The Pastoral Correspondence of Mgr Seignelay Colbert (1789–1810)

Marie-Paule Biron examines Colbert's correspondence with his priests in Rouergue, revealing his reactions to the Revolution. Mgr Colbert, a liberal prelate, was elected as a deputy for the clergy to the General Estates and left Rodez in March 1789. Initially enthusiastic about the early reforms, his optimism turned to doubt when the Constituante's religious reforms disrupted the balance between society and the Church. As a Gallican, Colbert had navigated the balance of power between royalty and the Pope but realised a separation of powers was needed to oppose the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. With the Concordat, Mgr Colbert found himself faced with two protagonists who undermined his principle of the separation of powers. While he sought to fight openly against Bonaparte, who wanted to tame the Church through the Concordat, he wanted, through dialogue and with the support of his Gallican confreres in exile in London, to make the Pope recognise that, under pressure from temporal power, he had exercised a power not granted to him by the Church to dismiss the bishops. Faced with his failure in the face of Bonaparte and the Pope's refusal to listen to him, Mgr Seignelay fell back on the “Little Church”, whose ideals he did not necessarily share.