FRANCE. – Region and State of Western Europe, the only one to enjoy the benefit of a triple maritime façade (Mediterranean, Atlantic, North Sea) and of the possession of the shortest and most convenient land routes between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic (Aquitaine Gate) and between Central and Western Europe (Burgundy Gate).
SUMMARY:
I. Geography
II. Civil and ecclesiastical history
III. Literature
IV. Art
V. Current relations between Church and State
VI. School system.I. GEOGRAPHY
Situated in the most populous part of the continent, it occupies a central position there, with a coastline (1,320 km.) longer than its land frontier (2,300 km.) and a more Atlantic (1,385 km. of coast) than Mediterranean character. By its area (551,696 sq. km. after territorial acquisitions made at Italy’s expense along the Alpine frontier) it is the largest State in Europe (excluding the U.S.S.R.), but it is surpassed (apart from the U.S.S.R.) by Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy in population and by many other States in population density. The territory over which it exercises sovereignty is, by extent, the third in the world: 12.4 million sq. km. with 115 million inhabitants.
A line drawn from Bayonne to Metz divides in FRANCE the domain of the lowlands (under 200 m.) from that of the highlands (only 1/10 of the total, however, exceeding 500 m.). To the N. and N.W. stretch plains (Paris Basin, Aquitaine Basin), plateaus, hills, and reliefs of ancient origin and slight elevation (Armorican Massif, Ardennes); to the S. and S.E. considerable mountain masses of recent emergence (Alps, Pyrenees, Jura), which FRANCE shares with neighbouring countries (Italy, Spain, Switzerland). The two domains are joined in the centre of the country by the broad Massif Central (1/7 of the territory), which in a certain way partakes of the characteristics peculiar to both types of relief. The result, on the whole, is a fairly varied morphology, corresponding to an equal richness of landscape, natural resources and economic potential, and to a harmonious arrangement of basins and passes, at all times favourable to exchanges.
The climate varies according to the regions, reflecting oceanic influences (Brittany, Aquitaine, Flanders: uniform, mild, humid), Mediterranean influences (Provence, Languedoc: mild winters, hot and dry summers, rainy autumns) and continental influences (central plateau and E. regions: strong seasonal contrasts, snowy winters and summer rains), but everywhere it is temperate with precipitation usually not less than 600 mm. per year and well distributed throughout the year.
According to the recent Constitution of 24 December 1946, the French Republic, which forms part of the French Union together with the associated States (Protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia, Republic of Vietnam), comprises, in addition to metropolitan territory, 4 overseas departments (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Réunion, Guiana) and 8 overseas territories (A.O.F., A.E.F., Madagascar and Comoros, Somaliland, French Establishments in India, New Caledonia, French Establishments in Oceania, St Pierre and Miquelon); in all, 11.1 million sq. km. with 75–80 million inhabitants (Togo and Cameroon are under trusteeship, and the New Hebrides are in condominium). The French Union is presided over by the President of the Republic; its expression is an Assembly composed half of representatives of metropolitan FRANCE. The French Republic, for its part, exercises its sovereignty through a bicameral Parliament (National Assembly of 619 deputies, and Council of the Republic of 250–320 councillors), which is responsible for the choice of the President, who remains in office for no more than 7 years. The French Republic is defined in the new Constitution as indivisible, secular, democratic and social. Administratively, metropolitan territory is divided into 37,989 communes, grouped into 3,028 cantons, 31 of which are irregular, and 90 departments.
The French population is distinguished in Europe by its stability. The decrease of 1.4 million inhabitants recorded in the 1946 census compared with that of 1936 corresponds to the loss of human life suffered in the Second World War. Since 1946 there has been some demographic recovery. By 1 January 1949 it may be estimated that FRANCE had 41 million inhabitants (density: 74 per sq. km.), of whom 1.7 million were foreigners (including 650,000 Italians). This population is distributed with relative uniformity. There are numerous urban centres, 23 of which have more than 100,000 inhabitants; but even these, for the most part, show more or less considerable losses of population compared with 1936.
