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2014
Les Hommes sans Dieu: Atheism, Religion,
and Politics during the French Revolution
Shane H. Hockin
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FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
LES HOMMES SANS DIEU: ATHEISM, RELIGION, AND POLITICS
DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
By
SHANE H. HOCKIN
A Dissertation submitted to the
Department of History
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Awarded:
Spring Semester, 2014
\Shane H. Hockin defended this dissertation on March 31, 2014.
The members of the supervisory committee were:
Darrin McMahon
Professor Directing Dissertation
John Corrigan
University Representative
Rafe Blaufarb
Committee Member
Ed Gray
Committee Member
Charles Upchurch
Committee Member
The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and
certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements.
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Writing a dissertation seems like a solo venture, but the truth is that the dissertation
cannot come to fruition without the wisdom and aid of many people. These individuals cannot be
appreciated enough. Some of them I do not even know their names. I am especially thankful for
the assistance of the staff at the George A. Smathers Libraries, the Archives Nationales, the
Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Newberry Library, and Strozier Library. They are the
unsung heroes of my research and I could not have done this without them. Lucy Patrick and
Sarah Buck-Kachaluba of Strozier Library deserve extra thanks for helping get me started.
None of my work would be possible, unfortunately, without money, and I have several
people and organizations to recognize for helping me in this regard. At the top of the list are
Margaret Ausley, the Florida State University Department of History, and the Institute on
Napoleon and the French Revolution. Without Margaret Ausley and the FSU History
Department’s generous fellowship offer, I never would have been able to return to school, let
alone write this dissertation. The Institute on Napoleon and the French Revolution, particularly
Rafe Blaufarb and Darrin McMahon, was vital in aiding me in completing my research and
allowed for me to study in Paris. I also received funding from Central Michigan University’s
Department of History to complete my Masters at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, Scotland—
a life-changing experience. Special thanks go to Chris Pigniatello, Vicky Bernal, and Anne Kozar
of the FSU Department of History for helping me stay on top of the administration for many of
these opportunities.
Of course, I am eternally indebted to the support I received from a number of professors
throughout my academic career. Patricia Ranft, David Rutherford, and James Schmiechen of
iii
Central Michigan University played crucial roles in guiding my early forays into the history
field, and without them I would never have started or continued this journey. At Florida State
University, I have Ed Gray, Charles Upchurch, Matthew Day, Jonathan Grant, and Rafe Blaufarb
to thank for their guidance and encouragement as I reinvented my academic self after six years
away from school. Above all, I am unremittingly grateful to Darrin McMahon, my major advisor,
whose criticism, patience, and reassurance were essential to my success. There is no Dr. Shane
Hockin without Dr. Darrin McMahon. Thank you for everything!
Finally, I want to recognize three people in my personal life for their contribution to this
project. My mother, Darlene, played the most instrumental role of my entire life in encouraging
me from a young age to use my intelligence, believe in myself, and stick to school. I doubt she
ever imagined I would be “sticking to school” for the rest of my life. My wife, Angela, has
endured an avalanche of academic discussion, stressful evenings, and philosophical speculation
while I studied and researched. Her love and support motivate me not only to be the best student
that I can be, but the best person. My old friend, Mike, occupied a special role in this project. In
addition to occasional editing duties on this dissertation, his compassion for helping people and
his toleration of others’ religious beliefs despite his personal atheism are inspirational and helped
change the way I view religion, atheism, and culture. This dissertation is dedicated to people
such as him—people who put compassion for humanity before their cultural, intellectual, and
political systems of belief.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... vii
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................1
1. The Materialist, the Mathematician, and the Libertine—an Examination of Three Types of
Enlightenment Atheism in the Early Years of the French Revolution ...............................16
1.1 Atheism and the Enlightenment ...................................................................................17
1.2 Naigeon: the Overt Atheist ..........................................................................................25
1.3 Condorcet: the Subtle Atheist.......................................................................................37
1.4 Sade: the Libertine Atheist ..........................................................................................46
2. Atheists and Fanatics: the Early French Revolution and the Specter of Atheism ......................60
2.1 Bigots and Fanatics: Atheism as Counter-Revolutionary Political Label ....................68
2.2 Atheism, Religion, and the Early Revolutionaries .......................................................77
3. Eternal Reason: Atheism and the Dechristianization Movement of 1793 .................................97
3.1 Historiography of Atheism and the Dechristianization Period ..................................102
3.2 The Paris Commune and the Dechristianization of 1793........................................... 115
3.3 The Atheism of the Representatives on Mission ........................................................128
3.4 Atheism, the National Convention, and the Revolutionary Calendar ........................134
3.5 Civil Religion versus the New Dawn of Atheism ......................................................141
4. La Père Duchesne—Jacques Hébert and the (A)Theism of Dechristianization ......................147
4.1 Jacques Rene Hébert: Biography of an Atheist? ........................................................148
4.2 Contemporary Views of the Religious Beliefs of Hébert ...........................................153
4.3 The Politics of Religion in La Père Duchesne: Proof of Hébert’s Atheism? .............157
v
4.4 Christ and the Eternal Father: Hébert’s Examples of the “Perfect Sans-Culotte” .....172
4.5 Hébert, Religion, and the Festival of Reason.............................................................182
5. The French Revolution and the Rejection of Atheism .............................................................186
5.1 Robespierre: the Crusader Against Atheism ..............................................................188
5.2 The Death of a Specter: the Fall of the “Hébertists” ..................................................198
5.3 The Citizens and the Rejection of Atheism ................................................................216
5.4. Conclusion ................................................................................................................228
Epilogue .......................................................................................................................................231
References ....................................................................................................................................242
Biographical Sketch .....................................................................................................................259
vi
ABSTRACT
When Edmund Burke declared in 1790 that the French Revolution was made up of an
atheistic “cabal” of philosophers, he initiated what would remain a stereotype of the
revolutionaries for not only the duration of the Revolution, but for the next two centuries and
continuing—the claim that atheism was a key component of the French Revolution and its ideals.
When the Revolution radicalized three years later in response to counterrevolution and war,
violence against priests, churches, and practicing Catholics escalated exponentially, culminating
in a spectacular Festival of Reason where the Revolution appeared to make Burke a prophet.
This “atheism” reigned supreme only briefly, and within months the term “atheist” was used to
brand certain radicals as immoral aristocrats and traitors, leading to their deaths on the guillotine.
This dissertation examines atheism as a state-of-being, ideological concept, and political
tool during the eighteenth century in France and attempts to answer several questions regarding
the role of atheism during the French Revolution. What did it mean to be an atheist during this
period? Was there an atheistic strain in the ideology of the Revolution? Were there atheists
involved within the political sphere—speaking in the National Assembly and Convention,
participating in the Jacobin clubs and municipal government, acting as representatives-onmission, and spreading atheism around the nation? Was the dechristianization movement
specifically an atheistic phenomenon? Finally, how did the fear of atheism become a tool for not
only counterrevolutionaries, but the leaders of the French Revolution itself? Ultimately, atheists
prove to be present and accounted for, but only as a small minority, with atheism itself being
mostly a specter used as a rhetorical tool by various factions for spreading fear and distrust.
vii
INTRODUCTION
In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke famously indicted the
“literary cabal” of philosophes for causing and perpetuating the burgeoning Revolution that
quickly escalated across the English Channel in France, accusing them of, among other things,
attacking and breaking down one of the most basic tenets of society and government—religion.
When searching for an adjective with which to describe these diabolical radicals, Burke found
the term “atheist” a natural choice, as the term had been used for over a century to describe
virtually any political, philosophical, or even religious notion that challenged the status quo. This
is not to say that atheism was the single, dominant subject of Burke’s Reflections, as it was
merely one of many concerns expressed in that seminal criticism of the French Revolution, but it
was a common theme for Burke and many of his contemporaries. Nevertheless, despite the
occasional implication that atheism was the absence of religion, Burke never really defined his
version of atheism. Regardless of Burke’s ambiguity on the topic, atheism was a vital theme in
Reflections. “We know,” he wrote in an attempt to defend faith, “and, what is better, we feel
inwardly, that religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good, and of all
comfort.” 1 Furthermore, he added, “it is our pride to know, that man is by his constitution a
religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason, but our instincts; and that it cannot
prevail long.” 2 For Burke, belief in God was one of the foundations of civilization. He went on to
label atheism a “superstition” and “absurdity,” and described atheists themselves as “bigoted,”
“fanatics,” and “libelers.” The fanaticism of these unbelievers ultimately would be the cause of
the fall of the revolutionaries, he claimed, because the rebels “preferred atheism to a form of
1
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. by Frank M. Turner, Yale University Press, 2003. 77.
Ibid., 77.
2
religion not agreeable to their ideas. They succeeded in destroying that form; and atheism has
succeeded in destroying them.” 3 Ultimately, Burke asserts that it was a “spirit of atheistic
fanaticism” that defined the French Revolution, and which was the biggest threat to civilized
society all over Europe. 4
Edmund Burke’s view of the French Revolution as embodying a “spirit of atheistic
fanaticism” represents a common stereotype of the political and cultural events in France during
both, the Enlightenment and Revolution, among contemporaries of Burke, and amid scholars
from the nineteenth century to the present. 5 Indeed, Alexis Tocqueville, a historian whose own
parents narrowly escaped the Terror, compared the political revolution of the period to a
religious revolution, noting that its aim of regenerating humanity was like a religion, “an
imperfect religion, to be sure, without God, cult, or afterlife.” 6 Despite this suggested connection
between atheism and the French Revolution, the historiography of the Revolution and that of the
history of atheism remain primarily segregated. Although the role of the Enlightenment in
causing or influencing the French Revolution continues to be a hot topic, historians of the period
tend to assume or overlook atheism in their studies. 7 Meanwhile, scholars attempting to trace the
evolution of atheism tend to focus on the Enlightenment and skip the French Revolution
altogether. 8 The reasons why academia has avoided this topic is unclear, though in a few cases it
3
Ibid., 126.
Ibid., 129.
5
Examples of contemporaries who claimed atheism, as well as Darrin’s work; list of scholars who deemed the
Revolution as atheistic.
6
Alexis Tocqueville, The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution, trans. by Arthur Goldhammer, (Cambridge
University Press, 2011), 21. Italics mine.
7
The list is too exhaustive to include every work guilty of ignoring or glossing over atheism when discussing the
religion, Enlightenment, and French Revolution, but two significant and influential books that contend directly with
these three topics while virtually surprisingly overlooking atheism are Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French
Revolution: Essays on the French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century, (Cambridge University Press, 1990)
and Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, trans. by Lydia Cochrane, (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1991).
8
See Michael J. Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987); Alan
Charles Kors, Atheism in France, 1650-1729, Vol. I: The Orthodox Sources of Unbelief, (Princeton University Press,
4
2
seems to be a desire to avoid giving credence to the role of the Enlightenment in causing the
Revolution, or contradictorily to avoid placing atheists on the scene during the Terror. 9 In his
most recent work, Democratic Enlightenment, Jonathan Israel proves the exception, arguing that
“la philosophie was the primary cause of the [French] Revolution. It was indeed overwhelmingly
the primary factor….” 10 By la philosophie, Israel refers to the radical Enlightenment—a concept
he characterizes as being, among other things, atheistic in nature—and argues that there is no
French Revolution without the Enlightenment works of atheists such as Benedict Spinoza, Jean
Meslier, Denis Diderot, and the Baron D’Holbach. 11 For Edmund Burke, the alleged “spirit of
atheistic fanaticism” was a destructive characteristic of the Revolution that would lead to its
downfall. For Jonathan Israel, the radical Enlightenment, as well as its atheism, was a positive
and essential contributor to modernity.
This dissertation closely examines the link between atheism and the French Revolution,
ultimately concluding that although Enlightenment rhetoric played its part in formulating the
1990); James Thrower, Western Atheism, A Short History, (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000); Richard
Popkin, The History of Scepticism: From Savanarola to Bayle, (Oxford University Press, 2003); Mark Curran,
Atheism, Religion and Enlightenment in Pre-Revolutionary Europe, (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press,
2012).A notable exception is Philipp Blom, A Wicked Company: the Forgotten Radicalism of the European
Enlightenment, (New York: Basic Books, 2010). Blom ends his book with a brief discussion on how the French
Revolution turned its back on the radical Enlightenment, particularly Diderot and d’Holbach.
9
Marxist writers, particularly, tended to avoid giving credence to any intellectual influences on the French
Revolution in order to sustain their economic causality approach. See Albert Soboul, The Sans-Culottes, (Princeton
University Press, 1980); Daniel Guérin,Class Struggle in the First French Republic: Bourgeois and Bras Nus 17931795, (Bristol, UK: Pluto Press, 1973). These two are particularly interesting examples in that they focus on the
period that includes dechristianization at its most extreme, with hardly a mention of possible atheism being
involved. Some recent authors do the same, focusing on political causation, with the religion question being deemed
expendable. For example, see François Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, (Cambridge University Press,
1978); William Doyle, The Origins of the French Revolution, (Oxford University Press, 1980); P. M. Jones, Reform
and revolution in France : the politics of transition, 1774-1791 , (Cambridge University Press, 1995).
10
Jonathan Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750-1790, (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011), 17.
11
Israel does curb his emphasis for the atheists in Democratic Enlightenment in his introduction compared to his
previous works on the Enlightenment, noting that many members of the radical Enlightenment were not unbelievers.
Nonetheless, the anti-religious sentiment of the work, combined with the enthusiastic trumping of atheists such as
d’Holbach and Diderot over other “moderate” Enlightenment figures, remains a key component of the book, even
when discussing the French Revolution which, as Philipp Blom notes, essentially turned its back on the likes of
Diderot and d”Holbach. Ibid., 12; Blom, Wicked Company, 305-318.
3
Revolution’s ideals, as well as did actual atheists, Israel’s emphasis on the materialist strain of
the radical Enlightenment as the primary cause of the French Revolution is exaggerated. Some
important occurrences of the Revolution certainly make it appear on the surface that atheism was
prominent. The resilient anticlericalism, physical attacks on the churches and clergy, rise of the
Cult of Reason, and the dechristianization movement as a whole all suggest that massive changes
in religious ideology occurred, though to what extent and in what ways are hotly contested. 12
There were also confirmed atheists significantly involved with the Revolution, including
Jacques-André Naigeon, the Marquis de Sade, Anacharsis Clootz, and Sylvain Maréchal; and
likely atheists such as Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette, Jean-Baptiste Carrier, Joseph Fouché, and
even the revolutionary moderate, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, also known as the
Marquis de Condorcet. 13 Indeed, the French Revolution marks a watershed moment in the
history of atheism, being the first time in the Western world that atheists actively and overtly
participated in the public sector. Nonetheless, there were many radical dechristianizers who
clearly were not atheists, despite their support of dechristianization, such as Antoine Momoro
and Jacques Hébert, both of whom are frequently labeled atheists. 14 Even more participants in
the more anti-religious aspects of the French Revolution are impossible to characterize at all,
12
Contrary to the likes of Jonathan Israel, many historians emphasize how religion remained an essential part of the
French Revolution, even during the dechristianization period. See John McManners, Church and Society in
Eighteenth-Century France, Vol. 2, The religion of the people and the politics of religion, (Oxford University Press,
1998); Suzanne Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred: Lay Religion and Popular Politics in Revolutionary France, (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1990); Dale Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin
to the Civil Constitution, 1560-1791, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996); Nigel Aston, Religion
and Revolution in France, 1780-1804, (Washington, D.C., The Catholic University of America Press, 2000).
13
Condorcet is the key figure to Jonathan Israel’s argument that philosophie was the one and only important
influence on the French Revolution, representing the link between the philosophes of the radical Enlightenment and
the Revolution itself. Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 18-19, 29.
