Secular Republicans versus the Church

The Dreyfus Affair crystallized long-simmering church-state tensions. The Catholic hierarchy's anti-Dreyfusard stance confirmed republican suspicions about clerical reaction. The aftermath brought decisive secular victory: the 1905 law separating church and state.

This law revolutionized French society. Church property became state-owned. Clergy lost state salaries. Religious symbols disappeared from public buildings. Processions required permits. Monks and nuns faced expulsion from teaching orders.

The implementation proved traumatic. In Brittany, villagers barricaded churches against inventory-takers. Women particularly resisted—their devotion dismissed as superstition by secular republicans who couldn't understand faith's consolations for difficult lives. Several protesters died in confrontations with police.

Yet secularization also liberated. Civil marriage and divorce gave women alternatives to church-sanctioned unions. Secular hospitals provided medical care without religious judgment. Public schools offered education free from catechism. The Republic finally delivered on revolutionary promises of freedom from clerical control.

Aristide Briand, the law's architect, sought pacification through liberalism. Associations cultuelles (religious associations) could use church buildings freely. The Pope's rejection of this compromise created the "guerre des inventaires" (war of inventories) as officials catalogued church property amid violent resistance. Eventually, practical accommodations emerged, establishing the secular framework still governing France.