FRANCE is still essentially an agricultural country: almost half of its inhabitants are engaged in agriculture, many of them smallholders. There are various crops, but among these cereals predominate (plains of the N., W. and Aquitaine), among which wheat (33 million quintals in 1947; 87 in 1913) and oats (30 and 52 million quintals respectively) are dominant, as well as potatoes (60 and 130 million quintals at the same dates); to these have been added, in the present century, various industrial crops (sugar beet, tobacco, hops, etc.), all, however, insufficient for domestic consumption. FRANCE is, on the other hand, an exporting country for its wine, which enables it to claim a recognized world leadership (44 million hl. in 1947; 63 on average in 1934–38). Livestock farming is also flourishing, in relation to the considerable production of hay and forage: FRANCE ranks first in Europe (excluding the U.S.S.R.) in the number of cattle (15 million head) and horses (2.4 million), second for pigs (after Germany), third for sheep, etc. Consequently, the income from animal products (butter, cheese, eggs) is considerable. Fishing is also well developed, especially in the N.W. sector (Brittany).
In contrast to the exceptional wealth of its iron ore reserves (Lorraine; FRANCE extracts about 1/4 of the world’s total of these minerals) stands the relative poverty which FRANCE suffers in terms of fossil fuels (Flanders, Cévennes; barely 5% of the world total). FRANCE does not even produce 2/3 (45 million tons in 1947) of the coal it consumes; moreover, it is almost entirely lacking in petroleum (51,000 tons in 1948), while it can count on substantial hydroelectric reserves (8 million HP, of which 6 are installed). Despite these imbalances, large-scale industry is represented in FRANCE in all its branches, with textiles (N. and E. of FRANCE) to the fore, where, as in other fields (furniture, goldsmithing, perfumery, glassmaking, etc.), the tendency to prefer quality, taste and elegance is most pronounced. After the wartime interlude, FRANCE has now resumed, and in some cases surpassed (artificial textiles), the positions of 1938. The main industrial districts are located in Flanders (machinery, textiles, glassworks, sugar refineries, waste products), around Paris (luxury goods, publishing), and near the main ports, as well as near Lyon (hotels) and St-Étienne.
Internal communications benefit from the favorable conditions provided by the terrain and the arrangement of the major river basins, radiating in a fan shape from the Massif Central. France has approximately 640,000 km of roads, 60,000 km of waterways, and 62,500 km of railways, of which 20,000 are local and 3,500 are electrified. A characteristic feature is the convergence of all these transport routes toward Paris. As for foreign trade, which is predominantly maritime, it is facilitated by the well-equipped major ports (Marseille, Rouen, Bordeaux, Le Havre, Cherbourg, Dunkirk) and by a merchant fleet numbering over 500 vessels (including 50 ocean liners) with a total tonnage of 2.1 million tons.
Trade with foreign countries consists mainly of raw materials and foodstuffs in imports, and agricultural products and high-quality manufactured goods in exports. Since 1944, the trade balance has consistently been in deficit (223.4 billion francs in 1948).