14
The labeling of Hébert as an atheist is most prominent in the public realm, but for examples of historians who
assume the atheism of Hébert, see Jean Jaurès, Histoire socialiste de la Révolution française, ed. Albert Mathiez
(Paris, 1924; rpr. with notes by Albert Soboul, New York, 1973), VI, 406–407, 410, 415; Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity:
Robespierre and the French Revolution, (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 294; Sylvia Neely, A Concise
History of the French Revolution, (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006), 199; Christopher Dawson,
The Gods of Revolution, (New York: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1972), 96-97; and Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A
History, (New York: HarperCollins Publishing, 2003), 368.
4
leaving no proof of either, atheism or theism. This includes most of the early revolutionaries that
Israel insists were the most important proponents of both, the radical Enlightenment and the
French Revolution—namely Emmanuel Joseph Sièyes, Constantin François de Chassebœuf de
Volney, Honoré Gabriel Riqueti de Mirabeau, Jacques Pierre Brissot, Jean-Sylvain Bailly,
Pierre-Louis Roederer, and Louis-Pierre Manuel. 15 It is interesting that Israel chooses to cease
his examination of the French Revolution before the moment that overt atheists and materialists
played their biggest role—as agitators during the Terror—electing instead to blame Rousseau
and the moderate Enlightenment for their influence on the likes of Maximillien Robespierre and
his allies, as if the extreme radicalism of the dechristianization movement and Cult of Reason
never occurred.
Part of the issue regarding the role of the radical Enlightenment involves matters of
semantics and definition, and a key argument of this dissertation is that “atheism” and “atheist”
are much broader terms than most scholars give credence, especially in regard to the views of
eighteenth-century authors. 16 Modern atheists often insist on a singular, “correct” definition that
usually specifies “the absence of belief in God,” opposed to active disbelief, primarily in order to
emphasize the universal nature of atheism and play down variations of disbelief. 17 In this sense,
15
Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 26.
The “true nature” of the Enlightenment is a hotly contested topic in academia today as well, with atheism playing
a minor role in some perspectives and a major part in others. The academic debate is too wide in scope to discuss
here, but for highlights of the different views in defining the Enlightenment period, see Carl Becker, The Heavenly
City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1932); Ernst Cassirer, The
Philosophy of the Enlightenment, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955); Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: an Interpretation, 2
Vols., (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1966, 1969); Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime,
(Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press, 1982); Margaret Jacobs, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists,
Freemasons, and Republicans, (New Orleans, LA: Cornerstone Books, 2006, originally published in 1981); Dena
Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1994); Roy Porter, The Creation of the Modern World: the Untold Story of the British Enlightenment, (New
York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2000); J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol.1: The Enlightenments of Edward
Gibbon, 1737–1764, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Jonathan Israel, Radical enlightenment :
philosophy and the making of modernity 1650-1750, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), Louis Dupré, The
Enlightenment & the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture, (New Haven: CT: Yale University Press, 2004).
17
Current atheists attempt to downplay the difference between active and passive atheism in order to stress the
16
5
“atheist” can describe the flamboyant and outspoken “New Atheist,” as well as agnostics who
spend little time considering whether a supernatural creator exists, or even an innocent child who
has not been exposed to matters of theology. “Absence of belief” is certainly a valid definition in
a general sense, nonetheless, the “absence of belief” that a small child may possess differs
starkly from a conscious identity centered on the belief that no deity or supernatural phenomenon
exist. Even among the “conscious identity” type of atheist variance exists between one who
passively disbelieves with no concern regarding the belief of others, and one who actively
promotes atheism as the superlative philosophy by which to live. These are not insignificant
differences. In context of early-modern Europe, the definition of “atheism” becomes even more
muddled, with the term commonly used to describe virtually any unorthodox manner of thinking,
with Catholics seeing Protestants as atheists, Protestants viewing Catholics the same, and both
viewing libertines and political radicals as practitioners of “atheism.” 18 Early-modern
intellectuals further denoted different types of atheism, distinguishing between “practical”
atheists and “speculative” atheists, with the former referring to those who only “disbelieve” to
justify immoral behavior, and the latter being those who philosophically did not believe in God.
Speculative atheists were thought by some theologians to not really exist in the population,
though by the eighteenth-century Enlightenment this clearly was not true, with the likes of Jean
Meslier, Denis Diderot, and the Baron D’Holbach espousing clear disbelief in a deity. 19 In fact,
Robert Darnton shows that the irreligious writings of D’Holbach were among the most popular
“natural” state of atheism. See Gordon Stein, ed., The Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Vol. I, (Buffalo, N.Y. : Prometheus
Books, 1985), 27-29; Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, (Boston: First Mariner Books, 2006), 24-30, 39-40, 52.
18
Kors, Atheism in France, 17-42.
19
Ibid., 54-58.
6
literature of the century, though to what extent it influenced or mirrored the beliefs of readers is
impossible to determine. 20
Yet “atheist” remained a term of disparagement during D’Holbach’s lifetime, as well as
beyond, well into the French Revolution. Both the Right and the Left used the term “atheism” to
discredit their enemies as vile abominations, with Robespierre extending its meaning to
encompass those of aristocratic sentiments. The role of atheism during the Terror remained
essentially that of a phantom designed to discredit the most extreme aspects of the
dechristianization movement and to establish Robespierre and his allies as the true leaders of the
French people, who remained religious in principle With all these definitions in mind, it becomes
clear that the complexity of personal belief, religion, spirituality, and even atheism is a major
issue when examining unbelief in the eighteenth-century, or even today, with the resulting
scholarship frequently resorting to speculation on who was or was not an atheist. 21 It is the goal
of this dissertation to treat “atheism” as a multifaceted concept, exploring atheism in both, its
positive and negative connotations; as a rhetorical term, a state of being, and among a few key
atheists, as an active philosophical sense of identity. It will be found that atheists in this latter
sense certainly existed during the French Revolution, participating openly in the government for
the first time in Western history, but that they were few in number and exceptional. Atheism’s
biggest role in the French Revolution remained that of a rhetorical tool used to demonize
oppositional political groups.
20
Robert Darnton, The Corpus of Clandestine Literature in France, 1799-1789, (New York and London: W. W.
Norton & Company, 1995), 205-208.
21
Berman’s work on Atheism in Britain is particularly speculative throughout his book on who was and was not an
atheist, while Israel spends much time with little evidence indicating who was a “believer” and not at the beginning
of the French Revolution. David Berman, A History of Atheism in Britain: From Hobbes to Russell, (London:
Croom Helm, 1988); Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 760-778.
7
In order to establish where eighteenth-century atheism and perceptions of atheism
originated, chapter one will discuss atheism as defined by the Enlightenment, with special
attention being placed on three atheistic Enlightenment figures who participated in the early
stages of the French Revolution—Jacques-André Naigeon, the Marquis de Condorcet, and the
infamous Marquis de Sade. Naigeon represents the typical, though rare, Enlightenment atheist in
the vein of the Baron D’Holbach, with whom Naigeon collaborated to publish the century’s most
overt and aggressive tracts promoting atheism. D’Holbach and Naigeon’s view of atheism was
that it represented the culmination of Enlightenment science and understanding, with irreligion
and disbelief in God and the supernatural being the natural state of human beings untouched by
fanatical and illogical religion, like Christianity, which the Enlightenment atheists believed to be
the cause of all oppression and ignorance. Their works were widely circulated, but little evidence
exists to suggest any significant impact on the Revolution as Jonathan Israel implies. 22 In fact,
Naigeon’s touted Adresse to the Assemblée Nationale, which argued an atheistic approach to the
Declaration of the Rights of Man in addition to a call for freedom of the press, went virtually
unheeded by the revolutionary legislation. If Naigeon represented the rational atheist, the
Marquis de Sade represented the stereotype of the atheist as perceived by theologians for
centuries. In addition to not believing in God, de Sade practiced libertinism to its extreme, living
a life of immorality and debauchery—the very things that religious writers had claimed would
occur in a society of atheists, who could never be moral without a deity to provide the original
basis of right and wrong. Like Naigeon, de Sade participated in the discourse of the Revolution,
but only played a minor part. The Marquis de Condorcet, however, represents the majority of
agnostic and atheistic thinkers in the eighteenth century, and Israel rightfully notes his influence.
Like many members of the radical and moderate Enlightenment, Condorcet promoted science
22
Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 767, 808-812, 819-820, 833-835, 928-929, 938-942.
8
and rationality, and was anticlerical and critical of the Church, but his atheism is difficult to
detect with certainty. Evidence found in his letters suggest a man who was sympathetic to
atheists and likely himself did not believe in God, but who did not specifically proclaim himself
an unbeliever nor stress atheism as being an essential philosophy. This marks a key difference
between the overt atheism of Naigeon and the subtle and elusive atheism of the skeptical
Condorcet—the line between being an atheist and merely being a skeptic is not always as clear
cut as believers and unbelievers like to assert. The prominence of the works of Condorcet and his
allies suggests that the Enlightenment, indeed, was significant to the revolutionaries, but that
atheism simply was not.
Chapter two will then contend with the secularism and skepticism of the early Revolution
from 1789 until 1792—the moderate period of the Revolution before radicalism allowed for the
possibility of open atheism—specifically in regard to the intentions that the revolutionaries
possessed in relation to Christianity and religion. What, precisely, were the religious beliefs of
the revolutionaries of the National Assembly and Convention prior to 1792 and the radicalization
of the Revolution? How did they feel about atheism? What role did atheism play in the early
development of the French Revolution? It will be demonstrated that the radical “materialists”
that Jonathan Israel identifies tended to be theists or non-committal regarding their spiritual
beliefs, caring little about debating theology. This was especially true when it came down to
business and dispute in the Assembly itself, an essential part of the Revolution that Israel
ignores. Although anticlericalism remained a strong rhetorical tool for the revolutionaries, the
likes of Mirabeau and Siéyes promoted practical governing and economics over anti-religious
sentiment, and many of their comrades refuted characterizations of the Revolution as atheistic. If
anything, atheism’s biggest role during the beginning of the French Revolution was that of a
9
rhetorical device for discrediting the work of the National Assembly. Analyzing the speeches and
debates surrounding the passage of laws in the National Assembly uncovers a palpable lack of
atheism in any form. Anticlericalism and a strong sense that the Catholic Church and its leaders
were oppressive, greedy, and unreasonable were, indeed, common themes among the new
politicians, but calls for the elimination of theism or Christianity were non-existent.
Revolutionaries such as Camus, Treilhard, and Mirabeau attacked the concepts of divine right,
clerical privilege, tax exemption for the Church, and above all the influence and control of
secular institutions by religious authorities. Meanwhile, they relied on economic arguments,
Classical logic, and even references to traditional scripture to drive their points home. These
revolutionaries did not want religion destroyed, but rather sought a more reasonable and
utilitarian religion, complete with God and ritual–the very opposite goal of Jonathan Israel’s
version of the “radical Enlightenment.” It is no coincidence that the revolutionaries leaned on the
names of Rousseau and Voltaire, rather than that of Spinoza and Diderot, to prop up their
visionary politics. Ultimately, the only faction that uttered any word of atheism and atheists were
the conservative powers resisting this attack on their traditional authority and economic
privilege, who used the word “atheist” as a weapon of slander in order to create the slippery
slope illusion of a new government bent on the destruction of not only the Church, but the
people’s freedom to worship the creator in which virtually all of them believed. Indirectly,
however, these accusations of atheism had the opposite effect than what their conservative
proponents expected, leading to debate over the nature of God’s authority, which opened the
door to harsher attacks on religion. The French Revolution, indeed, became more radical
throughout 1792 and 1793, but ultimately the radicalization was in response to the increased
10
attack against the Revolution by clerics, bishops, and the even the Pope, rather than a natural
consequence of skepticism or atheism.
With chapters one and two establishing the perception of atheism prior to the
radicalization of 1793, chapter four will serve three purposes. First, this chapter will identify the
true atheists of the dechristianization movement during the Terror, which was the period most
likely to have been perpetrated by strict unbelievers. Second, the relationship between the
atheists and non-atheists involved with the most extreme attacks on the Church will be examined
in order to help differentiate between the non-believers and the merely skeptical in order to
appreciate the varied characteristics of radical religious belief. Finally, the role that atheism and
atheists actually played during the radical Terror will be recognized. The writings of the most
prominent candidates for possible atheism will be examined closely to determine their religious
beliefs, when possible. These figures will consist of the primary promoters of the radical
dechristianization movement between 1792 and 1794, and will include revolutionary radicals
such as Maréchal, Lanthenas, Romme, Gobel, and d’Églantine; the representatives-on-mission
such, including Fouché, Carrier, Laplanche, and Javoques; and the so-called Hébertists,
including Momoro, Vincent, Desfieux, Ronsin, Clootz, and Chaumette. As with Hébert, the
writings (or lack thereof in some cases) of many of these anti-Catholic revolutionaries
demonstrate a wide range of different perspectives on religion, Christianity, and atheism. It will
be shown that few, however, can be accurately or definitively defined as “atheists,” with the
exceptions of Clootz, Maréchal, and likely Fouché and Chaumette. Ultimately it will be
demonstrated that dechristianization, and subsequently the French Revolution as a whole,
represented a wide spectrum of subtle differences in religious belief, even among the most
extreme radicals of the Terror. The role of atheism remained essentially that of a phantom
11
designed to discredit the most extreme aspects of the dechristianization movement and to
establish Robespierre and his allies as the true leaders of the French people, who remained
religious in principle. The likes of Clootz and Maréchal, the only two overt atheists after the
elimination of Sade and Condorcet from the political scene and the effective political retirement
of Naigeon, remained as exceptional as their three Enlightenment counterparts.
Chapter four will focus on a premier example of a revolutionary radical who has been
identified in many secondary sources as an atheist—Jacques Hébert. It is no particular surprise
that Hébert is identified by some as an atheist, as his profile fits the modern perception of what
constitutes a stereotypical atheist. 23 Hébert was a “man of letters” who prescribed to
Enlightenment ideals of progress and science, and condemned the Catholic Church’s irrational
rituals and corrupt leadership while pushing an anticlerical agenda which was extreme and
violent. Like today’s most famous atheist writers, such as Richard Dawkins or the late
Christopher Hitchens, Hébert utilized sarcasm and irreverence in his language in order to
demonstrate the foolishness of traditional religion, and associated with known atheists in what, at
a glance, appeared to be a clique of like-minded philosophers. Hébert even played a key role in
the promotion of a new religion, the Cult of Reason, dedicated to rational thinking and centered
on making a mockery of orthodox religious rituals, with opponents such as Robespierre and
Desmoulins subsequently accusing him of atheism. Thus this chapter examines the life and
complete writings of Jacques Hébert to uncover his theology and viewpoint on religion in order
to demonstrate the challenge with examining atheists during the French Revolution. The problem
with labeling Hébert as an atheist is that close inspection of his writings suggests that it simply is
not true—Hébert not only never declared the non-existence of God, but claimed that God fought
23
Again, see Scurr, Fatal Purity, 294; Neely, A Concise History of the French Revolution, 199; Dawson, The Gods
of Revolution, 96-97; and Hecht, Doubt: A History, 368.
12
for the Revolution and that Jesus was the perfect example of a sans-culotte. Hébert rejected the
traditional Catholic Church and its tenets, but maintained the importance of religion in society in
a very modern way—believing that religion should be utilitarian, separated from government and
schools, and that spiritual belief was a personal decision for the citizens to make for themselves.
Though specific items of belief vary from individual to individual, this gray space between
orthodox religion and atheism remains the position for the vast majority of skeptics, radicals,
pantheists, and philosophes of the eighteenth century.
