In Patriot and Priest, Annette Chapman-Adisho presents a social and intellectual history of the Constitutional Church in the Côte-d'Or department of France, with a special focus on the efforts, trials, and tribulations of the local bishop, Jean-Baptiste Volfius. As our author notes, “all politics is local” (23), and detailed regional studies of the unfolding of the French Revolution provide a useful window into the negotiations and conflicts that helped to determine not only the fate of the Constitutional Church but also that of the Revolution itself.

The book proceeds chronologically, beginning with the establishment of the diocese of Dijon in 1731. Chapter 1 examines the competing interests within church, state, and local communities and elucidates the challenges associated with creating a new diocese during this period. The next three chapters trace the creation of the Constitutional Church in the Côte-d'Or. Printed pamphlets and the cahiers de doléances of the local First Estate show that many of the local clergy supported major reforms. Among the reform-minded clergy was Jean-Baptiste Volfius, a professor of rhetoric and eloquence who became the first and only bishop of the Côte-d'Or.

Volfius's experience following his installation reveals the major difficulties and minor setbacks constitutional bishops faced. Like in many regions of France, only slightly more than half of the local clergy took and maintained the required Ecclesiastical Oath in 1791, which made it difficult to fill his parishes with priests. He even lacked the appropriate items required for Easter Mass as well as the keys to the sacristy, tabernacle, and confessionals, many of these items having disappeared around the time the previous bishop left the cathedral church. These practical issues were only one indication of the larger struggle Volfius faced as he sought to legitimize his episcopal authority. Writing from Paris, the former bishop of Dijon called on the clergy to resist revolutionary reforms and on the laity to refuse sacraments conducted by constitutional priests. The laity resented parish redistricting, complaining of long trips to church and the apparent privileging of affluent parishes, which they argued was contrary to revolutionary principles. Facing opposition on all sides, Volfius found it difficult to convince even those priests who had taken the oath to read his pastoral letters to their parishioners.

As the Revolution progressed, it grew increasingly hostile toward the refractory clergy (chapter 5) and then the constitutional clergy (chapter 6). The author highlights the importance of extralegal justice in carrying out attacks on the clergy, such as when the Jacobin Club of Dijon arrested over one hundred refractory clergy with the help of a “horde of sans-culottes, women and children” who had come to see refractories as enemies of the nation (68). Despite such extraordinary events, many local people remained loyal to refractory and constitutional priests alike. As in many departments across France, the local representatives on mission led dechristianization efforts, aided by local patriots. In the spring of 1794, 141 members of the clergy in the Côte-d'Or resigned; among them was the bishop.

The next three chapters trace efforts to rebuild the church in the wake of the Terror. Although he resigned under pressure from government authorities, friends, and family, Volfius's guilt over having done so seems to have driven him into a deep depression, preventing him from resuming his post until the summer of 1795. Those constitutional clergy who returned to their posts after the Terror faced opposition from both anticlerical republicans and anti-republican refractories, whose numbers had grown during the Terror. Contemporaries estimated that three-quarters of the local population supported the refractory clergy. Volfius's efforts to beseech refractories to cease their covert activities—reconducting sacraments previously performed by constitutional priests, saying Masses in private homes, and sowing hatred of constitutional priests—were largely unsuccessful. After the coup of 18 Fructidor, Volfius faced other, albeit less popular competition from the cultes décadaires and theophilanthropy. Chapman-Adisho's description of religious life during the Directory presents the constitutional clergy as a frustrated but steadfast minority who lacked both financial and popular support.

Despite attempts to revivify what remained of the Constitutional, now Gallican, Church through national and regional councils (chapter 10), these efforts were thwarted by the Concordat in 1801. Over a decade later, after the Bourbon Restoration, Volfius and other former clergy of the Constitutional Church were pressured to renounce publicly their former devotion to revolutionary principles, putting the final nail in the coffin of this revolutionary experiment. Although the Constitutional Church has often been characterized as an abject failure, Chapman-Adisho cautions us against such an interpretation, reminding readers that many of the reforms established by the Constitutional Church survived the revolutionary decade. She represents the constitutional clergy as resourceful, resilient, and dedicated to reuniting France's fractured church.

The author has drawn on a wide range of printed and archival sources and presents a well-researched, detailed history of religious developments in the Côte-d'Or during the revolutionary decade. Overall, this study is more descriptive than it is argumentative. Although there are occasional references to scholarly debates, some readers may yearn for more engagement with recent scholarship. As a social history, more direct comparison to other studies of regional developments, such as those of Louis Pérouas and Paul d'Hollander (La Révolution française, une rupture dans le christianisme? Le cas du Limousin (1775–1822) [Les Monédières, 1988]) and Timothy Tackett (Religion, Revolution and Regional Culture in Eighteenth-Century France: The Ecclesiastical Oath of 1791 [Princeton University Press, 1985]) may have made unique aspects of lay and clerical responses to religious change in the Côte-d'Or more evident. As an intellectual history, more direct engagement with other studies of the constitutional clergy such as that of Joseph Byrnes (Priests of the French Revolution: Saints and Renegades in a New Political Era [Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014]) or Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall (The Abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism [University of California Press, 2005]) would have placed Volfius within a larger context and perhaps accentuated the particularity of Volfius's character and experience.

Chapman-Adisho's study does much to enhance our understanding of the short-lived Constitutional Church and those who were dedicated to its success. While this book is likely to interest historians of the French Revolution in general, it will be of special use to scholars who focus on the history of religion in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France.