| Flanders (Nord) | 5,774 | 2,022,167 |
| Artois (Pas-de-Calais) | 6,752 | 1,170,467 |
| Picardy (Somme) | 6,227 | 467,479 |
| Brittany (Finistère, Côtes-du-Nord, Morbihan, Ille-et-Vilaine, Loire-Inférieure) | 35,312 | 3,074,683 |
| Normandy (Manche, Calvados, Orne, Eure, Seine-Inférieure) | 30,728 | 2,332,228 |
| Maine (Mayenne, Sarthe) | 11,457 | 639,867 |
| Anjou (Maine-et-Loire) | 7,218 | 477,690 |
| Orléans (Eure-et-Loir, Loire-et-Cher, Loiret) | 19,171 | 827,463 |
| Île-de-France (Oise, Aisne, Seine-et-Oise, Seine-et-Marne) | 25,385 | 7,671,578 |
| Seine-et-Marne, Marne, Aube, Haute-Marne | 26,741 | 1,126,904 |
| Loire (Meuse, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Vosges) | 23,653 | 1,866,147 |
| Alsace (Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin, Belfort) | 8,902 | 1,318,838 |
| Poitou (Vendée, Deux-Sèvres, Vienne) | 20,114 | 1,004,872 |
| Touraine (Indre-et-Loire) | 6,158 | 343,276 |
| Bourbonnais (Allier) | 7,382 | 368,778 |
| Burgundy (Yonne, Côte d’Or, Saône-et-Loire, Ain) | 30,701 | 1,448,457 |
| Franche-Comté (Haute-Saône, Jura, Doubs) | 15,690 | 738,438 |
| Aunis and Sologne (Charente-Inférieure) | 7,232 | 419,021 |
| Angoumois (Charente) | 5,072 | 309,279 |
| Limousin (Haute-Vienne, Corrèze) | 11,443 | 569,359 |
| Marche (Creuse) | 5,606 | 321,844 |
| Auvergne (Puy-de-Dôme, Cantal) | 13,705 | 676,991 |
| Lyonnais (Loire, Rhône) | 7,658 | 1,678,605 |
| Guyenne and Gascony (Gironde, Dordogne, Lot, Aveyron, Lot-et-Garonne, Tarn-et-Garonne) | 63,252 | 2,764,605 |
| Hautes-Pyrénées (Haute-Garonne and Bas-Pyrénées) | 7,712 | 413,411 |
| County of Foix (Ariège) | 4,903 | 155,134 |
| Roussillon (Pyrénées-Orientales) | 4,145 | 233,347 |
| Languedoc (Haute-Garonne, Aude, Tarn, Hérault, Haute-Loire, Lozère, Ardèche, Gard) | 46,331 | 2,553,424 |
| Savoy (Haute-Savoie, Savoie) | 10,786 | 498,971 |
| Dauphiné (Isère, Drôme, Haute-Alpes) | 20,441 | 928,233 |
| Comtat Venaissin (Vaucluse) | 3,578 | 245,508 |
| Provence (Basses-Alpes, Bouches-du-Rhône, Var) | 18,268 | 1,708,554 |
| County of Nice (Alpes-Maritimes) | 3,736 | 513,714 |
| Corsica (Sardinia) | 8,722 | 322,854 |
| 550,986 | 41,905,968 |
The province (and its population in thousands in 1946)
| Province | Population (in thousands in 1946) |
| Lille (189) | 178 |
| Arras (33) | 33 |
| Amiens (85) | 85 |
| Lille (189) | 178 |
| Arras (33) | 33 |
| Amiens (85) | 85 |
They struggle to hold back centrifugal forces, to withstand external assaults, and even less to consolidate the structure. Due to a lack of finances, they squander imperial assets to reward military services; no other bond, save the fragile one of personal loyalty, still ties their servants to the sovereign; the outlines of vassalage begin to take shape. The use of divisions persists, and even during his reign, Louis the Pious (814–840) is powerless or a victim of the disputes among his sons over his inheritance. The Empire collapses; Europe emerges. France withdraws into itself, now mutilated. The Oath of Strasbourg (842), bilingual, distinguishes the Romance dialect from the Germanic one; the Treaty of Verdun (843) places, with little discord, Lotharingia (the kingdom of Lothar) between the two Frances of the East and West: that of Louis the German and that of Charles the Bald. Only the latter will retain the name. Regionalism appears in Aquitaine. The crown makes a final effort when Charles the Bald reforms imperial unity (Christmas 876); but it is the last gesture: his successor, Charles the Fat, discredits himself by abandoning Burgundy to the Normans.