The fifth chapter will examine the consequences of the fight between the Hébertists,
Indulgents, and Robespierre’s allies and how this political battle shaped atheism’s status and
development. Did Robespierre and his compatriots really believe that Jacques Hébert and other
radical dechristianizers were atheists, or did they merely utilize the term as a method of
discrediting their enemies? What led to the downfall of the Terror’s version of the
dechristianization movement and how did atheism play a role in this ideological collapse?
Finally, how exactly was atheism viewed by the people of revolutionary France? Detailing the
debates leading up to the downfall of Hébert and other enemies of the Cult of the Supreme
Being, analyzing the works and writings of Robespierre and similar thinkers, and examining the
reactions of the public to these developments—as far as can be determined by their submissions
to the Committee of Public Instruction—uncovers the true viability of atheism during the French
Revolution. Ultimately atheism played little role in propelling the Revolution or influencing its
ideology, or even that of dechristianization, and this is a key point. There were, indeed, a few
atheists who played large parts in the drama that unfolded during the Revolution—Condorcet
and Clootz, in their own ways, especially—but their atheism was beside the point. The evidence
suggests that everything that occurred pertaining to religion—the initial attacks on the clergy and
13
Church for their corruption, ignorance, and power prior to 1792, the radical dechristianization
movement that erupted in 1793, and even the creation of the Cult of Reason—happened as much
at the hands of deists, agnostics, liberal Christians, spiritual skeptics, pantheists, and the
religiously uncertain, along with a select few atheists. Examination of the documents submitted
by the public to the Committee of Public Instruction during the developmental phase of the Cults
of Reason and the Supreme Being further demonstrate that the vast majority of people did,
indeed, want to see major changes in the role and definition of religion in their lives, but they
overwhelmingly feared atheism and desired the presence of a deity in their system of belief. The
only significant role that atheism played in the distribution of revolutionary ideas was that of
serving as a label which factions could attach to their competitors in order to discredit them in
the eyes of an overwhelmingly religious public.
This is not to disparage atheism, which despite its lack of influence in the French
Revolution made significant strides on its own account. Whereas atheism may not have altered
the French Revolution, the French Revolution certainly influenced the evolution of atheism in
multiple ways. For starters, Naigeon’s Adresse a l’Assemblée National marks a watershed
moment in the history of atheism—it was the second time in European history that an atheist
published an overtly atheistic tract under his own name without suffering any personal ill-effects
or serious public backlash, and was the first time that this had been done in an attempt to
influence the politics of a major nation. 24 That the likes of Sylvain Maréchal and the Baron
Cloots actively espoused atheism while participating in the political development of a major
European country is astounding in light of the lack of similar achievements anytime since
possibly the ancient Greeks. Finally, the French Revolution’s advancement of ideals such as
24
The first time in Western civilization that an atheist openly published a tract on disbelief occurred in Great Britain
eight years before. Michael Turner, Answer to Dr Priestley’s Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever, ed. By William
Hammon, (London, 1782).
14
freedom of conscience and religion, the growth of personal and individual spirituality, the
promotion of the Enlightenment view that all people should think for themselves, and most
importantly the active attempt to apply these concepts to political and social development
allowed for the possibility of unlimited options for personal belief or disbelief, or what Charles
Taylor would define as “modernity.” 25
25
See Charles Taylor, The Secular Age, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 167-171, 423.
15
CHAPTER ONE
THE MATERIALIST, THE MATHMATICIAN, AND THE LIBERTINE—AN EXAMINATION
OF THREE TYPES OF ENLIGHTENMENT ATHEISM IN THE EARLY YEARS OF THE
FRENCH REVOLUTION
This chapter proposes to examine the evolution of eighteenth-century perspectives on
atheism and compare a trio of prominent atheists of the Enlightenment who survived to
participate in the French Revolution— Jacques-André Naigeon, the Marquis de Condorcet, and
the infamous Marquis de Sade. By distinguishing between different types of atheism preestablished at the beginning of the Revolution, it will be easier to see how atheism evolved as a
result of the Terror and dechristianization period that typically define the “atheist militants”
invoiced by historians of the period. 1 Naigeon—the protégé of the Baron D’Holbach—represents
the overt atheist who believed that materialism and the disbelief in God were essential parts of
intellectual progress, and that the spread of these tenets would lead to a happier, more rational
world. The Marquis de Condorcet characterized a more moderate approach to atheism, having
preferred to promote science, mathematics, social change, toleration, and republicanism above
his disbelief in God. The majority of atheists during the eighteenth century were like
Condorcet—unbelievers who viewed religion with skepticism and caution, but who generally
kept their atheism to themselves. For these doubters, atheism in and of itself was not what was
1
Most historians of the French Revolution do not define the dechristianization movement of the Terror as
necessarily being “atheistic” in nature, but some works mention militant atheists as being contributing parties prior
to Robespierre’s establishment of the Cult of the Supreme Being, though few delve deeper into what atheism meant
or who, in fact, was an atheist. See Richard Cobb, The People’s Armies: The Armées Révolutionnaires, Instrument of
Terror in the Departments, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 442-479; Hugh Gough, The Terror in the
French Revolution, (London: MacMillan Press, 1998), 48-49; Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution,
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 97, 108-112.
mattered in society and government, but rather was simply a state of being that did not need to be
promoted as an essential ideological formula. What counted was the promotion of progress and
rational thought, which many radicals and philosophes believed went contrary to the teachings
and political activity of the Church. The Marquis de Sade represents the early-modern stereotype
of the atheist—an immoral, crude libertine who committed offensive acts due to his lack of a
moral compass which many believed could only be found in religion. Sade’s radical pornography
and extreme attacks on religion and morality were exceptional and did not represent the majority
of eighteenth-century atheists, but lingered as an example for anti-atheistic writers to exploit as
proof of the untenable position of atheism as a valid societal norm.
1.1: Atheism and the Enlightenment
Before examining Enlightenment atheists during the French Revolution, a brief
introduction to Enlightenment era atheism is in order. The most common assessment of atheism
by the majority of writers during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a negative view
which claimed that atheism was a source of immorality that needed to be stamped out. 2 In the
seventeenth century, John Locke argued in his A Letter Concerning Toleration that diverse
religious sects should be tolerated within the commonwealth and that this would lead to a more
stable, peaceful society, however, this toleration should not be extended to all systems of belief.
2
For more information on atheism the development of orthodox thought regarding atheism during the Enlightenment
period, see Nigel Aston, Christianity and Revolutionary Europe c. 1750-1830, (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002), 9, 93-102, James Byrne, Religion and the Enlightenment: From Descartes to Kant, (Louisville, KY:
Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 124-149; Peter Harrison, ‘Religion’ and the Religions in the English
Enlightenment, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 26-38; Darrin M. McMahon, Enemies of the
Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity, (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2001), 33-34, 100-101; Roy Porter, The Creation of the Modern World: the Untold Story of the British
Enlightenment, (NY/London: W. W. Norton & Co., 2000), 96-131; James Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible,
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 31-33; W. R. Ward, Christianity under the Ancien Regime, 16481789, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 72-79, 147-150.
17
Locke explicitly excluded atheists—those who did not believe in God or religion—from this call
for toleration. Locke wrote:
Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises,
covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold
upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves
all. Besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion,
can have no pretense of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of
toleration. 3
Locke believed that atheists lacked in motivation or ability to be trustworthy, and that their oaths
were consequently null and void. If one did not believe in God, the omnipotent and ultimate
judge of the heart and mind, what did one swear on? For Locke, the atheist was by definition
dishonest and antithetical to a productive and tolerant society. Locke, in comparison to many
French thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, nonetheless, was relatively generous
to the atheist. The Huguenot David Derodon, author of L’athéisme convaincu—Traité
demonstrant par raisons naturelles qu’il y un Dieu (1659), defined atheists as, “those for whom
debauchery, bad company, or little knowledge of good letters have been so corrupted that they
dare to deny publicly the Being who gave them their being.” 4 For him and many theologians of
the seventeenth and early eighteenth-century, atheists were merely libertines who used atheism
as an excuse for their excessive lifestyles, with many writers claiming that true atheists who did
not believe there was no God probably, themselves, did not exist. For example, the medical
doctor, Guy Patin, remarked:
3
John Locke, A Letter concerning Toleration, A new edition, (Glasgow, 1757), 170-1.
David Derodon, L’athéisme convaincu—Traité demonstrant par raisons naturelles qu’il y un Dieu (Orange, 1659),
4.
4
18
I never have been able to believe that there were any true atheists. The idea of
God is in all men. Those who combat this idea speak at the behest of their own
heart, but they do not follow the lights of their mind. They wish there was no God
to punish their immoralities, and that is the true goal of their sentiments. They
know despite themselves that this God exists. 5
Dozens of other writers of the time agreed—true atheism was impossible, because men innately
knew that God existed. Therefore, atheists were merely debauched villains with no morals, or the
sufferers of madness. 6 As real atheism became more evident, even Voltaire—though no friend to
the Christian religion and a promoter of the abridged writings of Jean Meslier, the first declared
atheist in French history—described the atheist as being a baneful fiend. “The atheist and the
fanatic are two monsters that can devour and tear the body, but the atheistic one in his error
preserves his reason, which cuts him with his own claws, while the fanatic is suffers from a
continual madness that sharpens hers.” 7 To Voltaire, atheism was not conducive to honor or
ethics, was unwelcome in government, and was nearly as noxious as fanaticism. This latter
epithet comparing atheism to “fanaticism,” coming from the anti-fanatical Voltaire, may be the
ultimate insult against the character of the atheist. These conceptions of atheism represent the
views of the majority of people in seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe.
Breakdowns in the consensus on theology, unconventional perceptions and criticism of
the Bible, and the instability created by the Religious Wars resulted in a number of alternative
5
Guy Patin, L’esprit de Guy Patin, tiré de ses conversations, de son cabinet, de ses lettres, et de ses autres ouvrages,
(Amsterdam, 1709), 171.
6
The list of French writings by those who believed atheists to either not exist, to suffer from madness, or to be
immoral libertines is long, with some of the most detailed including Michel Levasseur, Entretiens sur la religion
contre les athées, les déists, et tous les autres ennemis de la foy catholique, (Blois and Paris, 1705); David Augstin
de Brueys, Traité du légitime usage de la raison, principalement sur les objets de la foy. (Paris, 1728); and Noel
Alexandre, Abrégé de la foi et de la morale de l’Eglise…, (Paris, 1686). For a more complete list and further
analysis on the anti-atheistical writings of French theologians, see Alan Charles Kors, Atheism in France, 16501729, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.
7
Voltaire, Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, Tome 17, (Paris: Garnier frères, 1880), 457.
19
views on atheism and God. 8 Thomas Hobbes, inspired by the English civil wars, gave atheism
credibility by suggesting that religion and God were man-made entities designed to explain the
unexplainable, cure anxiety and fear for the future, and to support established regimes. 9 Pierre
Bayle, though not an atheist himself, maintained that a society of atheists was as equally
susceptible to human nature and justice as pagans or even Christians, which included the
capability for demonstrating honor and virtue. 10 Benedict Spinoza further armed atheism,
criticizing the validity of the Bible, miracles, and revelation. Spinoza also presented “God” as
being one and the same as nature, denying any incorporeal spirit and promoting a materialist
view of the world that negated the Cartesian duality of existence. 11 In the eighteenth century,
Julien Offray de la Mettrie perpetrated the idea that morality was a natural condition and that all
things, even those seeming disembodied, were part of the material universe, explaining that the
“soul is only a principle of movement or sensible, material part of the brain, which one can
regard as the machine’s principle spring without fear of being mistaken.” 12 Materialism became
the primary basis for the conception of true atheism in the eighteenth century.
8
See Michael J.Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism,(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987); Lucien
Febvre, The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: the Religion of Rabelais, trans. Beatrice Gottlieb
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982); Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the
Making of Modernity 1650-1750, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical
Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons, and Republicans, (Lafayette, LA: Cornerstone Book Publishers, 2006);
Paul Oskar Kristeller, “The Myth of Renaissance Atheism and the French Tradition of Free Thought,” Journal of the
History of Philosophy 6, 1968; Alan Charles Kors, D’Holbach’s Coterie: An Enlightenment in Paris, (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1976) and Atheism in France, 1650-1729, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1990); R. R. Palmer, Catholics and Unbelievers in Eighteenth Century France, (New York, 1961); Richard Popkin,
The History of Scepticism: From Savanarola to Bayle, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
9
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997), 59-68.
10
Bayle, Pierre. Miscellaneous reflections, occasion’d by the comet which appear’d in December 1680, Vol. 2.
(London, 1708), 221, 269, 329, 349, 353, 365.
11
Jonathan Israel argues that this is why Spinoza was certainly an atheist, in contemporary early modern terms,
despite Spinoza’s rejection of the label himself. By denying the traditional views of providence and the supernatural,
Spinoza was rejecting God as people then understood the deity to be. Israel, Enlightenment Contested, pp. 45-46;
Benedict Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, ed. by Jonathan Israel, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2007).
12
Julien Offray de la Mettrie, L’Homme Machine, (Paris: Numilog, 2001), 34-36.
20
The Enlightenment debate over the role of religion in society and politics, and the
position of the atheist within the context of the Enlightenment, came to a head during the
publication of L’Encyclopédie, edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D’Alembert.
Beginning in 1750, the two philosophes began amassing articles and essays on a wide range of
topics from artisans, mathematicians, physicians, scientists, theologians and other experts and
academics all over Europe in order to create the most complete collection of information ever
assembled. Although written by a variety of men of letters with diverse political beliefs, the
rationale behind orthodox religion and the political power of the Church stood as primary targets
for many articles published in the Encyclopédie, and controversy erupted. Although the
Encyclopédie covered much ground that had little to do with religion and despite the wide range
of theological beliefs among the contributors, a vein of derision and sarcasm aimed at revelatory
religion and faith certainly existed within the numerous volumes. For example, the frontispiece
famously depicted philosophy and truth as linked at the top of the hierarchy, with the figure
representing religion turned away from truth and gazing longingly out at the unknown. Diderot,
who scholars believe converted to atheism sometimes in the late 1740s, wrote articles on
religious “canon” and “Jesus Christ,” emphasizing the inconsistencies in the former term and
mocking the proposed divinity of the latter, with the two combining with scholasticism to form
“a kind of monster.” 13 Nonetheless, in spite of a clear anticlerical and anti-Christianity
philosophy, the Encyclopédie focused primarily on the promotion of science, knowledge,
progress, liberty, and toleration. The attack on orthodox religion and absolutism did not go
unnoticed, however, and opponents to Enlightenment philosophie reacted sternly. The Mercure
13
See Denis Diderot, “Canon” and “Jesus Christ,” Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et
des métiers, etc., eds. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert. (University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie
Project, Spring 2013 Edition), Robert Morrissey (ed), http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/, 2:601-2:604. For more on
Diderot’s atheism, see Michael J. Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism, (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1987), 194-250; Alan Charles Kors, D’Holbach’s Coterie, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 47-50.
21
labeled the Encyclopédie as a representation of “skepticism, materialism, and atheism,” and the
government banned the first two volumes in 1757, declaring the work as seeking to “destroy the
royal authority, to establish an independent spirit of rebellion, and in terms both obscure and
ambiguous, raising the foundations of error , corruption of morals, irreligion and unbelief.” 14 It is
telling that the opponents of the philosophes considered skepticism and atheism to be as
dangerous as treason and rebellion.
