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Sacred Liberty examines revolutionary France's efforts to force its 55,000 nuns from the religious life. It looks at why the National Assembly wanted to suppress France's convents and how successful it was in doing this. In this powerful new study, Gemma Betros confronts one of the enduring problems of the Revolution: the breakdown of relations between church and state and its implications for the survival of each.
Focusing on the city of Paris, this book traces the suppression of convents from the eve of the Revolution in 1789 until the end of Napoleonic rule in 1815. Bringing together a range of primary source material, including police reports, letters and trial records, it analyses the motives of the state while uncovering the startlingly diverse thoughts and actions of the women affected. Sacred Liberty reveals the complex ways in which the French Revolution used female religious communities in its battle against the Catholic Church and shows how, with the reinstatement of convents under Napoleon, their place in the modern state was reshaped in a way that is still visible today. It is a text of great importance to anyone interested in the French Revolution, the history of women or the modern history of religion in Europe.