Three waves brought the Normans to France after the death of Charlemagne. Until 886, their ships ascended rivers in the country for raids that were as devastating as they were fleeting. From 886 to 911, their attacks grew in scope; they supported the siege of Paris in 888. In 911, Charles the Simple ceded to them the territory that would become the province of Normandy. At the same time, in the tenth century, the Saracens ravaged the southern coasts, while the Hungarians pillaged the east and center of the kingdom. Faced with this invasion, the monarchical power proved powerless; only local defense was effective. The counts, in fact hereditary, became independent; they reserved for themselves the income from taxes because it was their duty to maintain the castles and lead their men into battle. Great fiefs were formed (the duchies of Normandy and Burgundy, the counties of Flanders, Auvergne, Poitiers, Toulouse, and Barcelona). Authority dissolved, and the monarchy was now nothing more than a dignity contested among the great during the tenth century.
Hugh Capet had already exercised the regency for King Lothair and King Louis V, and two of his ancestors had occupied the throne when, in 987, he was elected king. A weak king surrounded by powerful vassals, the first four Capetians (Hugh, Robert the Pious, Henry I, and Philip I) at least managed to increase their domains and secure the crown for their descendants by leveraging their royal rights and the support of the Church, which had consecrated them.
In the twelfth century, with two active kings, Louis VI the Fat (1108–1137) and Louis VII the Younger (1137–1180), the monarchy awakened. The name of king became synonymous with peace. Louis VII welcomed adventurous lords to his lands, the people trusted in his justice, and under his protection, the communes freed themselves from their lords. However, the struggle against the great feudal lords became more difficult when Henry II Plantagenet, king of England, added to his domains of Maine and Anjou all of Aquitaine, brought to him as a dowry by Eleanor, his wife, whose previous marriage to Louis VII had been annulled.
The apogee of the monarchy came under the reigns of Philip II Augustus (1180–1223), Saint Louis (1226–1270), and Philip IV the Fair (1285–1314). In a kingdom enlarged by Artois, Picardy, and other regions confiscated from John Lackland (Normandy, Poitou, Saintonge), whose strength was demonstrated at the Battle of Bouvines (27 July 1214), the manly equity of Saint Louis brought tranquility and order. War gave way to peaceful works: land and crafts nourished a more numerous people, the fairs of Champagne attracted foreigners, and people once again dared to forget the gold coinage of Charlemagne. The French language, the University of Paris, and Gothic art shone throughout Christendom. The administration of the *baillis* and the justice of the royal investigators of the Parlement were perfected in the time of Philip the Fair, while the king extended his influence over Lyon, Champagne, and Flanders.
But greater duties required new resources. Recourse was had to expedients (currency manipulation, confiscations of the property of the Templars, Jews, and Lombards). The monarchy, now national, dragged the *piononone* (early assemblies of the Estates) into the struggle undertaken by legists, steeped in Roman law, to circumscribe the power of Pope Boniface VIII and the civil power.
With the death of Philip the Fair, fortune abandoned the Capetians. In fourteen years (1314–1328), amid feudal agitation, the three sons of the king (Louis X the Quarrelsome, Philip V the Tall, and Charles IV the Fair) failed to produce a male heir, a failure that would never be reversed. The throne could not pass through the female line, and thus Charles the Bad, future king of Navarre, and King Edward III of England were set aside in favor of a minor, Philip of Valois, since he was “native to the kingdom.” From this arose the Hundred Years’ War. Calamities accumulated. The unpreparedness of Philip VI and the foolhardy valor of John II the Good were paid for with the disasters of Crécy (1346), Calais (1347), and Poitiers (1356); the king of France died a prisoner in London. The territories abandoned in the Peace of Brétigny (1360) were poorly compensated by the acquisition of Montpellier and the Dauphiné. Economic and social disaster brought other scourges: famine, currency devaluation, high prices, plague, depopulation, and their train of disorders (*jacqueries*), and the bourgeoisie, led by Étienne Marcel, attempted through the Estates General to control royal finances.
Charles V the Wise (1364–1380) succeeded in ending the pillaging of the countryside and restoring authority, and with the help of Bertrand du Guesclin, he recovered part of the lost territories from the English. The reign of his son, Charles VI (1380–1422), began well, but he went mad, and the fifteenth century closed amid disorder; indeed, to the rivalries of the princes was added the confusion of the Great Schism. The future of France was then uncertain.