The Encyclopédie, however, was far from an atheistic tract despite its frequent skepticism
and critique of orthodox religion and the Catholic Church, and demonstrates the wide diversity
of Enlightenment thought. The definitions of “atheist” and “atheism” given in the Encyclopédie,
written by the Abbé Claude Yvon and the German Huguenot pastor, Johann Formey, respectively,
illustrate this point poignantly. Neither Yvon nor Formey supported atheistic materialism and
were, in fact, practitioners of the Christian religion—Yvon for Catholicism and Formey for
Protestantism. 15 Formey characterized atheism in both, antiquated and modern terms. He begins
his definition by making a surprisingly modern distinction—noting a difference between one
who actively rejects God’s existence and one who passively does not know or believe in God.
Simple ignorance of God does not define atheism. To be charged under the odium
of atheism, one must have the concept of God, and reject it. The state of doubt is
not formal atheism, but rather he who approaches or moves away from belief, in
14
The Mercure passage is quoted in McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment, 126-127. The government document
banning the Encyclopédie is quoted in Robert Morrissey, ed., “Suppression of the First Two Volumes,”
Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, etc., eds. Denis Diderot and Jean le
Rond d'Alembert. University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Spring 2013 Edition),
http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/. For more on the legal, theological, and philosophical debates over the
Encyclopédie, see Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 56-92; John Lough, The Encyclopédie, (New York: D. McKay,
1971), 190-196, 236, 258-266; Philipp Blom, Enlightening the world: Encyclopédie, the book that changed the
course of history, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Daniel Brewer, The Discourse of Enlightenment in
Eighteenth-century France: Diderot and the Art of Philosophizing, (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University
Press, 1993).
15
Jonathan Israel lists Formey as one of the treasonous members of the “moderate Enlightenment,” while Alan
Charles Kors tells how Yvon’s rational theology was ”in keeping with the theological tenor of his age.” Israel,
Democratic Enlightenment, 58, 83, 96; Kors, D’Holbach’s Coterie, 48.
22
proportion to the number of his doubts. We are therefore entitled to treat atheists
as those who openly declare their bias on the dogma of the existence of God, and
they support the negative. This remark is very important because many great men,
both ancient and modern, have been very lightly taxed atheism for attacking false
gods or rejecting some other weak argument, yet concluded in favor of the
existence of the true God. 16
This distinction between the active atheist and the passive atheist, though Formey denies the
term “atheist” for the passive unbeliever, continues to highlight debate over atheism and identity
over two hundred years later. 17 Like other conventional theists, however, Formey repeated
Locke’s warning that atheists could not be trusted with an oath, and viewed atheism as
“unvirtuous,” “degrading,” “dishonest,” and “destitute.” He mourned the deaths of so many
accused unjustly over the centuries of being atheists, but condemned admitted atheists, stating
that “the magistrate has the right to punish those who dare to profess atheism and to destroy them
even if he cannot otherwise rid society of them.” 18 The Abbé Yvon’s definition of “atheist”
mirrors the typical early-modern categorization of the term. He identifies three types of
atheists—ignorant atheists, practical atheists, and speculative atheists—and like Formey, he
denounces the unbelievers as impious fools. 19 Yet despite the orthodoxy of writers such as Yvon,
the government persecuted him and other ecclesiastic clergy who contributed to the
16
Johann Heinrich Samuel Formey, “Atheisme,” Encyclopédie,1:185-1:187.
See Stein, Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Vol. I, 27-29; Dawkins, God Delusion, 24-30, 39-40, 52.
18
Johann Heinrich Samuel Formey, “Atheisme,” Encyclopédie,1:185-1:187.
19
Yvon’s definition of atheists reflects that of theologians going back well into the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. The ignorant atheist was one who had no knowledge or understanding of God, perhaps due to being weakminded or being from a population not exposed to Christianity. The practical atheist was one who actively denied
the existence of God, usually not due to true unbelief, but rather to justify living a libertine and immoral lifestyle.
The speculative atheist, or theoretical atheist, was one who hypothesized about the existence of God and attempted
to philosophically argue in favor of atheism. These were the true atheists and the ones most feared by orthodox
authorities. See Claude Yvon, “Atheist,” Encyclopédie,1:181-1:184. Alan Charles Kors, Atheism in France, 16501729. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), PAGE #.
17
23
Encyclopédie, forcing Yvon to flee to the Netherlands. 20 The debate over the Encyclopédie raged
for over a decade, and Formey and Yvon demonstrate an Enlightenment that may typically have
been radical and progressive, but which could also be orthodox, religious, and even cruel. 21
It is ironic, in light of the presence of such religious figures as Yvon and Formey, that the
most influential and controversial atheist writer of the eighteenth century also was a contributor
to the Encyclopédie. 22 Paul-Henri Thiry, the Baron d'Holbach did not invent any new arguments
for atheism, but he synthesized the criticism of others on religion, the Bible, miracles, and God
and posed them in the form of a directly pro-atheist argument. 23 Few had done this before and
none as boldly and publicly as d’Holbach, though he published his many atheistic writings using
pseudonyms. His decade-long blitz of atheistic writings—including Le Christianisme dévoilé, ou
Examen des principes et des effets de la religion chrétienne (1761), La Contagion sacrée, ou
Histoire naturelle de la superstition (1768), Théologie Portative, ou Dictionnaire abrégé de la
religion chrétienne (1768), Système de la nature ou des loix du monde physique & du monde
moral (1770), Tableau des Saints, ou Examen de l'esprit, de la conduite, des maximes & du
mérite des personages que le christiannisme révère & propose pour modèles (1770), Le Bon
Sens (1772), and La Morale Universelle, ou Les devoirs de l'homme fondés sur la Nature
(1776)—set off a firestorm of controversy, criticism, and increased government crackdowns on
philosophical writings deemed dangerous to society and order. The Baron D’Holbach established
20
Kors, D’Holbach’s Coterie, 48.
Again, see Becker, Heavenly City; Cassirer, Philosophy of the Enlightenment; Gay, Enlightenmen; Darnton,
Literary Underground of the Old Regime; Jacobs, Radical Enlightenment; Goodman, Republic of Letters; Porter,
Creation of the Modern World; Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol.1; Israel, Radical enlightenment; Dupré,
Enlightenment & the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture.
22
Although he emphasizes writers of the “low” Enlightenment in his narrative, Robert Darton’s tables suggest that
the Baron D’Holbach was one of the most widely read writers in France before the Revolution. Robert Darnton,
Forbidden Bestsellers of Pre-Revolutionary France, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996), p. 26-69.
23
Interestingly, D’Holbach was a major contributor to Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, but wrote little of
controversial note, primarily supplying articles on alchemy, chemistry, metallurgy, and natural science. For a
complete list of his articles in the Encyclopédie, see Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et
des métiers, etc., eds. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert. University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie
Project (Spring 2013 Edition), Robert Morrissey (ed), http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/.
21
24
the official Enlightenment view of atheism from the perspective of the atheist himself, focusing
on the breakdown of religion via assault of Christian history and the Bible, connecting the
formation of religion to the tyranny of the monarchy, the promotion of materialism as the more
reasonable explanation for the condition of man and the universe, and the advancement of
atheism as the solution to solving mankind’s misery and unhappiness. D’Holbach summed up
his position in Le Bon Sens:
Is it not more natural and more intelligible to deduce all which exists, from the
bosom of matter— whose existence is demonstrated by all our senses, whose
effects we feel at every moment, which we see act, move, communicate, motion,
and constantly bring living beings into existence— than to attribute the formation
of things to an unknown force, a spiritual being, who cannot draw from his ground
that which he has not himself, and who, by the spiritual essence claimed for him,
is incapable of making anything, and of putting anything in motion? 24
The argument that atheism—the active belief that there was no all-knowing God or deity, no first
cause of the universe, no supernatural occurrences, and no loving or wrathful or even detached
creator of the world—was a legitimate alternative to religion for creating happiness and order in
society was the Baron D’Holbach’s contribution to the eighteenth-century intellectual discourse.
1.2 Naigeon: the Overt Atheist
The Baron D’Holbach’s did not survive to see the French Revolution, but the contributing
partner to this deluge of atheistic publishing did. Jacques-André Naigeon, a young artist and
24
Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron D’Holbach, Le Bon Sens, 23-24.
25
philosophe who was friends with Diderot and a member of the infamous D’Holbach Coterie. 25
While Diderot, also known to be an atheist, preferred to keep his lack of belief in a deity hidden
in his writings, Naigeon adopted D’Holbach’s atheism as his primary philosophy. He helped
promote the Baron’s atheistic writings with Amsterdam publishers and edited some of
D’Holbach’s later works. 26 Naigeon’s one individual addition to D’Holbach’s spread of atheist
propaganda in the late 1760s and early 1770s was Le militaire philosophe ou difficultés sur la
religion proposées au R. P. Malebranche, prêtre de l'oratoire (1768). As with many of the works
of D’Holbach, Naigeon’s Le militaire philosophe added no new arguments to the discussion of
atheism, but rather synthesized the basic arguments against religion as presented by D’Holbach,
Jean Meslier, Diderot, and other writers who preceded him. Naigeon’s piece, however, stopped
short of denying God’s existence, preferring to attack the reasoning behind Christian dogma, the
power of the Pope, and the logical inconsistencies in religion. Naigeon declared:
I find the Christian religion absurd, extravagant, and insulting to God; pernicious
toward men, facilitating and even authorizing plunder against them. The
enticement, ambition, and the interest of its ministers and the secrets of their
families are a revelation. I see Christianity as a source of terrible murders, of
crimes and committed atrocities under the name of God. Religion seems to me a
torch of discord, of hate, of vengeance, and a mask which covers the hypocrite so
he can more skillfully cheat those whose gullibility is useful to him. Finally, I see
25
Although many of Naigeon’s philosophical writings are readily available, not a lot is known about the life of
Naigeon outside of references in letters by the philosophes. The only available biography of Naigeon was written by
the nineteenth-century French philosopher Jean-Philibert Damiron who focused on Naigeon’s writings, rather than
his life. See Jean-Philibert Damiron, Mémoires sur Naigeon, (Geneva: Slatkine, 1852); Friedrich Melchior Grimm,
Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique de Grimm et de Diderot depuis 1753 jusqu'en 1790, Tome
1.(Paris: Furne, 1829-31), iv-vi; Alan Charles Kors, The D’Holbach Coterie: an Enlightenment in Paris, (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 27-29.
26
See Alan Charles Kors, "The Atheism of D'Holbach and Naigeon," Atheism from the Reformation to the
Enlightenment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) and D'Holbach's coterie : an enlightenment in Paris, (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1976).
26
the Christian religion as the shield of tyranny against the oppressed people; and
the scepter of otherwise good Princes who are full of superstition. With this idea
of your religion in mind, besides the right to abandon it, I am now obligated to
renounce it and to view it in horror, to pity or to despise those that continue to
preach it, and to publicly curse those who support religion with their violence and
their persecutions. 27
Thus, Naigeon’s Le Militaire philosophe is less a denial of God’s existence than an attack on the
irrational nature of Christianity and the violence and oppression of Church and government
leadership under the guise of God’s name, making it a typical example of the Enlightenment
assault on religious revelation and superstition. By the beginning of the French Revolution,
however, Naigeon’s atheism would become as overt as D’Holbach’s.
Naigeon was one of the few Enlightenment atheist philosophes who survived to
contribute to the discourse of the French Revolution. In 1790, Naigeon published his Adresse a
l’Assemblée Nationale, sur la Liberté des Opinions, sur celle de la Press, etc. 28 This address
posed two main questions. First, is it necessary for the name of God to be printed in a declaration
of men’s rights? Second, is it possible for the legislature to legitimately and fairly censor the
opinions of the press in regard to the topic of worship? The second question quickly became a
non-issue as the radicalization of the Revolution soon made criticism of Christianity, religion,
and worship commonplace, and Naigeon’s comments presented no new thoughts on the subject.
His answer to the first question, however, exemplifies a watershed moment in the history of
atheism. Naigeon’s treatise on the legitimacy of non-traditional religious opinion and the rights
27
Jacques André Naigeon, Le militaire philosophe ou difficultés sur la religion proposées au R. P. Malebranche,
prêtre de l'oratoire. Par un ancien officier, (Amsterdam, 1768), 82-83.
28
Jacques-André Naigeon, Adresse a l’Assemblée National, sur la Liberté des Opinions, sur celle de la Press, etc.
(Paris, 1790).
27
of man is the first time in France that an atheist openly published an atheistic tract under his own
name. 29
Naigeon Adresse a l’Assemblée Nationale attempted to delegitimize the usage of the
name of God in the legislation and pronouncements of the revolutionary National Assembly,
particularly in the Declaration of the Rights of Man. His arguments broke down into five main
points. First, the usage of God’s name in a treaty on man’s natural rights was unnecessary.
Second, religion and the belief in God were at odds with and were an obstruction to progress.
Third, the addition of the reference to God was dangerous, because its inclusion promoted the
foundation of the new French government on a religion that was inconsistent, vague, and which
promoted passions over reason. Fourth, the overuse of the name of God would lead to its
manipulation and the perpetuation of false beliefs, something with which a proper civil document
should not be involved. Finally, the usage of any reference to religion in the Declaration of the
Rights of Man would be a promotion of the very clergy and Church that impeded the rights of
man in the first place.
Naigeon’s “necessity argument” centered on the reliable nature of man’s rights and the
existence of other writings on the subject which precluded the name of God in their definitions of
rights.
It is only necessary to read with some attention the principles of rights published
in England and France to be convinced that one can produce an excellent
declaration of the rights of man without placing anywhere the name of the
regulating, universal one. Suppose that man depends on God as his religious
teacher, does that make it any less true that his rights are inalienable,
29
The first time in Western civilization that an atheist openly published a tract on disbelief occurred in Great Britain
eight years before. Michael Turner, Answer to Dr Priestley’s Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever, ed. By William
Hammon, (London, 1782).
28
imprescriptible, and sacred than if this necessary link between man and rights
derived from his nature, and consequently his duty? 30
Naigeon insisted that if it was not previously necessary to include God in a treatise on man’s
right, why was it now? Furthermore, Naigeon felt that religion was inconsistent, and that the God
of Christianity was volatile and unpredictable, thereby making religion a poor foundation for
determining morality and the importance of natural rights, and a needless element to the
discussion. Nature, however, was a persistent entity throughout mankind’s history. “Whether
God exists or does not exist,” he posited, “man always remains what he is; his nature is always
the same.” 31 Thus, in order to define man’s rights in a consistent manner, the declaration needed
to be founded on something stable and unchanging, such as the nature of man itself. And if it was
possible to define man’s rights at all without the usage of religious references, logically, God
need not appear in the Declaration of the Rights of Man at all. Fundamentally these are the same
arguments against religion and in favor of natural law that Enlightenment philosophes had made
for much of the preceding century, but Naigeon distinguished his necessity argument by his
insistence that religion’s superfluous nature was due to the non-existence of the great deity
himself.
It is evidently said that God, a religion, and a church must be part of a code, or a
big national charter, but all this scaffolding is absolutely useless in a Declaration
of Rights, when these things do not provide any justice, force, or penalty for such
and such a dogma or such and such a religion in particular. Founded only on the
nature of man, they exist in all their evidence, range, and legitimacy on whatever
hypothesis that one adopts on religion, on the formation of the universe, and on
30
31
Naigeon, Adresse a l’Assemblée Nationale, 14-15.
Naigeon, Adresse a l’Assemblée Nationale, 16.
29
the nature and attributes of their God. And it will always severely be the same, and
absolutely such for all men, when He does not exist. 32
Here he put his cards on the table. When Naigeon mocked the “God that never shows himself,”
he did so because he did not believe God exists, and therefore considered the inclusion of the
“universal creator” in the discussion of man’s rights to be unnecessary. 33
Establishing, from his viewpoint, that God did not exist and that religion was useless and
unnecessary, Naigeon further argued that religion in general was an impediment to progress, and
therefore out-of-touch with the needs of the new era.
