All the bishops but four refused to take an oath which set at naught the authority of the Pope: more than 50,000 priests likewise refused, and were ejected from their livings: the recusants were termed _orthodox_ or _non-juring_ priests, and by the law of August, 1792, they were exiled from France, while their more pliable or time-serving brethren who accepted the new decree were known as _constitutionals_.

About 12,000 of the constitutionals married, while some of them applauded the extreme Jacobinical measures of the Terror.
One of them shocked the faithful by celebrating the mysteries, having a _bonnet rouge_ on his head, holding a pike in his hand, while his wife was installed near the altar.[152] Outrages like these were rare: but they served to discredit the constitutional Church and to throw up in sharper relief the courage with which the orthodox clergy met exile and death for conscience' sake.

Moreover, the time-serving of the constitutionals was to avail them little: during the Terror their stipends were unpaid, and the churches were for the most part closed.
After a partial respite in 1795-6, the _coup d'etat_ of Fructidor (1797) again ushered in two years of petty persecutions; but in the early summer of 1799 constitutionals were once more allowed to observe the Christian Sunday, and at the time of Bonaparte's return from Egypt their services were more frequented than those of the Theophilanthropists on the _decadis_.

It was evident, then, that the anti-religious _furor_ had burnt itself out, and that France was turning back to her old faith.

Indeed, outside Paris and a few other large towns, public opinion mocked at the new cults, and in the country districts the peasantry clung with deep affection to their old orthodox priests, often following them into the forests to receive their services and forsaking those of their supplanters.
Such, then, was the religious state of France in 1799: her clergy were rent by a formidable schism; the orthodox priests clung where possible to their parishioners, or lived in destitution abroad; the constitutional priests, though still frowned on by the Directory, were gaining ground at the expense of the Theophilanthropists, whose expiring efforts excited ridicule.