The history of secularism in France is the birth and development of this principle up to the present day.
Secularism first took shape in France during the French Revolution: the abolition of the Ancien Régime in August 1789 was accompanied by the end of ecclesiastical privileges, the reaffirmation of universal principles, including freedom of conscience, and the limitation of religious freedoms expressed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
In the 19th century, secularization laws gradually freed the State from its historical ties with the Catholic Church and created new political and social norms based on the principle of republican universalism. This process, part of a broader movement associated with modernity, entrusted the sovereign populace with the redefinition of political and social foundations—such as legislative power, civil rites, and the evolution of law and morality—independently of any religious dogma.
To support this principle and reduce Catholic resistance to it, the Third Republic nationalized education and healthcare activities that had not previously been handled by the state. This revolutionized the organization of hospitals and the school system. For the latter, the Jules Ferry laws secularized education, which had been public and compulsory since 1833. This period was marked by an educational war between the Republic and the Church. The Republic expelled the Jesuits from France, followed by all other teaching congregations in 1903. In 1904, it prohibited religious from teaching, a ban that was only lifted in 1940 by the Vichy regime. Passed in 1905, the law separating Church and State, which marked the culmination of an assertive secularization process, nationalized Church property for a second time, and prohibited the State from subsidizing any religious denomination.
Since Bonaparte's Civil Code, which defined divorce for the first time, the State has legislated and used secularism to devise new rules of law for the family and the individual. With the French Constitution of 1958, secularism became the foundation of the republican pact, guaranteeing national uniformity.
Under the terms of the Declaration of 1789, which forms part of today's constitutional bloc, religious freedom is limited by the public order defined by law. Movements that do not adhere to this public order are typically classified as sects. Such movements can be entirely banned under the About-Picard law. However, despite this legislation, there is no consensus on the legal criteria for condemning an entire movement, aside from the crimes or misdemeanors committed by its members.
The origins of secularism
Definitions Historian René Rémond cautions against asserting definitively that the idea of separation between temporal and spiritual powers is present in the Gospel verse: "Render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's" (Luke 20:25). Today, this Gospel excerpt may have more to say about the distinction between Caesar and God than was in Jesus' mind, or in the way the writer intended to convey his message.
Theologian Henri Madelin, on the other hand, argues that secularism has its origins in the foundational texts of Christianity. He contends that it emerged during the Wars of Religion "to stabilize the religious dynamics within Western societies." According to him, "we should be delighted to have religions that have interpretative principles, that have invented a model where there is a relationship between Caesar and God, between politics and religion".
According to philosopher Henri Peña-Ruiz, "Caesar is a figure of political domination, Marianne is a figure of the emancipated people, of the Republic giving itself its own law". In his view, secularism cannot be reduced to the "abstract separation" of the temporal and the spiritual. If, from the Revolution onwards, secularism removed society and its institutions from any clerical tutelage, it was only after the Enlightenment had affirmed universal values (freedom of conscience, equality of citizenship, common law) rooted "in the legacy of an entire culture of critical thought" and in "the desire for autonomous thought, dear to the philosophers" of Antiquity.
For Jean-Michel Ducomte, professor of public law, secularism, far from finding its source in religion, "is first and foremost a process of emancipation from the pretensions of the Churches to found the social and political order".
Historian Georges Weill distinguishes four currents that contributed to the secular conception of the State: "Catholics, heirs to the Gallican tradition of the Ancien Régime monarchy; liberal Protestants; deists of all persuasions; and freethinkers and atheists".
The following paragraphs outline the historical foundations on which these theses are based, without positioning them against one another.
The medieval foundations of secularism The foundations of secularism, or the historical underpinnings that facilitated its emergence, largely originated within the Church itself. The investiture controversy between Pope Gregory VII and the German Emperor in the 11th century, in which the Pope sought to define his independence and that of the Church alongside the political powers, is a fundamental point. This episode confirmed that spiritual and political powers can, and ultimately must, be separated.
The rediscovery of Aristotelian philosophy in the 13th century, by contributing to the construction of a political thought built on the foundations of natural order and reason, is also one of the distant intellectual foundations that later and progressively enabled the emergence of secular thought and its political application.
Gallicanism and the distinction of powers
Gallicanism (borrowed from the medieval Latin gallicanus, meaning "French") is a specifically French religious and political doctrine that seeks to limit papal intervention in the management of Catholic Church affairs. Its origins can be traced back to King Philip the Fair 's reaction to the theocratic ambitions of Pope Boniface VIII.
