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Why was there conflict between the revolutionaries and the church? Prior to the revolution of 1789 the Catholic Church had been one of the most powerful and wealthiest groups in French society. A major source of it’s wealth as an institution was the tithe, this was commonly 8 – 10 % of the grain crop of a rural community, and amounting in value anything up to 150 million livres annually. As well as this the church was a powerful landowner in it’s own right, through the holdings of noble clerics, religious orders (for which dues and rents totalled up to 130 million livres), or the small plots of most parish clergy. In fact the church owned perhaps 10 % of the landed wealth in France, though this varied from 3 % in parts of the south, to 40 % in the Cambrésis . To add to this almost everywhere it was the most fertile land of the region that they owned. The strength of the church did vary from region to region, but generally Catholicism was strongest in the west and Brittany, the north east, the southern Massif Central, the Pyrenees and Basque country, and less so in the centre, the Paris Basin, the south east and Aunis-Saintonge. The 1789 revolution led to the nationalisation of Church property and led to a complete reasse