2. Ecclesiastical history
Medieval France owed almost all its features to the Church, and in return the Church found in its “eldest daughter” an elect land. After baptizing France at Reims in the person of Clovis, the Church educated Frankish society. The cathedral schools and monasteries preserved from the disaster of Merovingian ignorance what still remained of ancient letters and arts. The unbridled laity’s immorality was counterbalanced by the great austerity of Saint Columban and his disciples. Brutality was checked by the right of asylum and the immunity of Church lands, and restrained by the vigorous reforms of bishops (Gregory of Tours, Venantius Fortunatus). The monarchy bowed before them; it endowed great abbeys (Saint-Denis, Saint-Wandrille, Jumièges, Saint-Riquier, Sainte-Croix-de-Poitiers). In a reciprocal exchange of services, it was from the civil power, represented by the heirs of Charlemagne, that Saint Boniface received the necessary support for the reform of a clergy too attached to secular life and for the expansion of the faith in Germany. The double consecration of Pepin the Short by Boniface and the Pope gave the French monarchy a religious character.
Just as the Church had watched over the birth and early education of the French nation, so too, united with the Carolingian state, it gave the new empire its raison d’être. The Catholic creed founded the unity of the *populus christianus*; Latin expressed it; bishops were the auxiliaries of the counts; conquests aimed at the Crusade; the “Carolingian Renaissance” was the work of the clergy; and finally, legend would canonize a “new Constantine.” His son Louis, educated by bishops, would be “the Pious”; he humbled his power before the Pope, and the abbots (Wala) governed the country. In the following generations, the episcopate still supported the deficiencies of the monarchy: Archbishop Adalbero of Reims, for example, was a key figure.
Similar situations called for similar solutions. The baptism of Rollo transformed the Normans from barbarians into members of an orderly people. The sacring transferred legitimacy to the “third race” of the kings of France, the Capetians. The consecration at Reims took on the aspect of a sacrament. The king healed scrofula and swore to defend the Church; the Church inscribed his name in the Canon of the Mass. He reigned “by the grace of God.” For three centuries, Church and monarchy were united; for until Philip the Fair, they were divided by no long or deep conflict. In a general climate of concord, the Church found in France a fertile center for its perpetual renewal.
As with the earlier Merovingian bishops, it is above all as monks that, from the 10th century onward, the bishops defend Christian virtues and faith against the contamination of the age. Thus arises Cluny, founded in 910, whose daughter houses everywhere oppose the spirit of religion and peace to the slow materialism of the early feudal age. The end of the first millennium sees France clothed in a “white habit of new churches.” Through France, the Cluniac sanctuaries (Tours, Vézelay, Saint-Gilles, Toulouse) line the pilgrimage roads. Burgundy and Aquitaine are the privileged lands of Cluniac influence. There the institutions of peace germinate (the Peace and Truce of God, peace associations), while knights “ordained” according to quasi-sacramental rites make it a point of honor to protect the weak. The abbeys add to the benefit of peace that of daily bread, assured by the labor of their own fields to a multiplied population. Then the people place their expansive strength and the barons their honor at the service of the Faith; the Crusade, conceived in Burgundy and the Midi in the 11th century, makes its first campaign in Spain, and is organized under the leadership of a French pope, Urban II, at the Council of Clermont (1095). From then on, the majority of the forces of every Crusade come from France, and in the East all Westerners are called “Franks.”
The monastic order, in the 10th and 11th centuries, had been less corrupted than the secular clergy by wealth and the relaxation of morals. It is from a French-speaking land, Lorraine, with Bruno of Toul (Leo IX), and from Cluny, where the Italian Hildebrand (Gregory VII) had been formed, that the decisive current of ecclesiastical reform sets out. Ivo of Chartres, for his part, proposes the conciliatory solution of the dual investiture, temporal and spiritual, which will reconcile Pope and Emperor in the Concordat of Worms (1122).
