Mgr Fr.-J. Hirn (1751-1819), Premier Évêque Concordataire du Diocèse de Tournai (1802-1819): Un Épiscopat difficile (review)

François-Joseph Hirn was bishop of Tournai when that see was a part of the Napoleonic Empire, and continued on after Napoleon's fall, when Tournai was a part of the Netherlands reconstituted by the Congress of Vienna: a pivotal personality and a pivotal see. The priest historian and canon of the cathedral at Tournai, Albert Milet, finally published this volume at age 85, in lieu of the biography that he had projected at the beginning of his research. He settled for an extensive and carefully laid out, but necessarily heterogeneous, collection of documentation.

Hirn himself was born in Strasbourg and, after his education and seminary formation, was ordained there. He served briefly in Mainz, a see with close ties to Strasbourg, but then returned to complete a doctorate in theology at the University of Strasbourg. His opposition to any germanizing local Catholicism led to some antagonisms that he briefly finessed when trying out a vocation to the Carthusians. He was in Strasbourg when the Civil Constitution of the Clergy became the object of the loyalty oath taken by sixty percent of the French clergy who were obligated to it. Hirn refused to take the oath, but avoided further harassment because he relocated to Mainz just as it was regained by the Prussians. It may be that his reputation for kindness to wounded French soldiers at this time was the source of his later nomination as bishop of Tournai by Napoleon's government. His organizational and intellectual gifts were clearly manifest in his text on restructuring the diocese of Tournai, in the foundation of a new diocesan seminary, and in his organization of a complex diocesan library. Hirn appreciated and praised Napoleon more than many of his fellow bishops, but he was one of the principal episcopal dissenters at the Napoleon-sponsored church council in 1811. This stance brought him into such conflict with the government that he was actually condemned to several years of prison. He submitted to a forced resignation, but became so agitated by what he took to be his own weakness in this matter that he later paid a special visit to the pope to ask for forgiveness. Hirn was reinstated with full papal approval just at the moment that Tournai was placed under the authority of the new King of the Netherlands.

The book is arranged in chapters of carefully sorted out archival data, enhanced by the author's footnote references and commentary, and is part of the series, Bibliothèque de la Revue d'Histoire Ecclésiastique, an utterly random list of specialized, high-quality studies. In this case, historians of church-state affairs of the revolutionary and Napoleonic eras can explore the reception of the Concordat and its subsequent political and religious fortunes in a specific region. Everything contained in local archives is printed up in this text, in whole more often than in part. Most chapters are followed by annexes that are numbered sequentially across the book and not by individual chapters; relative to central features of Hirn's episcopate and the life of the diocese, the material varies considerably in importance. Whereas data on Hirn's organization of and contributions to the library might interest only local historians, the two years of correspondence between Hirn and the departmental prefect can interest all historians of the concordatory church; Milet entitles this chapter, "Une Collaboration peu ordinaire," which indeed it was. By the end of the text, the reader feels the need for that rounded-off monograph Milet was never able to finish, although a disputatious correspondence between regional civil authorities and clergy over burial refusals is of obvious church-state interest. The last chapter, documents pertaining to Bishop Hirn's arrest and imprisonment, does have special importance today, because it complements...