UC Irvine

The French Revolution was also a cultural revolution that redefined the relationship of the family to the state and precipitated unprecedented religious changes in French society. In the eighteenth century, philosophes attacked religious celibacy, which previously had been viewed as a higher spiritual calling. Defining celibacy as detrimental to society and unpatriotic, reformers instead promoted marriage as a productive institution that severed as the basis of civil society. Almost from the first moments of the Revolution, legislators--concerned that religious vows violated individual rights--considered the dissolution of monasticism. Although women religious hastened to petition the National Assembly in defense of their way of life, the political and religious schism caused by the oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy ended the sympathetic relationship that had developed between nuns and legislators. The dominant image of nuns transformed from victim to fanatic. The perceived counterrevolutionary sentiments of nuns justified the complete suppression of convents in 1792. Revolutionary propaganda and the loss of a secure social status encouraged former nuns to marry. Previously historians have believed that nuns' marriages were motivated by active religious persecution that took place during the dechristianization campaign of 1793- 1794. Reinvestigating the best source of information on married nuns--the Cardinal Caprara archives of petitioners who requested reconciliation with the Catholic Church under the Empire--reveals that nuns' marriages were not really motivated by Revolutionary dechristianization campaigns. Instead married nuns explained that they believed that they had the right to marry, that they fell in love, or that they had married to secure economic stability. Moreover, looking at complete departmental studies we find that nuns' marriages were not as rare or historically inconsequential as formerly thought. Historians have underestimated the number of married nuns and failed to recognized marriage as an important survival strategy, especially for the youngest nuns. In fact, many nuns internalized revolutionary discourse that promoted companionate marriage and individual rights. Their correspondence provides proof of a sexual revolution that overturned a previous sexual order, rejected celibacy, and more firmly entrenched a pro- nuptial culture in Revolutionary France.