For the Church, problems rapidly renew themselves as she herself does. The spread of ancient rationalism (the new Aristotle) under the influence of Arab science, and that of Cathar Manichaeism, source of the Albigensian heresy, create new and grave problems for the Faith. The great surge of cities in commerce increases the love of wealth, which ends by insinuating itself even into the Cistercian Order. In the effort to find a solution, the field grows along with the grain; but it will be its own seed that bears the ripest fruit. Emulators of austerity are found together in the abbey of Pontigny, founded by Robert of Arbrissel, and in the Carthusians of St. Bruno, the Premonstratensians of St. Norbert, and above all the reformed Cistercians of St. Robert of Molesmes and St. Bernard of Clairvaux; while a Peter Waldo, in Lyon, is only the rough sketch of a St. Francis, lacking only humility.
The name of St. Bernard dominates the entire age. He is the counselor of popes, bishops, and kings. Civil power, moreover, finds in the Church its best support; the chancellors are men of the Church, e.g., Suger, abbot of St-Denis, friend of Louis VII. More than the proud rationalism of an Abelard, St. Bernard brings to the multitude the consoling devotion of the feast of Corpus Christi; it will be an answer to the Albigensian condemnation of matter, with the cult of a God hidden under the species of bread. And, to finish once and for all with the Albigensian heresy that for twenty years had devastated Languedoc, not enough was the long crusade of the northern barons led by Simon of Montfort against Raymond VI of Toulouse, in 1209. Even the Inquisition, established in 1249, is only a brutal and negative means. Only preaching will bring souls back to the Faith. Founded on French soil, in Toulouse, by a Spaniard, St. Dominic, and not without relation to the ideal of the Poor Man of Assisi, the Order of Preachers finally achieves the synthesis between study and poverty, reason and Faith, speculation and prayer.
Enriched by the talent of the Mendicants (St. Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure), and protected after the pontificate of Innocent III by the papacy and the king, the University of Paris is, in the words of Pope Alexander IV, “the tree in the earthly Paradise.” Of its four faculties (arts, medicine, law, theology), the most celebrated is the last, of theology, where the students of these four nations divide themselves; the most famous are the studium dominicale of St. James and the college founded in 1257 by Robert de Sorbon (the Sorbonne). The Church directs all social life from the king (St. Louis was a Franciscan tertiary) down to the humble origins of the craft confraternities. It is she who inspires the arts. Succeeding, toward the end of the 12th century, the Romanesque cult of the round arch diffused by the Cistercians, there arises, in the 13th century, the Gothic style; in Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, in St-Denis, royal necropolis, in Chartres, Bourges, Laon, Reims, Amiens, Rouen, it expresses the ascent of religious thought and feeling.
In the Middle Ages, the temporal and the spiritual are united as soul and body. Philip the Fair perhaps believed he could serve the Church as much as his crown by defending against the Pope the financial and judicial immunities of his circle (the altar of the tenths, the trial of Barral of Baux), and by condemning the Templars, reproved by public opinion. Neither side distinguished the domain of God from that of Caesar, and matters came to extremes: the Pope excommunicated the king and threatened to depose him (bull Unam Sanctam, 1302); the king allowed William of Nogaret to perpetrate against the Pontiff the outrage of Anagni (1303), engineered by the Colonnas. The French Church, excepting the Regulars, followed Philip the Fair, and this docility foreshadows religious nationalisms. Thus arose the notion that the Avignon popes, from Clement V to Gregory XI, were nothing but docile servants of the king of France. The Hundred Years’ War aggravated the situation, and the papacy, seemingly compromised, did not succeed in its many efforts at mediation. The schism, from 1378, placed France among the partisans of the Avignonese Clement VII. Thus was born Gallicanism, strengthened by a temporary and partial withdrawal of obedience on the part of the French Church toward the two rival pontiffs. And yet, once again, the university proposed solutions for Christendom: agreement and council. At the end of the 14th century, confusion reigned in France, both in the Church and in political life.