Between the 15th and 16th centuries, Gallicanism was formalized in a series of texts (notably the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges) that affirmed the theological and legal dependence of the French Church on the State, and the superiority of royal power over the Papacy. However, it was tempered in 1516 by the Concordat of Bologna, signed between King Francis I and Pope Leo X, which allowed widespread royal control over episcopal and abbatial appointments, giving rise to the commendation system.
Gallicanism was articulated in the Declaration of the Clergy of France, drafted by Bossuet on the initiative of Louis XIV, at the clergy assembly of 1682. The Pope's power was declared to be purely spiritual; monarchs could not be subject to him. It stipulated that papal judgments on matters of faith must be validated by the Roman Catholic Church in France and should not contradict the customs of the kingdom. The Pope, wishing to avoid a rupture similar to that provoked by Henry VIII in England, at the origin of Anglicanism, was forced to accept this situation.
However, Louis XIV soon found himself caught in a trap when Gallicanism and Jansenism were too closely linked. French Gallicanism included a conciliarist aspect that posited the authority of the Pope as subordinate to the authority of the Church gathered in council, a stance reminiscent of richerism. The Jansenists, who were vigorously opposed by Louis XIV, significantly influenced Gallicanism in this richerist direction. This connection quickly became a threat to the king, who feared that this conciliarist demand, articulated on a religious level, could lead to similar political demands, such as the Estates General declaring superiority over monarchical authority. Consequently, Louis XIV did not fully implement Gallicanism, choosing instead to ally with the Pope to combat Jansenism.
The Edict of Nantes and religious freedom
In 1598, the Edict of Nantes also marked an important step towards strengthening absolutist royal power in France. To a certain extent (notably excluding Jews), it guaranteed freedom of religious conscience throughout the kingdom, allowing Protestants to worship freely in places where they had established communities prior to 1597. According to Pierre Joxe, the Edict of Nantes marks a turning point in the history of mentalities, as it delineates a distinction between the political subject, who must adhere to the king's laws in the public sphere, and the believer, who is free to make personal religious choices, now relegated to the private sphere. Nevertheless, the Edict reaffirmed that Catholicism was the sole recognized religion.
The legitimacy of absolute monarchy was rooted in divine right (embodied in the coronation of the king with oil from the holy ampulla), so it could not do without the Catholic Church. Between 1660 and 1685, the kingdom embarked on a policy of converting Protestants to Catholicism, even to the point of persecution (dragonnades). After emptying it of its content, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes by signing the Edict of Fontaine bleau in 1685.
The Age of Enlightenment Although the term itself is more recent, the philosophical and political idea of secularism appeared in England at the end of the 17th century, with King James II's notion of "indulgence" as universal freedom of conscience.
This idea was restricted by the Glorious Revolution of 1688, based on John Locke's notion of "toleration", which concerned Protestants only and excluded Catholicism and Judaism. This inspired the Bill of Rights of 1689 and the Act of Settlement of 1701.
The founding text of the idea of secularism is John Locke's Essay on toleration, which considers that the acceptability of a religious idea is measured by the fact that it respects the public order defined by civil law. This principle was to be found in the Declaration of Rights of 1689, and also in the Declaration of Rights of 1789, which stipulates that "no one should be disturbed for his opinions, even religious ones, provided that their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by the Law".
This English idea was adopted by the philosophy of the Enlightenment, which emphasized the primacy of civil law over divine law. It promoted the coexistence of all religions that accepted this principle while opposing those that did not, expressing a desire to formally distinguish between religious doctrines and state policies.
At the time, the aim was to counter the power of the Catholic Church, and to promote the sovereign's action in the legislative sphere. The undermining of the religious basis of legislative legitimacy made it possible to establish republican or democratic regimes, in which the law was the sole expression of the will of the political state. The questioning of Catholic moral authority brought with it the possibility of a change in mores, notably in financial matters (authorization of interest-bearing loans, marine insurance), family matters (divorce, previously permitted only for Protestants), sexual matters (libertinism), as well as the authorization of slavery.
Voltaire, an admirer of Locke and Newton who had also contributed to the Glorious Revolution, wrote his Traité sur la Tolérance (Treatise on Toleration) on the occasion of the trial of Jean Calas, in which he argued that the political order could do without religious constraints, as did Montesquieu in De l'Esprit des Lois (The Spirit of Law).
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in Du contrat social, expounded on the concept of popular sovereignty and the notion of general interest, asserting that individuals must consent to surrender part of their "natural rights" for the benefit of the collective. This tension between civic equality and individual freedom "expresses the tension between the citizen and the person, between public and private space".