French revolutionary legislation concerning the catholic Church (1789–1795)

On the eve of the Revolution, the Catholic Church in France was an institution of considerable social and economic significance, controlling approximately 10% of the country's arable land and operating an extensive network of charitable and educational establishments. At the time, calls for radical anti-Church reforms enjoyed little popular support.

The Revolution brought a systematic escalation of blows against the Church: from the abolition of tithes and the nationalization of Church property (1789–1790), through the suppression of religious orders and the imposition of the schismatic Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790), to decrees providing for the deportation and execution of non-juring clergy. The culmination came with the September Massacres of 1792 and the Jacobin Terror, during which all public activity of the Catholic Church was banned and attempts were made to replace Christianity with a state religion.

This sequence of events reveals a deliberate process leading from the curtailment of Church privileges to its systematic persecution. A full normalization of Church-state relations was not achieved until the Concordat of 1801, while the enduring legacy of the Revolution remains the model of the secular state that has defined France to this day.