Conclusion

The Conclusion reiterates the central argument of the book, that stories told by and about converts in the period after the French revolution were a crucial element in French culture. These narratives fascinated a broad audience drawn by a heightened consciousness of religious liberty and a deep anxiety about the exercise of this newly acquired right. The Conclusion ends with a comparison of two recent works which suggest the continuing resonance of stories about converts and conversions, Michel Houllebecq’s Submission, and Emmanuel Carrère’s memoir, The Kingdom.

Prodigal Sons and Daughters?

This chapter portrays several prominent Jewish converts to Catholicism, whose stories troubled the Jewish community of France in the first half of the nineteenth century. It focuses in particular on Alphonse and Théodore Ratisbonne, from a banking family in Strasbourg, who founded the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion, a women’s order dedicated to the conversion of Jews. The aggressive proselytism of the Congregation in the 1840s generated public controversy about religious freedom and conversion. Hostile exchanges in the press over the work of the Congregation led to heightened tension between Catholics and Jews and a paradoxical situation in which greater religious liberty was accompanied by a stricter enforcement of religious boundaries.

Philology and Freedom

This chapter draws on Ernest Renan’s memoirs and correspondence to examine his decision to abandon a promising clerical career as a young man in 1845. Renan’s religious choice involved personal struggle and family tension, as with the other converts in this book. This chapter emphasizes as well how the scrutiny of the Bible based on a rational and critical historical method eroded Renan’s faith. Although Renan was unable to resist the findings of philology and the voice of his conscience in rejecting Catholic dogma, he retained a deep respect for the priests who encouraged his intellectual development, and a nostalgia for the faith of his childhood.

Religious Wandering in French Romantic Culture

This chapter presents the “wandering Jew” as a symbol that captures the significance of religious choice in French culture during the Romantic era (1800-1848). It relates the surge of interest in the story of the “wandering Jew” to other major works of the period which focus on religious conversions. Novelists Chateaubriand and Eugène Sue, operatic composers Halévy and Meyerbeer, the essayist and poet Heinrich Heine, all created works in which religious conversion is at the center of tragic scenes that show individuals in conflict with themselves, their families, and their communities. These stories establish the cultural context within which the converts studied in this book lived and thought.

Mysticism, Despair, and Progress

This chapter traces the complicated religious journey of George Sand, from an unorthodox education guided by her free-thinking grandmother to a mystical Catholicism while an adolescent, and finally to a form of social Christianity as an adult. It links Sand’s evolving religious ideas to her tumultuous personal life and her radical positions on social institutions, in particular marriage and the status of women. Although she moved away from Catholicism Sand continued to believe in a benevolent but inscrutable God who oversaw a universe marked by spiritual and material progress. This chapter presents Sand’s life as exemplifying the religion of humanitarianism that emerged in the post-revolutionary era.

God and Liberty?

This chapter examines the religious choices of Félicité Lamennais, a key figure in the political and religious debates of the French Restoration. After flirting with the doctrines of Rousseau as an adolescent, Lamennais converted to ultramontane Catholicism, convinced that papal authority was the only reliable basis for social order. State repression of Catholicism in Poland, Belgium, Ireland, and France in 1830 led Lamennais to alter his views and embrace a marriage of “God and Liberty” in which Catholics would support the separation of church and state, and defend political and civil liberties, in particular the freedom of the press. Twice condemned by Pope Gregory XVI, Lamennais abandoned Catholicism and embraced the right of freedom of conscience that he had formerly condemned.

Introduction

The Introduction reviews the scholarly literature on religious liberty and conversion, and proposes that the stories of French converts in the aftermath of the French Revolution provide a unique perspective for studying these issues. It introduces the major characters in the book, figures whose dramatic religious choices drew a large audience. This public fascination with converts and conversions attests to the interest and anxiety that accompanied the establishment of religious liberty as a constitutional right. The Introduction closes with a summary of the chapters that follow.

Family, Nation, and Freedom

This chapter studies the salon of Sophie Swetchine, a Russian émigré and Catholic convert who moved to Paris in 1826, and whose home became a center of religious life that brought together Roman Catholics and Russian Orthodox believers. It focuses on the Russian diplomat Ivan Gagarin, who saw in the Catholicism of the Swetchine circle a path to personal salvation and the political and social regeneration of Russia. Gagarin participated in the debates between Slavophiles and Westernizers about the future of Russia, arguing that Catholicism represented a middle way between Russian autocracy and the corrosive individualism that threatened western Europe. Gagarin concluded his career by joining the Jesuit order, a freely made decision to accept the bonds of religious authority.

From Toleration to Liberty

This chapter offers a broad overview of the history of religious liberty in France from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Early in this period philosophers such as Montaigne, Bayle, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Constant moved from an understanding of religious liberty as a collective right designed to protect minority religious communities to an increased sensitivity to the right of individuals to make personal religious choices. The chapter situates Article Ten of the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789), which established religious liberty as a fundamental right, within this historical context. It concludes with an examination of the political theory and constitutional structures of Restoration France that created the space for individuals to realize the right announced in Article Ten.