Bishop Colbert de Castlehill in the Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques

Julien Béchard has researched the articles devoted to the episcopacy of Mgr Colbert de Castlhill by Les Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques, the Jansenist weekly published from 1728 to 1803. The Jansenists had many grievances against the French episcopate in the eighteenth century. They accused the first order of exercising despotic power over the second-order clergy and the lay faithful as a whole. The bishops were neglecting their role as defenders of the faith, allowing incredulity to grow throughout the kingdom, and making pacts with the Church's enemies, the Philosophers. Although Gallican, the episcopate was in continual conflict with the Jansenists and parliamentarians in order to defend the Church's interests, notably the independence of its jurisdiction. The first opposition newspaper, Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques, relayed this pejorative view of the episcopate to a wide audience, showing the evils of the Unigenitus bull for the Church and exposing the persecution Jansenists suffered at the hands of ecclesiastical authority. The episcopacy of Mgr Colbert de Castlehill did not escape the harsh analysis of the Jansenists. For Les Nouvelles, the episcopacy of the bishop of Rodez was merely a continuation of that of Mgr Loménie de Brienne, archbishop of Toulouse from 1763 to 1788, one of the bishops most criticized by the newspaper. Both were accused of despotism and complacency towards the doctrine of the Philosophes. This paper focuses on the Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques’ analysis of the person and episcopacy of Colbert de Castlehill, in two sheets dating from 1784 to 1789.