the execution and its message able intended to influence the Catholic church in France, in places the change was slow in coming. In the archdiocese of Toulouse some two decades later, the position was propagated that the condemned should not communicate because of the risk the communion not being received in a suitable way or with suitable veneration.210 In the diocese of Belley there was still no change by 1846 and it held to the line that those condemned to die in France were not to receive Communion.211 This position was strongly criticised by Jean-Baptiste Jacquenet, eventually bishop first in Gap and later in Amiens. It might come from Calvinism or Jansenism, but it was not humane, and worse, it was not the teaching of the Catholic Church. Further, Jacquenet suggested that it was too close to civil justice in its aim to condemn and punish. The delinquent instead of being brought to heaven was given over to despair and horror. Jacquenet wrote: ”Vous enseignez qu’au moment où son corps va périr, l’Église qui reste sa mère, malgré ses crimes, abandonne son âme àla merci de l’enfer!” The admonitions of the ideas from Toulouse were recommended by Gousset in his preface to the book.212 Vincent Petit has interestingly interpreted the move advocated by Gousset, Jacquenet, and many others as a theological liberation of the church from a state bound for secularisation. Putting some distance between it and the civil law and state made it easier to stand for pardon and salvation instead of punishment. Not least the revolution of 1830 was important for the legislation confirming the distance between the state and religion.213 An alternative perspective on this development, though, is that it marked the shift from Gallicanism to ultramontanism.214 In France, however, at this time the environment for the pastoral care had become more complicated. Starting with the Enlightenment, and implemented through the French revolution, a new principle was intro210 Petit 2010 p 339, 341, 343. 211 ”Ce n’est pas l’usage en France d’accorder la communion aux criminels qui sont condamnés au dernier supplice, ni même à ceux qui sont détenus dans les prisons pour crimes capitaux.” Devie 1846 p 208. 212 Jacquenet 1861 pVsq, 129 sq. ’You teach that at the moment of her death, the church, still her mother despite her crimes, leaves her soul to the mercy of hell.’ (Quotation p 130) 213 Petit 2010 p 345 sqq. 214 See Petit 2010 p 338 sqq. 77
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