It is expedient to not provide an entire abstraction of God in the discussion of all
questions not essentially and exclusively from the spring of theology. It is because
of theology—oh, had no one ever admitted the existence of God—that the
progress of reason has been so slow, so late in all the centuries, and with all the
people’s policies. 34
Naigeon maintained that progress had been slow due to the presence of the concept of God. He
never directly mentioned the subject of revolution, but he implied that the sluggish evolution of
positive intellectual development was the reason the Revolution became necessary. Naigeon
boldly pointed to the accomplishments of Montesquieu and Newton as examples. Their
“fanaticism” in believing in God, he posed, severely limited their accomplishments. As great as
the two intellectual giants were, Naigeon wondered how much greater their contributions to
civilization may have been had they not believed in God. He also noted that while reading
Newton’s greatest work, “one arrives at the end of the book of Principia mathematica not only
without having spoken the name of God, but even without having felt a moment in the course of
32
Ibid, 34-35.
Ibid., 25.
34
Ibid., 26-27.
33
30
his work and its meditations, the need to resort to this Being for reasoning the mechanisms of the
universe.” 35 Naigeon implied that all things can be explained in nature and mathematics, thereby
rendering the idea of God not only unnecessary but in opposition to the progress of modern
society, a viewpoint held by atheists over two hundred years later. 36
Having noted the impediment to progress that religion provided, Naigeon moved on to
more direct criticism of Christianity and the “dangers” it posed to the creation of a free and
liberal state. After declaring that man’s nature remains constant, Naigeon further contended that
man’s fragile needs and sensitive nature required rights that were established on the foundation
of these desires and sensitivities.
(Man) is sensitive, has physical needs and social relationships that are more or
less immediate, more or less extensive, but always real and necessary. One can
deduct the natural rights of man from his physical sensitivities, needs, and social
relationships. His morals and obligations to the social order evidently result from
the same sources, and must not be established on a fundamentally movable and
ruinous base. 37
The “fundamentally movable and ruinous base” Naigeon referred to, of course, was the Christian
religion. Due to the ambiguity of Christian dogma, it was not only an inappropriate source to
base man’s morals and natural rights on, but the potential of religious instability was a threat to
the state.
Nothing is therefore more dangerous, more in contrast to the goal of the wise
legislator, than to secure the rights of man to the existence of God, and morals to
35
Ibid., 29-31.
For example, see Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 137-189.
37
Naigeon, Adresse a l’Assemblée Nationale, 16.
36
31
religion, because all the religious ideas are, by their nature, vague, uncertain, and
vacant. 38
But why did Naigeon think this was such a threat to good legislation? The answer is that he
believed that the dogmas of religion arose from the passions of the people, rather than their
reason, and consequently could promote violence and moral disintegration.
It is the importance that one attaches to religious opinions and to specific religion
in particular that is dangerous and so much in contrast to common sense and good
order. It is this attached importance that relaxes all the springs of the corporate
body that breaks the soft links that exist between men, arming brother against
brother and son against father, and causing the slaughter of citizens by one
another. It is this that turns religion into a destructive blight in the hands of the
priest, a glove which hits indistinctive between people and kings when it does not
find in them submission which it needs to turn them into executioners of
vengeance. It is this importance, in a word, that causes the history of God to be
written in characters of blood in the annals of all the people in the world, while the
shy reason, linked by fear and evasive in front of the imposture and armed
fanaticism of daggers. 39
Thus Naigeon suggested that to include religious opinions and God’s name in political discussion
was to open the movement up to fanaticism and blood. Like many of his revolutionary
contemporaries, Naigeon believed the Catholic Church to be a source of great violence and
oppression, and he feared that its inclusion in the governmental process had great potential for
calamity and disaster. Unlike most of his contemporaries, however, Naigeon based this fear on
38
39
Ibid., 16.
Ibid., 37-38.
32
what he saw as a fundamentally absurd belief that a deity existed. “The strongest dyke that can
oppose the torrent of bad morals,” Naigeon posited, “is the treatise of deism and atheism.” 40 To
believe in God’s participation in the world was irrational and not useful in eliminating corruption
or benefiting the citizens, and to allow this unreasonable belief into the political realm was to
invite further degradation in the logical purpose of the National Assembly. Atheism was the
proper counter to this potential ruin.
Naigeon further suggested a fourth issue regarding the overuse of God’s name, that being
that if the authorities continuously mentioned the Supreme Being, this would further perpetuate
these destructive religious dogmas which threatened national progress.
There is yet another inconvenience in speaking too often the name of God. It is
that then, all ideas turning themselves necessarily to this object, there soon is born
some meditative whose envy legitimizes, so to speak, the titles of the divinity,
verifying the name’s strength, and usually God’s existence and attributes. 41
Perhaps a vague argument, but Naigeon’s point was that by adding the name of God to the text of
important government documents like the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the National
Assembly contributed to the perpetual use of God’s name, which he suggested led to
manipulation by the priests and clergy of the Church. By using the terminology of divinity to
legitimize the work of the government, the alleged characteristics of God—which Naigeon
associated with incongruity and violence—are also, in the minds of those who hear it,
legitimized.
The argument regarding the overuse of God’s name and how this usage further
perpetuates and legitimizes religion was ultimately a set-up to an argument that Naigeon must
40
41
Ibid., 88.
Ibid., 26.
33
have known was a hot topic—the idea that by preserving the language of religion, the new
government gave credence to the very priests and clergy that opposed the National Assembly and
the principles of the French Revolution itself.
The true God of the priest is his own interest. The maintenance of the worship, the
defense and propagation of the religion do not enter for anything into his
calculations, and one can be sure that, when there is no longer any consideration
or special distinction attached to the trade of priests, and when there is no longer
any big profit to be had, then religion and its temples and altars will soon fall into
ruin. 42
By illustrating that the usage of God’s name promoted the power of Church authorities, Naigeon
played on the fears of the revolutionaries, who currently battled conservative priests and
clergymen for the political souls of the French nation. If the National Assembly continued to
promote the name of God, thereby giving credence to the Church, Naigeon suggested that they
essentially endorsed the “strong tyranny of the clergy” and legitimized the opposition.
To flatter one’s self to render tolerant the religion of the state is to be unaware of
how much the priests are hard, insolent, and ferocious to all when they are strong.
One can cut some heads from this vivacious hydra, but they will reemerge to
measure. 43
By demonizing the priests and comparing them to the “vivacious hydra,” a relatively common
metaphor for a growing scourge in society, Naigeon utilized the language of the revolution in
order to promote his vision of an atheistic world with no God or religion. Without outright saying
it, Naigeon argued that atheism and the elimination of the concept of God from the language of
42
43
Ibid., 45-46.
Ibid., 39, 48.
34
government were the secrets to promoting a beneficial, progressive revolution that would
successfully bring to fruition the values and ideals of the Enlightenment.
Naigeon ultimately saw himself as being a representative of the philosophes lumieres,
and presented many points that are commonly thought to be ideals of the Enlightenment era—
including freedom of the press, toleration, rational politics, and a scientific approach to all things,
including social issues. In addition to arguing against the usage of God’s name in the proceedings
of the National Assembly, Naigeon’s Adress a l’Assemblée Nationale vehemently upheld the
importance of freedom of speech and of the press, insisted that legislators not censor public
writing, and generally concerned itself with the promotion of progress and the assurance of
public happiness for the greatest number of citizens. It is perhaps surprising, too, to find that
Naigeon argued in favor of religious toleration and freedom of worship, despite his antagonism
toward religion and his disbelief in God.
All the religions, all the sects, and all different manners of serving and
worshipping God, must vaguely be allowed and authorized protection by the law
and accepted in the state. Indifferent equality in the eyes of reason, the legislator
has to give to all liberty, safety, and justice. By all where there is a dominating
religion, intolerance and fanaticism show their hideous heads and threaten in a
moment the infinity and tranquility of the state, and personal safety and liberty of
all. 44
Ultimately Naigeon believed it was impossible for all people to adopt atheism, and he accepted
that ignorance prevented a Utopian world dominated by unbelievers. By eliminating religion
from government, however, and preventing censorship of atheistic ideas, it was possible to grow
atheism and at least allow for atheists and others to participate in the realm of government and
44
Ibid., 32-33.
35
politics and promote their interests, as well as the welfare of all. “It is necessary,” Naigeon
maintained, “that the Jew, Protestant, Deist, and Atheist be used to fill indiscriminately in the
state all the places where their merit and the superiority of their knowledge calls for it, and that
the catechism of man be not the tariff of his virtues, but rather his talents.” 45 Thus, despite his
atheism, Naigeon envisioned a world in which people of different beliefs could interact and
govern themselves based on merit, rather than hierarchies and arbitrary cultural identities.
Regardless of his toleration of religion outside the political realm, Naigeon’s Adress à
l’Assemblée Nationale remains an atheistic work and it is this that sets it apart from other
writings of the time. In addition to promoting the general ideals of the Enlightenment, he hoped
to protect the welfare of himself and other skeptics. “It must not be that there be any other law
against the deists and atheists,” he argued, “or against this supposed crime that the jurisprudence
of the theologians calls blasphemy, an obscure and vague term by which they designate any
suggestion contradictory to their absurd dogmas and signs, or to their own interests.” 46 Naigeon
maintained that skeptics and disbelievers should clearly be respected above the religious and
allowed to freely espouse their beliefs in public. That an atheist so overtly did this in a time not
long after an era when such expression could be met with certain death, and when other
unbelievers kept to themselves or argued in vague terms or under pseudonyms in fear of
significant political repercussions, was a groundbreaking moment in the history of atheism.
Nonetheless, whereas Naigeon’s contributions to the literature of atheism during the
1790s is substantial, Naigeon’s significant impact on the French Revolution is limited. It is
important to note that Adress á l’Assemblée Nationale was a published address and was not given
45
46
Ibid., 57-58.
Ibid., 89.
36
on the floor of the Assembly, and Naigeon was never elected to serve in office. 47 After the Adress
á l’Assemblée Nationale, he contributed no more writings directly addressed toward the political
situation in France, choosing instead to devote his time to the editing and publication of
philosophical writings, including the complete works of his late friend and mentor, Denis
Diderot, as well as his own Diderot-inspired Encyclopédie Méthodique: Philosophie Ancienne et
Moderne, which attempted to examine the history of philosophy in order to delineate the
intellectual progress of mankind. Interestingly, Diderot had asked him to “publish only those
works that would harm neither my memory, nor anyone’s peace,” but Naigeon believed the
works, especially the previously unpublished pieces that expressed Diderot’s atheism more
explicitly, to be of utmost importance. 48 Naigeon’s edition of Diderot’s writings helped expose
his friend’s writings and philosophy to generations of readers, probably contributing more to the
history of atheism than his own intellectual endeavors.
1.3 Condorcet: the Subtle Atheist
The Marquis de Condorcet’s approach to atheism was less direct and more complex than
Naigeon’s overt unbelief, and was akin to that of the majority of religious skeptics during the
time period in that his atheism was not publicly declared in writing. Condorcet differed from
Naigeon in that Condorcet was an Enlightenment philosopher who happened to be an atheist,
while Naigeon was an atheist who happened to be an Enlightenment philosopher. In other words,
47
It is difficult to say how many people read Naigeon’s Adresse, but André Morellet, considered to be one of the last
philosophes despite being anti-Revolution and an opponent of Naigeon, later complimented the Adresse for its
stance on liberty and toleration, though he was critical of its overt atheism. André Morellet, Mémoires inédits de
l'abbé Morellet,... sur le dix-huitième siècle et sur la Révolution, Vol. 2, (Paris: Baudouin, 1822), 387-402. Also see
Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 74, 899-901, 934; Damiron, Memoires sur Naigeon, 41-44.
48
Denis Diderot, Correspondance, Vol. XII, ed. Georges Roth (Paris, 1755-1770), 231.
37
atheism was not the dominant philosophical trait in Condorcet’s writings and activities. Rather
than actively promoting his atheism, Condorcet typically chose to keep his personal unbelief to
himself, allowing his faith in nature, science, and mathematics to imply his religious beliefs. This
distinction between Naigeon and Condorcet is important, as Naigeon’s overt atheism stands as an
exceptional ideology for the period, whereas Condorcet’s subtle unbelief illustrates the nuances
of belief that typically characterized the Enlightenment. It is widely accepted by historians from
Condorcet’s Enlightenment relationships and writings as a whole—his staunch anti-clericalism
beginning with his Lettre d’une Théologien in 1775, his stringent rejection of the legitimacy of
religion, his acceptance of scientific materialism, his insistence that everything can be explained
in nature and mathematics, as well as references to him by contemporaries who knew him, such
as Voltaire, Turgot, Friedrich Grimm, and Thomas Jefferson—that he was an atheist. 49 However,
like his friend Denis Diderot, Condorcet did not overtly declare his disbelief in God to anyone
but his friends, nor did he focus his writings and philosophy on atheism and materialism like
Naigeon and D’Holbach. Twentieth-century historian J. Salwyn Shapiro even wrote , “From his
writings it is difficult to tell if Condorcet was an atheist or deist,” and few recent scholars spend
time contending with his skepticism of God’s existence, because Condorcet’s focus and influence
lie in his writings on mathematics, social reform, tolerance, and liberal republicanism. 50 The
closest thing to a “smoking gun” that implicates his atheism is an exchange of letters between
Condorcet and Turgot in which the latter questioned the tenets of materialism and instead
49
See Friedrich Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique de Grimm et de Diderot depuis 1753
jusqu'en 1790. Tome 11, (Paris: Furne, 1829-1831), 52; Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to Thomas Law,” June 13, 1814.
50
See J. Salwyn Shapiro, Condorcet and the Rise of Liberalism, (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1934),
170-186; Keith Michael Baker, Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics, (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1975), 27-35, 183-189; Ian McLean and Fiona Hewitt, Condorcet: Foundations of
Social Choice and Political Theory, (Aldershot, UK: Edward Elgar Pub. Ltd., 1994), 3-78; Emma Rothschild,
Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2001), 191-217; David Williams, Condorcet and Modernity, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 1-9.
117-138.
38
promoted a metaphysical dualism and first cause of motion (or God), to which Condorcet
replied:
I read with great pleasure your thoughts, but I do not like that you fall from
physics into mythology. I am surer of the existence of my mind than my body, but
I have no certainty of the existence of other minds, but only a very high
probability of them. And as for the existence of a general cause, the probability
seems to me an almost vanishing quantity. 51
The “general cause” likely refers to God, with the debate over what initiates motion and gravity
being a common discussion regarding whether or not a deity exists, but nonetheless Condorcet’s
response remains ambiguous. Thus is cannot be stated with absolute certainty what Condorcet
did and did not believe about God, only implied, and this makes Condorcet a premier example of
what exemplified the typical Enlightenment atheist.
One of the few writings to resemble an “atheistic tract” published by Condorcet was an
early work, Lettres d’une Théologien à l’auteur du Dictionnaire des trois siècle, published
anonymously in 1774. The Lettre d’une Théologien was in response to a work written by the
abbé Antoine Sabatier, whose Trois siècles de notre littérature, in light of the spread of atheistic
literature written by Naigeon and the Baron D’Holbach, severely denounced the philosophes as a
cabal of vanity and ignorance, and attempted to discredit them by demonstrating the strength of
orthodox thinking through a listing of centuries of significant religious writers and theologians. 52
Rather than declaring God non-existent, however, Condorcet merely lambasted Sabatier’s attacks
on philosophy and the absurdities of revealed religion, much in the same vein as Voltaire and the
writers of the Encyclopédie. The closest thing to a denial of God in the work was a criticism of
51
Condorcet, Correspondance inédite de Condorcet et de Turgot 1770-1779, ed. by Charles Henry, (Paris: Charavay
frères, 1883), 177-178.
