François de Bonal

François de Bonal (b. May 9, 1734 at the castle of Bonal, near Agen; d. in Munich, September 5, 1800) was a Catholic Bishop and figure in the French Revolution.

Life

Bonal became a canon at Chalons-upon-the-Saone, then Vicar-General of the diocese of Agen and Director of the Carmelite nuns in France, before being made Bishop of Clermont in 1776. In the 1780s, he passed an unpopular decree prohibiting the priests of his diocese from preaching without his authorization.^[1]

On the eve of the French Revolution, as Bonal was warning his diocesans against the license of the press, showing the evil consequences to France.^[2] In his pastoral letters, he denounced "the mortal poison of an impious philosophy which is spreading among us."^[3]

He went as an episcopal delegate to the Estates-General of 1789 by the clergy of the bailiwick of Clermont, and subsequently to the National Assembly, where he led the religious coalition, arguing that "the principles of the French Constitution depend on religion as their eternal basis,"^[4] and that Christianity was aligned with, not opposed to, good citizenship.^[1] In 1790, he led most of the episcopal delegates in refusing to vote on the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, claiming that a lay assembly did not have the authority to make the ecclesiastical reforms involved.^[5] In addition to opposing various measures to reduce the power of the Catholic Church, Bonal also opposed granting citizenship to French Jews.^[6]

To Target, who spoke of the "God of peace," he replied that the God of peace was also the God of order and justice.^[2]

From his prison Louis XVI sent for his opinion as to whether he should receive Paschal Communion. In reply, he was sympathetic, but advised the monarch to abstain "for having sanctioned decrees destructive of religion". Bonal was alluding chiefly to the civil constitution of the clergy.^[2]

Having declined to take the loyalty oath to the constitution, Bonal was exiled from France in 1792.^[7] He passed to Flanders and later to Holland. Arrested at Texel by the French, he was tried at Breda, and condemned to deportation. He succeeded in making his escape and went to Altona, and spent the last years of his life in various cities of Germany. He was the author of a Testament spirituel.^[8]

References

1. Aston, Nigel (2000). Religion and Revolution in France, 1780-1804. CUA Press. pp. 29, 137.
2. Sollier, Joseph. "François de Bonal." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 2. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. 30 June 2023   This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
3. McPhee, Peter (2016). Liberty Or Death: The French Revolution. Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300219500.
4. Edelstein, Dan (2018). "Christian Human Rights in the French Revolution". Journal of the History of Ideas. 79 (3): 423. doi:10.1353/jhi.2018.0025. PMID 30245487. S2CID 52343766.
5. McPhee, Peter (2014). A Companion to the French Revolution. John Wiley & Sons. p. 127. It was on the grounds that a lay assembly had no such power that, on Bishop François de Bonal of Clermont's motion of 2 June, most of the episcopal delegates - some fifty-two in all - refused to debate much less vote on the measures that went into the making of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
6. Schechter, Ronald (2003). Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715-1815 (Studies on the History of Society and Culture). Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 158. François de Bonal, the bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, was similarly conservative, and in addition to opposing active citizenship for Jews, he opposed the nationalization of church lands and the laicization of church organizations.
7. de Lezay-Marnésia, Claude-François (2016). Hoffman, Benjamin (ed.). Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio. Penn State University Press. ISBN 9780271077871. François de Bonal (1734-1800) was consecrated bishop of Clermont in 1776. Elected deputy to the Estates-General by the seneschalsy of Clermont-Ferrand, he became a member of the ecclesiastical committee of the Constituent Assembly, opposed the Civil Constitution of the clergy, and went into exile in 1792.
8. "Bonal, Francois De", The Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature. (James Strong and John McClintock, eds.) Harper and Brothers; NY; 1880  This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.

  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "François de Bonal". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

Sources

• Feller, Biographie Universelle (Paris, 1866)
• De GreveCoeur, Journal d'Andrien Duquesnoy (Paris, 1804)