education, Free Thinkers, Free-Masons, and Jews. Wieviorka 1995, 85.
88
Chanet 2004, 63; Baubérot 2004c, 22; Baubérot 2004a.
89
Gould 1999.
90
Winock 2004.
91
Gould 1999, 21.
29
Convention