52
Antoine Sabatier, Trois siècles de notre littérature, (Amsterdam, 1774), v.
39
the author’s inclusion of thirty-seven “proofs” of God’s existence, with Condorcet suggesting
that “when one provides so many proofs, it shows that the author is dissatisfied with the first
thirty-six.” 53 At one point Condorcet condemned Sabatier for labeling Helvetius an atheist, an
accusation Condorcet called a “libel.” 54 So Condorcet’s inflammatory work critiquing the
enemies of the Enlightenment was hardly a work of atheism.
In light of the heated response to the philosophes because of D’Holbach’s Système de la
Nature, and the fact that many attributed Condorcet’s Lettres to Voltaire himself, Voltaire was not
pleased. Prior to the publication of Condorcet’s attack on Sabatier, Voltaire had already warned
the young philosophe that “there are atheists and atheists like there are bundles of sticks and
bundles of sticks. Spinoza was too intelligent not to admit that there is intelligence in nature. The
author of the Système does not reason as well as Spinoza, and declaims a lot too.” 55 Voltaire was
suggesting to Condorcet that admitting some sort of universal creator or power was essential to
even a modern philosophy. Three years later, Condorcet took a stronger stand and responded in a
letter to Voltaire.
One should reproach you for screaming at the atheistic ones. I admit that it was
wrong for them to write such rants and to write them as such great lengths. I
confess that it was useless to say that it is dangerous for deism to take to
superstition, and that it is not a question of superstition heading towards deism. I
also admit that it is a bit clumsy to want to let the absurd and bloody collapse of
superstition depend on the decision of a metaphysical question that will remain
obscure a long time, and maybe always. But the atheistic ones are under the knife,
53
Condorcet, Lettres d’un Theologien à l’Auteur du Dictionnaire des Trois Siècles, (Berlin, 1774), 38.
Ibid., 59.
55
Condorcet, “Voltaire to Condorcet, Sept. 1772,” Oueuvres of Condorcet Tome I, (Paris: Firmin Didot frères, 1847),
29.
54
40
and the knife that the gouges them will soon dip itself in the blood of the deists as
well. So let us not speak poorly of the atheists. 56
Although Condorcet did not specifically admit to atheism, it is clear that Voltaire suspected his
youthful influence to lean away from theism, and Condorcet subsequently presented himself as at
least sympathetic to atheism. For the next two decades Condorcet published dozens of works
promoting science and mathematics as the best explanation of all things, as well as the most
probable solution to problems, scientific and social alike. However, none of these works were
overtly atheistic.
Nonetheless, the “atheist” Condorcet was the most influential and well-known of the
High Enlightenment philosophes to survive and participate in the French Revolution. His status
as a great scientist and mathematician, as well as his willingness to promote republicanism and
equality despite his original station as a Marquis brought him considerable respect at the
beginning of the Revolution. He served as a representative of Paris and became secretary of the
National Assembly in 1791, and quickly contributed several discourses on republicanism,
citizenship, education, women’s suffrage, and slavery, while contributing to the Girondist attempt
to write a new constitution. Condorcet, however, wrote very little specifically about religion or
the existence of God while serving in the National Assembly. The journal Chronique du
Mois/Chronique de Paris that Condorcet edited from 1791 through 1792 reprinted the speeches
and decrees of the revolutionary government and presented the usual anti-clerical and antiCatholic sentiments that typified the rhetoric of the Revolution, but nothing overtly atheistic
appeared under his name. He did deny the legitimacy of the link between the monarchy and any
sort of mystic or spiritual hereditary mode of perpetuation, declaring in his writings questioning
the legitimacy of the hereditary absolutism that “we no longer live in a time or dare to be
56
Condorcet, Oueuvres of Condorcet Tome I, (Paris: Firmin Didot frères, 1847), 87.
41
amongst those who ensure the power of laws through the impious superstition some men make
out to be some kind of divinity.” 57 In other words, monarchs did not derive their powers from
God, but rather utilized religious faith as a means for promoting the legitimacy of their rule.
Condorcet did not actively promote atheism, but he outright rejects the validity of divine right of
rule, and always seemed to assume there was no Supreme Being or other-worldly impact on the
events and actions of the real world.
Condorcet is perhaps most famous for his Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de
l'esprit humain (Sketch for the History of the Progress of the Human Mind), which represents one
of the premier outlines of the Enlightenment belief in the potential for mankind to achieve
perfection, and is the most atheistic of all his publications. Writing the work while on in hiding
from the Montangard authorities of the Revolution after his relative moderation ran up against
their radicalization, the optimism and hope of the Equisse was extraordinary, though his anticlericalism and criticism of religion remained radical. Condorcet again did not blatantly deny
that there was a God in the Esquisse, but the work illustrated his perception of the evolution of
human thought from superstitious antiquity to the scientific Enlightenment thinking of the
eighteenth century, and for Condorcet this meant the elimination of religious influence on society
and politics. Condorcet believed that mathematics and science could resolve, in addition to issues
of arithmetic and physics, many of the problems involved in ordinary social and political
situations and that “truth” did not require a universal creator. Religion, on the other hand, was
merely a method for controlling the minds of the people invented by those looking to rule over
others. Discussing the early days of civilization, Condorcet explained:
57
Condorcet, De La République, ou Un Roi est-il nécessaire à la conservation de la liberté?, (Paris, 1791), 5.
42
Men of deception began to usurp authority over people’s opinions based on fears
and chimerical hopes. Their grandiose belief systems established more regular
worship and promoted ideas of supernatural powers. With the creation of these
concepts, we can locate throughout history pontiffs and princes whose families or
priestly tribes always ruled as a class of individuals affected by insolent
prerogative, separating men to better control them, and seeking to seize the
knowledge of medicine and astronomy for use in subduing men’s minds, rather
than to unmask their hypocrisy and break their chains. 58
Condorcet viewed science as a means for freeing man from the bondage of ignorance, and
religion as a chain used by power-hungry rulers to keep people ignorant and their thoughts
enslaved. He illustrated this belief through historical analysis and criticism of the civil religion of
the Romans, the rise of Islam, and the developments of Catholicism and Protestantism, though he
gave some credit to Martin Luther for promoting independent thinking amongst his followers.
Ultimately, however, Condorcet promoted materialism and science as the only methods by which
the universe could truly be understood, and he contended that religion stood in the way.
If we confine ourselves to simply showing the advantages and utility of science
compared to that of religion, or in their applications to the arts or for the welfare
of individuals or to the prosperity of nations, we would still have shown how
weak are the benefits of religion. Most important perhaps is to destroy the
prejudices and recover human intelligence, the latter of which has had to bow to
false directions and absurd beliefs, transmitted to the children of each generation,
with the terrors of superstition and fear of tyranny. All errors in politics and
58
Condorcet, Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain, (Paris: Chez Agasse, Year III), 35-36.
43
morality are based on philosophical errors that themselves are related to physical
errors. In other words, there is neither a religious system nor a supernatural
extravagance that is not based on ignorance of the laws of nature. The inventors
and proponents of this nonsense could not predict the subsequent development of
the human mind. 59
This may be the closest Condorcet came to a blatant, written denial of God’s existence. He not
only rejected the legitimacy of any and all religions, but declared all supernatural and nonscientific beliefs as being null and void. Only science and the study of nature could unveil the
secrets of the universe, Condorcet argued, and although he did not deny God, he implied that the
necessity for such a being did not exist.
Condorcet frequently wrote in terms of "finding truth" through usage of scientific
methods and mathematical formulas, previously utilizing both to explain voting patterns and
political tendencies of the nation, as well as to defend his positions on republicanism, toleration,
and equality. In the sense of believing in human progress and the power of science, he was an
ideal example of the Enlightenment philosophe, yet his atheism took him a step further. If
Voltaire believed that mankind could achieve things that had previously been unthinkable due to
increased developments in reason and science, Condorcet added that he did this on his own
volition and without any "supreme being" playing a role in this development whatsoever. Yet,
unlike the Baron D'Holbach and Naigeon, he did not actively promote atheism as an essential
and primary philosophy, but rather relied on the logic of his mathematical, scientific, and
political arguments to imply the superiority of his atheistic position. This atheism, however, was
not the key part of his legacy, but rather it was his emphasis on progress and his activities in the
Revolution that set him apart as a significant figure during the eighteenth century. Although
59
Ibid., 308-309.
44
Condorcet never attained the revolutionary era importance of Mirabeau, Danton, or Robespierre,
he played a key role in the development of the radical Revolution, though his opposition to the
violence of the Terror and the radicalism far-left eventually ran him afoul with Montagnard
authorities, including Robespierre and the atheistic Chaumette. Condorcet’s ultimate vision of a
rational society and government founded on equality, toleration, and “social mathematics” never
materialized and arguably he represents the failure of the Enlightenment to take hold in the
French Revolution. 60
Nonetheless, Condorcet remains an inspirational figure for those who believe in reason
and do not see him as an embodiment of the “cold” Enlightenment. Often religious people
antagonistic toward atheism sarcastically retort that "there are no atheists in fox holes," implying
that when faced with death, even the most steadfast of unbelievers will find themselves praying
to the God almighty for deliverance. It should be noted that Condorcet's final testament, as well
as a letter written to his daughter, exists from his final days as he attempted to escape the
Revolutionary authorities. Knowing that he would likely never see his daughter again, he
bequeathed to her instructions on how to live her life and be happy, as well as asking her
relatives to care for her well-being. He did not mention his atheism or other major philosophical
tenants, but rather instructed Eliza on finding happiness in her mind and thoughts, and
encouraged her to be non-vengeful, charitable, and of good virtue. In religious terms, one might
call his words "moral advice." There was no sign of conversion or regret, and his final words to
his daughter put a human “face” on the Enlightenment atheist. In the end, as Bayle suggested a
60
Jonathan Israel sees Condorcet as being the embodiment of how the radical Enlightenment usurped the early
Revolution, and ultimately blames the proceeding violence and radicalism of the Revolution on Robespierre and the
Jacobins and their failure to embrace the views of the likes of Condorcet. See Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 1522, 775-779, 904-907.
45
century before, atheists could be virtuous, and Condorcet further illustrated that they could
remain non-believers, even in the face of death.
1.4 Sade: the Libertine Atheist
The Marquis de Sade was an exceptional character who is difficult to place within the
history of the Enlightenment and French Revolution. On one hand he was a philosophe who
wrote an abundant amount of philosophical and fictional works, most famously in the genres of
pornography and libertinism. On the other hand, his influence mostly is found in the interest
drummed up by the depravity of his stories and his promotion of the sexual activities that now
bear his name, rather than his intellectual contributions to science or politics. During the French
Revolution he represented the far left, but unlike Condorcet, he is not considered to have been
extremely influential. After spending over a decade imprisoned in Vincennes and the Bastille for
his acts of blasphemy and sexual deviancy, on July 2, 1789 he infamously yelled out his window
at the Bastille to the crowd below that the guards were murdering the prisoners, allegedly to
punish the warden for restricting his movement within the prison. The end result was that the
warden transferred the Marquis to Vincennes again, a few days after which the Parisian mob
stormed the Bastille. When the revolutionary government abolished the lettre de cachet the
following year, Sade was free and served as secretary and vice-president for the section of Piques
on the National Convention, helping write pamphlets on the state of Parisian hospitals, the need
for direct vote by the public, and the veneration of Marat. His aristocratic background, criticism
of Robespierre, and atheism eventually landed him back in prison, where he narrowly escaped
46
the guillotine—political stalling until the Terror ended prevented his sentence from being carried
out. 61
Indeed, the Marquis de Sade was an atheist, but he differed from Condorcet in that he
overtly wrote on the subject, and diverged from Naigeon in that his atheism was not the primary
concept of his philosophy. Rather, de Sade represents the stereotypical excesses of the atheism
and the Enlightenment—extremes that counter-revolutionaries envisioned and feared the most
when imagining the results of the end of traditional orthodoxy. He was the poster child for what
theologians for two centuries had warned would be the characteristics of the atheist—immoral,
violent, debauched, revolutionary, and libertine. Yet the Marquis was still a philosophe who put
forth a radical materialist philosophy that justified these alleged “immoralities” as being merely
the logical giving-in to urges and desires that were biologically natural. Sade rejected the idea of
a natural man whose sexual functions singularly linked to procreation and the promotion of
Christian and social morals that he found arbitrary and illogical. Instead he proposed in Histoire
de Juliette (1797):
To be despotic is the primary desire inspired by us by a nature whose law could
not be more unlike the ludicrous one usually described to her, the substance of
which is not to do unto others that unto which ourselves we would not have
done… but rather I affirm that the fundamental, most profound, and keenest
penchant in man is incontestably to enchain his fellow creatures and to tyrannize
them with all his might. 62
61
For more on the life of the Marquis de Sade, see Gilbert Lély, The Marquis de Sade, a Biography (New York:
1961); Lawrence Lynch, The Marquis de Sade, (Boston: Twayne, 1984); Maurice Lever, Sade, a Biography, Trans.
by Arthur Goldhammer, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, m1998); Neil Schaeffer, The Marquis de Sade: a
Life, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999).
62
Marquis de Sade, Oeuvres, Vol. III, ed. by Michel Delon,(Paris: Gallimard, 1998), 459.
47
The Marquis de Sade believed that man was naturally selfish, and that traditional morals were a
façade, and although the phrase is anachronistic, he essentially believed decency to be a “social
construct,” rather than a naturally occurring phenomenon. Therefore what others perceived as
sexual deviancy in his writings and sexual exploits, including his committing of rape and
physical abuse, were merely his submission to his natural urges, which in his mind was more
scientifically “normal.” This same basic view of nature contributed as well to his opinions on
atheism. 63
It is true that many appearances of atheism in the writings of the Marquis de Sade occur
in his pornographic fiction, suggesting that he was using irreligion as a basis for legitimizing his
sexual sadism and violence, but these references suggest his libertine stories were more than just
an assault on religious restrictions on sexuality. 64 Fiction stood as a relatively safe format for
expressing controversial viewpoints, being that the author could hide behind the veil of
imagination, and de Sade’s views on God played as much of a role in his fantasies as his erotic
interests. In his introduction to Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome, a work written in 1785 that
63
For more on the philosophy of the Marquis de Sade, see Pierre Kosslowski, Sade my neighbour, trans. by
Alphonso Lingis (Northwestern University Press, 1991; originally published in 1947); Lester G. Crocker, Nature
and Culture: Ethical Thought in the French Enlightenment, (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1963); Michel
Foucault, The History of Sexuality, An Introduction, (New York: Vintage Books, 1990); Annie Le Brun, Sade: Aller
et Detours, (Paris: Plon, 1989); Michael Shapiro, “Eighteenth Century Intimations of Modernity: Adam Smith and
the Marquis de Sade,” Political Theory, Vol. 21, No. 2, (May, 1993), 273-293; Phillippe Sollers, Sade contre l'Être
suprême. (Paris: Gallimard, 1996); Caroline Warman, Sade: from materialism to pornography, (Oxford: Voltaire
Foundation, 2002) . It should be noted that at least one historian, Donald Thomas, rejects the idea that any serious
philosophy can be found in the writings of Sade. He argues that the Marquis was deranged and unstable, and that his
so-called “philosophy” was merely an attempt to validate his deviant actions. Considering the unique nature of his
works and his influence on popular culture, as well as academia (as evident in the writings noted above), this is a
difficult position to sustain, despite the pornographic curiosities found in Sade’s fiction. Donald Thomas, The
Marquis de Sade, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978).
