The Scandalous AbbeÌ Rioust: the Multiple Careers of an Exiled (Ex-)Priest in the Era of Revolutions

Jeffrey Tyssens

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Chapter 3 The Scandalous AbbeÌ Rioust: the Multiple Careers of an Exiled (Ex-)Priest in the Era of Revolutions

In: Biography across the Digitized Globe

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Jeffrey Tyssens

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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 71â90

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004726710_005

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Abstract

Initially, in pre-revolutionary France, Mathieu NoÃ«l Rioust (1756â1829) was making a bright career as a young clergyman, but then the post-1789 events interrupted his way upward. As a royalist and opponent of the âconstitution civile du clergeÌâ, a âmisstepâ â he made an aristocratic divorcee pregnant and then married her â transformed him into a scandalous ex-priest who had to try and make a deal with the revolutionary republic, posing now as an anti-clerical and a freemason. Swimming through quite a few muddy waters (his trajectory was marked by several âturning pointsâ indeed), he was included in the 1815 French dictionary of the âgirouettesâ, the turncoats who had happily joined many of the subsequent French regimes since 1789. In the early years of the Bourbon restoration, Rioustâs trajectory took a transnational turn. He ended up in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands as a political refugee because of a press trial against him, which resonated throughout Europe and prompted great liberal authors to take up their pens in defense of press freedom. Rioust worked as a journalist in future Belgium and finally switched sides again, just in time to die peacefully, reconciled with the Catholic church where his career had started so promisingly.

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Biography across the Digitized Globe

Essays in Honour of Hans Renders

Series:Â Biography Studies, Volume: 4

Cover Biography across the Digitized Globe

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004726710

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 18 Feb 2025

Subjects
- History
  - Book History
- Literature and Cultural Studies
  - General
  - Biography, Autobiography, Life-Writing

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Part 1 Theory â Transnational Microhistory

Part 2 Archives â Bits and Traces

Part 3 Practice â Teaching and Writing Biography

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Chapter 3 The Scandalous AbbeÌ Rioust: the Multiple Careers of an Exiled (Ex-)Priest in the Era of Revolutions

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Biography across the Digitized Globe

Essays in Honour of Hans Renders

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Chapter 3 The Scandalous AbbeÌ Rioust: the Multiple Careers of an Exiled (Ex-)Priest in the Era of Revolutions