The History of the Clergy during the French Revolution
An account of what befell the French clergy in the first years of the Revolution, published in exile by a French priest from reports sent to him by other refugee clergy. It includes a detailed narrative of the killing of priests in Paris in September 1792.
Barruel dedicated the book to the English nation, which had taken in the exiled clergy. He says in the dedication that he publishes a collection of accounts communicated to him by his dispersed brethren, and that he was careful, for fear of exaggeration, in what he admitted. The third part tells of the arrest of priests who had refused the oath, their confinement in the church of the Carmelites in Paris and their deaths on 2 September 1792.
The book appeared within two years of the events and rests on survivors’ reports, but it is the work of a committed opponent of the Revolution, written to honour the victims and to move its English readers. It is cited in the French Revolution and the Church for the event it describes; it gives the victims’ side only.
Cited in
- 1790 to 1801, firm date