64
Some biographers claim that atheism of de Sade is in doubt, citing his “unconvincing extremism,” desire to
legitimize his sexuality, and the fact that many of his characters actively attack holy items and verbally assault God.
Sade’s consistency in claiming to be an atheist and denying God’s existence over many decades, however, especially
in his letters and non-fiction works that some of these authors do not discuss, suggest that he truly and actively did
not believe a God existed, and was therefore a “modern” atheist. For the opposing position, however, see James R.
Weiss, Marquis de Sade’s Veiled Social Criticism: the Depravities of Sodom as the Perversities of France,
(Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2008), 11-17, 89; Lever, Sade, a Biography, 123.
48
is a catalogue of rape, sexual abuse, incest, and orgies, de Sade argued that the fact that these
libertine acts even existed was sufficient to prove that there was no God.
One knows only well too that it is impossible for these fools take on those who
abhor religion and renounce the idea of this infamous god of theirs. What they
persuade themselves, these stupid creatures, is that the existence of God is not
merely a madness that has twenty sects in the world today, and that the religion
that it invokes is only a ridiculously invented fable by deceitful people whose
interest is only to cheat us. In a word, decide yourself: if there was a god and this
god had true power, would it allow that the virtue that honors your profession to
be sacrificed as it will to vice and libertinage? 65
Insert “priests” or “clergy” in for the “deceitful people,” and de Sade begins to sound like the
revolutionary radical he posed as only five years later, but more important is the fact that de Sade
denied the existence of a God. He did not simply promote the libertine lifestyle. He made it clear
that he believed religion to be more than merely a Voltare-inspired infâme, but rather that its
basis on the existence of a deity was a “madness” founded on the lies of the authorities. In La
Philosophie dans le Boudoir, finished in 1795 subsequent to his second release from prison after
the Terror, the characters Dolmance and the Madame explained to the naïve Eugenie that the
Christian God was an “appalling monster” and a “barbarous being” that tortured his creations
and allowed the Devil to tempt them into eternal torment. Again, de Sade did not merely critique
Christianity, but declared God an “illusion,” “fable,” and “absurdity.” All things could be
explained in nature, his characters asserted, and even to declare (as Spinoza did) that God and
65
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, Oeuvres, Tome II, ed. by Michel Delon, (Paris: Gallimard, 1995),
68.
49
nature are one and the same is “an act of stupidity.” 66 To confirm these theories in action, the
philosophizing concluded with the characters engaging in erotic acts and blasphemies against
God not unlike those that put de Sade in prison nearly twenty years before. Nonetheless,
although the whole of his fictional works suggests a definitely disbelief in the universal creator,
it does not mean that de Sade did not seek to legitimize his actions. In Aline et Valcour, ou le
Roman Philosophique, written in 1788 and published in 1795 and the first fictional work de Sade
released under his own name, de Sade declared the benefit of being a unbeliever.
I believed that if there actually existed a God, it was impossible that it would
punish its creatures for the defects placed on them by his own hand; and that to
compose a reasonable code, I had to regulate myself on his justice and on his
tolerance. What the atheist has decided became a thousand times more preferable
to the admission of a God, the worship of which would oppose itself to the
happiness of all humanity. There was less danger to not believe in the existence of
this God at all, that which to some appeared to be an enemy of man. 67
Here he explained how the libertine motives meshed well with atheism—if the vengeful God of
Christianity punished men for being only human, then this was not a God that was reasonable,
and therefore it was not worth altering his lifestyle. This, however, does not necessitate that Sade
believed in God, but rather illustrates that he was fully aware of how being an atheist impacted
his status in society and his ability to experience what he wanted to within that society.
Perhaps the best summary of what the Marquis de Sade did and did not believe in regard
to God’s existence can be found in his 1782 work, Dialogue entre un prêtre et un moribund, in
66
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, Oeuvres, Tome III, ed. by Michel Delon, (Paris: Gallimard, 1995),
27-32.
67
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, Oeuvres, Tome I, ed. by Michel Delon, (Paris: Gallimard, 1995),
676..
50
which a priest arrived to give a dying man his last rites, only to have his own believes critiqued
to the point where the clergyman himself came to question what is true and what is not. After
asking the dying man whether or not he believed in God, the man answered:
No, and for a simple reason—it is perfectly impossible to believe what one does
not understand. Between comprehension and faith, there exists an immediate
problem; that comprehension is the first food of faith, and with ineffective
comprehension, faith is dead, and so are the ideas of faith that some pose. I
challenge you yourself to believe in the God that you preach to me, because you
would never know me to try and demonstrate it, because it is not in you to define
for me that which you yourself do not understand. As soon as you do comprehend
it, you no longer can furnish me a reasonable argument, because all that is above
the boundaries of the human mind is a pipe dream or utter uselessness. That your
God could able to be only the one or the other of these things, in the first case I
would be insane to believe, a fool in the second. My friend, prove to me that there
is no inertia in matter, and I will grant you the Creator. Prove to me that nature
does not suffice itself for itself, and I will allow you to him suppose a master. I
return only to the evidence. I believe the sun, because I see it. I conceive it as the
center of all the inflammable material of nature; its periodic march across the sky
pleases me without astonishing me. 68
As with his views on morality and selfishness, ultimately the Marquis de Sade’s position on the
existence of God was similar to that of Naigeon and the Baron D’Holbach in that he believed
that all things could be explained in nature, and therefore God was unnecessary and a man-made
illusion. There was no need for a divine first cause, because movement occurred organically.
68
Ibid., 5.
51
There was no need for a malevolent or benevolent creator, because all morals and actions were
caused by the materials of the brain.
The Marquis de Sade broke away from Naigeon and D’Holbach, however, in regards to
his final conclusion on what this meant for mankind. D’Holbach’s primary message was that
religion was the cause of much of man’s misery and suffering, and due to its focus on science
and the natural, atheism would bring mankind peace, morality, order, and happiness. Although
D’Holbach frequently quoted Thomas Hobbes for support on his materialism and rejection of
religion, he disagreed with Hobbes on one fundamental idea—the nature of man. In the
seventeenth century Hobbes argued that man was naturally created equal, but was just as
instinctively selfish and antagonistic, thereby ensuring misery as each man battled to gain and
keep what they desired. 69 D’Holbach, and subsequently Naigeon, firmly disagreed and argued
that nature was morally neutral, and therefore man was born neither good nor evil, with good and
evil being concepts conceived of by man in reaction to his positive and negative experiences.
Ultimately vice and virtue were matters of habit and experience, and therefore if men created a
positive environment—one D’Holbach surmised could only be achieved in an atheistic society
without religion—then people would develop consistently into virtuous, happy beings. 70 The
Marquis de Sade, however, adopted Hobbes’ perspective on the nature of man, believing it to be
a fact of nature that man was innately selfish and self-serving. As a result the writings of Sade
espoused anarchy, depravity, and self-fulfillment. God was a “machine made to serve our
passions,” man had need for “vice as well as virtue,” and laws were merely “principles designed
to fulfill some men’s wills and needs.” 71
69
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1997), 68-72.
Baron D’Holbach, Système de la Nature, Vol.I, (Hildesheim, Germany: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1966),
143-186.
71
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, Oeuvres, Tome I, ed. by Michel Delon, (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), 6.
70
52
Whether the Marquis de Sade firmly believed that God did not exist and that nature was
characterized by anarchy and self-gratification, or if he merely advocated these philosophies to
justify or explain his sexual desires and inherent psychosis is debatable. His actions during the
French Revolution, on the surface, may seem to cast mixed messages on the subject of his beliefs
about man’s propensity for or against morality and virtue. The French aristocrat embraced the
Revolution, wrote treatises on equality and toleration, and played an active role in promoting the
rights and values of his section. He was well-liked and received several promotions, and on
September 29, 1793 he was even called on to read to the National Convention what ultimately
can be described as a religious homage to Marat and le Pelletier:
Unique goddess of the French, holy and divine liberty, allows that to the feet of
such altars shed us again some tears on the loss of your two more faithful friends;
we leave to weave cypresses to the oak garlands of which ourselves surround you.
These bitter tears purify your acclaims, and do not extinguish it; they are a more
homage to all those than our hearts present you... 72
Although not necessarily a “theistic” approach to a eulogy, the speech was clearly a call for ritual
and worship of reason and revolutionary virtue, and “Citizen” Sade spoke his words as if
presenting them to the spiritual souls of the men he honored, almost as if he believed they would
hear him.
A closer look at his writings and actions suggests that these reactions to the political
events surrounding him were firmly within the confines of his philosophy. For one thing, the
confusion and violence of revolution clearly supported his view that life was naturally erratic and
full of danger. In addition to supporting his Hobbesian view of nature, his actions proved to be
72
Marquis de Sade, “Dicours prononcé à la fête décernée par la Section des Piques, aux mânes de marat et de le
pelletier, par Sade, citoyen de cette section, et membre de la Société populaire,” Crimes of Love, and Other Works,
(Project Gutenberg, EBook # 28718, 2009), 272.
53
quite selfish and in-line with the viewpoint that man acted for self-preservation and selffulfillment. By accepting and participating in the French Revolution, Sade salvaged his life, as
his aristocratic background made him susceptible to suspicion and likely execution if he did not
demonstrate himself every bit the revolutionary as the sans-culottes around him. Furthermore,
his popularity allowed him to have his plays produced and his writings published with few
repercussions. Yet all these acts of patriotism hid the fact that the Marquis de Sade found the
Revolution to be ugly and his sense of nobility made him feel like an outsider. On the day of
Marie Antoinette’s execution, he reprinted the final words of the former queen in his journal:
“Words of Marie Antoinette at the Conciergerie: The ferocious beasts who surround me every
day invent some new humiliation to add to the horror of my fate. Drop by drop they distill in my
heart the poison of adversity; they delight in counting my sighs, and while waiting to bathe
themselves in my blood, they satisfy their thirst with my tears.” 73
The only problem with this reproduction is that Citizen Sade was not present at the
execution, and therefore had no way to know what Antoinette said or did not say. The words
were his and expressed his own fears and anxieties regarding the French Revolution and what it
may lead to, especially in regards to his own fortune. With his political hypocrisy soon to be
revealed and no God to comfort him, his uncertainty for the future must have been a frightening
thing to face.
On December 8, 1793 two commissars from the revolutionary committee appeared at the
door of the Citizen Sade, searched the premises, and arrested him for suspicious correspondence
with enemies of France, but not before he wrote and mailed a letter to a friend, the Cardinal de
Bernis. That letter, which remained unpublished until being printed as Contre l’Être Supreme in
1989, detailed Sade’s dissatisfaction with the direction the Revolution was heading, especially in
73
Marquis de Sade, Ouevres Complètes, Vol. 15, (Paris: Cercle du livre précieux, 1966-67), 15.
54
regards to religion. The letter described the violence and hypocrisy of the Terror and
Robespierre’s establishment of the Cult of the Supreme Being, comparing the new civil religion
to Christianity.
The majority is already rallied to the cause of the Supreme Being, they will
provide tomorrow's troops and engage in pagan worship, a rather blood-soaked
paganism. Christianity is bearable only if it preserves paganism. No doubt this is
another chimerical and vain being that appears for the punishment of mankind.
Speak for me, Holy Father, for chimera to chimera, and though completely
hypocritical and laughable, at least this has the advantage of having populated the
shrines of the most pleasant bacchanalia of history. 74
Sade found it absurd that Robespierre would promote a religion for the people based on a deity,
especially in light of a revolution so violently expelling Catholicism, which had been labeled by
the revolutionaries as too bloody and destructive. For a figure deemed by history as being
depraved and insane, the Marquis de Sade, if only for his own self-preservation, proved to be
astute in the face of revolutionary calamity. His imprisonment for his “crimes against the state”
lasted for over a year, and he escaped the guillotine only because the Terror did not survive his
appeals.
Ultimately the significance of the godless aspects of the lives and writings of these
“Enlightenment atheists” rests on three points. First, Naigeon, Condorcet, and Sade represent the
complexity of atheism; a term frequently oversimplified and stereotyped. 75 Three unique
74
Marquis de Sade, Contre l’Être Supreme, (Paris: Quai Voltaire, 1989), 25.
There is a tendency for authors today, atheist and theist alike, to oversimplify what it means to be an “atheist” (or
for that matter, "religion”); categorizing unique perspectives and individual identities as a singular entity in order to
inflate the number of existing atheists as a whole, or misrepresent these diverse views in order to delegitimize
opposing political and intellectual agendas. For example, Gordon Stein and Richard Dawkins both painstakingly
insist on a specific “correct” definition in order to legitimize atheism—maintaining that “denial” of God is not a part
of what it means to be an atheist, thus making many who do not claim to be atheists fall under the umbrella of
75
55
eighteenth-century types of atheists that can be identified leading into the French Revolution—
the overt materialist atheist who founded his philosophy on the promotion of an active disbelief
in God, the subtle logical atheist whose unbelief took a backseat to the advancement of science
and reason as methods for resolving practical social and political problems, and the immoral
libertine atheist whose materialist view of nature derived from the notion that man was selfish
and subject to his passions and desires. None of these three were likely the first of their kind
(Naigeon certainly was not), but their fame and impact on history make them visible reminders
of where atheism originated and how it evolved—the third chapter of this dissertation will
discuss new, revolutionary atheism—but how stagnant unbelief remains as well. These three
forms of atheism and the bulk of their arguments against religion and the existence of God
originated during the eighteenth-century, but they persist extant and relatively unchanged over
two-hundred years later.
Second, the activities and writings of these three atheistic philosophes demonstrate the
significant impact the French Revolution had on developments in the history of atheism. The free
and uncensored movement of these three figures was unprecedented in Western civilization.
Certainly the likes of Hobbes and Spinoza espoused atheistic thought long before Naigeon,
Condorcet, or Sade were even born, but they vehemently denied being atheists and wrote in
terms that were ambiguous and subject to interpretation. 76 No doubt Jean Meslier was the first
atheism. It should be noted that Dawkins presents the diversity of religion as evidence against its legitimacy.
Meanwhile, theist writers like Alistair McGrath, Norman Geisler, and Frank Turek emphasize the strict defiance and
aggressive nature of atheism in order to portray it as illogically uncompromising, being certain to exclude more
subtle versions of atheism that would be more difficult to refute. Stein, Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Vol. I, 27-29;
Dawkins, The God Delusion, 24-30, 39-40, 52; Alistair McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism: the Rise and Fall of
Disbelief in the Modern World, (New York: Doubleday Books, 2006), 220-221; Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, I
Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 22-23. For exceptions, authors
who acknowledge more nuanced or diverse definitions of atheism, see Thrower, Western Atheism, A Short History,
1-4; Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism, 8-10.
76
See Popkin, The History of Skepticism: from Savonarola to Bayle, 189-207, 239-253; Israel, Radical
Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750.
56
person to openly and overtly deny God’s existence in writing and under his own name, but he
only did so posthumously when the authorities could not punish him. His works circulated as
clandestine literature, often abridged, and had a limited impact on the intellectual history of the
century. Of course the Baron D’Holbach was the first to actively promote and publish works
promoting the logic and benefits of atheism, but he did so under cover, using pseudonyms and
ducking their authorities, even being laid to rest at last in a Christian burial. Naigeon, Condorcet,
and Sade, however, lived their latter lives during the French Revolution as known atheists.
Naigeon’s Adresse a l’Assemblée National was not especially influential, but it was a landmark
work that promoted atheism in the name of an atheist author, publicly and unashamedly.
Condorcet did not promote his atheism as Naigeon did, but was known by many to not believe in
God, and this had little impact on his reputation as a political reformer until his politics ran afoul
with Robespierre. Even the infamous Marquis de Sade was able to openly publish his immoral,
atheistic works in his own name while working for the citizens of Paris in the National
Convention. This is a phenomenal and unsung moment in the history of atheism.
Finally, although the proliferation of Enlightenment rhetoric and ideology characterized
the Revolution from its conception, the uniqueness of these three figures suggests that
Enlightenment forms of atheism were only a minor factor in the early years of the French
Revolution, as it is difficult to find many other significant revolutionaries who fit the atheistic
characteristics of these three influential philosophes, and the National Assembly passed little to
no legislation regarding outright atheism, pro or con. 77 In fact, despite Naigeon’s Adresse, the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen included the “Supreme Being” in its text.
Whether or not the Enlightenment created and influenced the French Revolution has been the
77
To what extent there were, indeed, other atheists involved in the French Revolution will be the subject of
subsequent chapters of this dissertation.
57
subject of endless debate amongst historians for decades, and much of the arguments for and
against Enlightenment sway are dependent on how scholars define their terms. 78 Clearly the
language of the Enlightenment was recurrent throughout the Revolution, but ultimately it was
Voltaire and Rousseau who found their remains honored in the Pantheon, not Diderot or
D’Holbach, casting further doubt on the influence of Enlightenment atheism. What remains
certain is that if historians want to define the Enlightenment based on the breakdown of religious
influence and even atheism, then they face a daunting and complex task in analyzing the
Enlightenment impact in France during the 1790s. On one hand, certainly there was an abrupt
and often severe, though in some ways temporary, transformation in how the French people
perceived religion and God, as illustrated by the Revolution. The people rose up against the
Church. They mocked traditional rituals. They gathered in great mass at the Festival of Reason.
It is difficult to pin-point where this change occurred and what characterized it and how many
variations there were depending on which specific region or group of people are being examined,
but somehow religion was viewed differently by many. 79 On the other hand, it has also been
noted that for many people religion and faith in God did not change at all—the Revolution
merely altered the context and space in which those people practiced their religion. 80 By the end
of the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte, religion, Catholicism, and theism were all far from gone.
This analysis of Naigeon, Condorcet, and Sade cannot provide the answers to these questions,
78
See Daniel Mornet, Les origines intellectuelles de la Révolution française,(1715-1787), (Paris: A. Collin, 1933);
François Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 29-33, 36-40;
Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), 3-19;
Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 12-27;
Dale Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 8;
Jonathan Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750-1790, (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011), 18-19.
79
Vovelle, The Revolution against the Church: from Reason to Supreme Being, (Columbus, OH: Ohio State
University Press, 1991), 1-24; Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1995), 17, 95-110.
80
McManners, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France, Vol. 2; Van Kley, Religious Origins, 362-375;
Aston, Religion and Revolution in France, 196-258; Suzanne Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred, 1-30.
58
but it can conclude thus—if one insists on atheism as a defining characteristic of the
Enlightenment, then the Enlightenment had little impact on the events of the French Revolution
leading up to the radicalizations and dechristianization movements of 1793. The next chapter of
this dissertation will examine how atheism impacted the rhetoric and political radicalism of the
Revolution leading up to and during the Terror.
59
CHAPTER TWO
ATHEISTS AND FANATICS: THE EARLY FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE SPECTER
OF ATHEISM
On May 30, 1791, the thirteenth anniversary of the death of Voltaire in 1778, the
National Assembly declared that the famous philosophe’s body was to be unearthed from its
interment at the Abbey of Sellières, near Romilly-sur-Seine and returned to Paris, where it would
be honored as a symbol of the triumph of reason and liberty by reburial in the recently-built
Panthéon. Revolutionaries exhumed the body and displayed it until July 10, after which
Voltaire’s corpse travelled from Romilly to Paris to much fanfare, with great crowds gathering at
each stop to honor him like a saint, venerating the flower-covered sarcophagus as a sacred relic.
In Paris, the people displayed the corpse on an altar at the former site of the Bastille, where
Voltaire had twice been imprisoned, symbolizing the triumph of philosophie and liberté over
tyranny, lending a new sacred legitimacy to the Revolution. The following day the funeral car,
drawn by twelve white horses, set off for the Panthéon, stopping frequently for performances and
speeches, mocking the “stations of the cross” in manner, accompanied by an enormous
procession of soldiers, musicians, and people dressed to represent every walk of life, as
thousands of spectators watched and cheered as Voltaire rolled by. Upon arrival at the Panthéon,
they laid his body to rest in a beautiful tomb, which was kept open for three days, as if awaiting
Voltaire’s resurrection, so that the people of Paris could catch a final glimpse of the
philosophical champion of the rights of man. The inscription on one side of the tomb read, “Poet,
philosopher, historian; who expanded the human spirit and taught us to be free.” The
revolutionaries thereby hailed Voltaire as the premier example of the struggle for the basic
principles of the Revolution—reason and liberty. 1
On the other side of the same sarcophagus there is another inscription which contributes a
different perspective to the concept of Voltaire as a revolutionary symbol. It reads, “He battled
the atheists and fanatics. He inspired toleration. He reclaimed the rights of man against the
bondage of feudalism.” 2 The promotion of toleration and the rights of man, attacks on ancien
régime feudalism, and the usage of the ambiguous label of “fanaticism” to condemn
counterrevolutionaries are well-known ideological concepts frequently found in the writings of
the revolutionaries—but “atheists” seem like an unlikely target for the wrath of the French
people of the Revolution. Conservatives in both France and England already labeled the
Revolution itself as “atheistic” in nature, and Edmund Burke famously asserted that the French
Revolution’s “spirit of atheistic fanaticism” was the biggest threat to civilized society. 3 It was
easy for opponents—the First Estate especially—to view revolutionary anti-clericalism and the
nationalization of the Catholic Church with the August Decrees passed on August 11, 1789, as
being direct attacks on Christianity itself, with the issue of the source and origin of all power
being the primary item for discussion. Nonetheless, as illustrated by the inscription on the
sarcophagus of Voltaire, the Revolutionaries themselves rejected the idea that God was not
somehow evident in their lives. Kings, Popes, clergymen, and theologians vigorously debated the
1
Moniteur Universel, (Paris: 1791), 802-803; Chronique de Paris, (Paris, 1791), 781; Several good descriptions in
secondary works can be found in the following: Bernard N. Schilling, “The English Case Against Voltaire: 17891800, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 4, No. 2 (April, 1943), pp. 202-205; James A. Leith, “Les trois apothéoses
de Voltaire,” Annales historiques de la Révolution française, Année 51, no 236 (April-June,1979), p. 161-209;
Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, (New York: 1989), 561-566; Darrin McMahon,
Enemies of the Enlightenment, 83-86.
2
Both, contemporary accounts and later scholarship tend to ignore this second inscription, though at least one
contemporary illustration clearly highlights it. See Simon Schama, Citizens,a Chronicle of the French Revolution,
561-566 (a copy of the illustration in question is on 562-3); F. W. J. Hemmings, Culture and Society in France 17891848, (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011); Evelyn Beatrice Hall, The Life of Voltaire, (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1910), 563565.
3
Ibid., 129.
61
very nature of religion and the Church and their role in formulating government for over a
century, additionally including the question of how the Christian God intended government and
Church to operate, and in 1789 in France these debates raged on the floor of the National
Assembly. If God existed, then what exactly was the role of the Supreme Being in dictating
power relationships between church, state, and the people?
The potential for this discussion to break down into an inquiry about the nature of God
was real; however, the political melee of the French Revolution instead initiated a discourse that
evaded the question. To begin with, as historian Timothy Tackett establishes, few of the early
French Revolutionaries were philosophers and scarcely any of them questioned God’s existence,
and thus initially had little motivation to broach the topic. 4 Additionally, there were more
pressing issues at hand, namely repairing France’s devastated economics, calming the violent
and marauding mobs of sans-culottes, and establishing the social and political structure of the
new government. The defining of “God” and the nature of the relationship between the law and
the divine had to be avoided while the new government established itself, because religion was
such a divisive topic. For centuries the Church coupled itself with the will of God, claiming sole
responsibility for interpreting and projecting God’s power, though the French government
contested the extent of the Church’s role in determining governorship. As Dale Van Kley
demonstrates, internal struggles and political battles between the Church and the French crown
broke down the credibility of both—crown and Church, the vast majority of French people still
valued religion and believed in a deity in one form or another. 5 Now the leaders of the Church
4
Timothy Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary: the Deputies of the French National Assembly and the Emergence of
a Revolutionary Culture (1789-1790), (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 50-74.
5
Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution, 2-7. Also see Aston, Religion and Revolution in France,
1780 – 1804, x-xi, 88. 99; Suzanne Desan, The Revival of Religion During the French Revolution, (Berkeley:
University of California at Berkeley, 1985); John McManners, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France,
Volume II;, and Jeffrey Merrick, The Desacralization of the French monarchy in the Eighteenth Century, (Baton
Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, 1990).
62
were political partners and adversaries in the Assembly, and whether the likes of Sieyès and
Condorcet were atheists and materialists or not, due to the beliefs of the people of France and the
need to retain legitimacy, the Third Estate had to focus on arguments of economics and social
justice that denigrated the power of the Church, but not God himself. 6 Thus, even by July of
1790, when the Civil Constitution of the Clergy finally passed, the revolutionaries found they
were not ready or willing to contend with an issue of the magnitude of redefining or challenging
the legitimacy of religion—a matter that would certainly call into question the very nature of
people and their beliefs. Atheists, as few and inconspicuous as they were, for the time being were
considered an enemy of both the left and right factions of the Revolution—a circumstance that
would remain until the radicalization of revolutionary politics after the counter-revolutionary
reaction to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
Regardless of the lack of actual atheists involved with the early years of the French
Revolution, atheism remained a part of the political discourse. This chapter will analyze the
concept of “atheism” in regard to the discussion that led to the term’s negative appearance on the
Panthéon sarcophagus. Why are “atheists” deemed important enough to be singled out with
“fanatics” on Voltaire’s tomb? What was the significance of “atheism” in the political discourse
of the French Revolution, and why were revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries alike afraid
of it? Atheists, to be sure, existed, but they were a small minority that did not represent the
opinions of the vast majority of the Third Estate or the major orators and authors who promoted
revolution. Those atheists or materialists who participated in the political process of the early
6
Timothy Tackett shows that none of the earliest revolutionaries harbored any atheistic beliefs, but historians still
reference certain individuals as being unbelievers or skeptics. In his earlier works, for example, John McManners
refers to both Loménie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse and the revolutionary theorist Abbé Sieyès as
“unbelievers,” without any reference to what this meant or how it was established. More recently Jonathan Israel
emphasizes the materialism of Siéyes and Condorcet when discussing their roles in the Revolution, though neither
themselves accentuated those beliefs in the Assembly. See Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary, 65-74; John
McManners, The French Revolution & the Church, (New York: Harper Torchbooks, Harper & Row, 1969), 2, 16,
28; Jonathan Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 769-778.
63
French Revolution—Naigeon being the only exception prior to 1792—either deemphasized their
atheism or kept their religious beliefs concealed. Eventually authentic atheism would manifest
itself in the radicalization of the Revolution after 1791—though it will later be shown that
atheism’s manifestation occurred in a restricted manner—but in the meantime it is important to
appreciate the early debate on the relationship between the Church and state in order to
understand how politicians and pamphleteers viewed atheism and religion in the years leading up
to the Terror and the atheistic attack on religion that the conflict perpetuated. The nationalization
of the Church and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy played an important role in creating the
environment and conflict in which atheists emerged as true political entities. Prior to the
breakdown of religious hegemony in France, however, no open atheists held prominent positions
in government, and of the few members of the National Assembly who likely were atheists or
materialists, none espoused atheism as a primary objective of their politics. In fact, “atheism”
remained the same “insult bandied about” that Roy Porter identified as a common rhetorical
device used during the Enlightenment period, frequently appearing in the fearful speeches and
pamphlets of those who felt that religion itself was not being regenerated or organized, but rather
outright transformed into its antithesis—irreligion, or atheism. 7 Their revolutionary counterparts
strongly disagreed, finding accusations of irreligion to be irrelevant, choosing instead to focus on
new conceptions of the “democratic politics,” and separating religion from the national ideology
in an attempt to legitimize their proposed political changes. 8 So what did atheism signify and
symbolize to the revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries as they debated the legitimacy of
7
Roy Porter, The Creation of the Modern World: the Untold Story of the British Enlightenment., (NY/London: W.
W. Norton & Co., 2000), 128.
8
For important discussions on the significance of politics and ideology in legitimizing and defining the French
Revolution, see François Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, trans. by Elborg Forster, (Cambridge University
Press, 1981), 22-28.; and Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, (Cambridge University Press,
1990), 4, 18, 24; Timothy Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary, 48-76.
64
the changing relationship between religion and politics between 1789 and 1791, and what does
this say about the meaning of religion and belief at the onset of the French Revolution?
Before analyzing the relationship between perceived concepts of “atheism” and the
politics of the period, it should be noted that religion remained a key concept in the
establishment of the language of the Revolution, though to what extent is contested by
historians. 9 Suzanne Desan provides an excellent working definition of religion during the
French Revolution with which to start, describing eighteenth-century religion in France as
“public ritual, localized sacred power, the interwoven texture of the sacred and profane,
individual or communal prestige and identity, patterns of sociability and festivity, divine aid,
strengthening of faith, moral order, salvation.” 10 In other words, religion was more than just the
Church and its doctrine, but was also a social tool with which the people structured their personal
lives. Using this definition, Desan shows that religion remained alive and well during the French
Revolution, despite the fall of the authority of the Catholic Church. This is important, because
regardless of the view of the likes of Edmund Burke that the Revolution was an atheistic
phenomenon, and despite the radical attacks on traditional Christianity that, on the surface,
vindicated Burke’s concerns, religion remained a key component to the development of cultural
unity throughout the period. Defining the religiosity of the French people is not enough,
9
Historians who emphasize the influence of the Enlightenment tend to claim that a decline in religiosity, the spread
of liberal and radical ideas, and the philosophe attack on Christianity were instrumental in defining the Revolution,
its language, and its consequences. Even Roger Chartier, who essentially claims the opposite—that the French
Revolution ultimately created the Enlightenment—suggests that changing views of religion and declining orthodox
religiosity contributed to the Revolution’s eventual dechristianization. See Daniel Mornet, Les Origines intellectuels
de la Révolution française, (Paris: Armand Colin, 1933), François Furet, Interpreting the Revolution, 25-46;
Norman Hampson, Prelude to Terror: the Constituent Assembly and the Failure of Consensus, (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1988), 5-7. 42; Jonathan Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 15-17; Roger Chartier, The Cultural
Origins of the French Revolution, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), 92-110.
10
Suzanne Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred: Lay Religion and Popular Politics in Revolutionary France, (Cornell,
1990); 96; Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 2546. For other significant arguments supporting the domination of traditional religion during the French Revolution,
see Nigel Aston, Religion and Revolution in France; and John McManners, Church and Society in EighteenthCentury France, Volume II.
65
however, to explain the decline of Church authority, the secularization of the law, or the growing
animosity toward traditional religion that occurred. Dale Van Kley argues that measuring the
religiosity of the French people is more complex, maintaining that if “one holds that the
eighteenth century was a religiously tepid century and that ‘real’ belief was in abeyance—the
vitality of ‘belief’ is of course notoriously elusive and hard to verify—it remains the case that the
eighteenth century does not exhaust the search of the Revolution’s origins, which on any
reasonable reading must be taken back to the sixteenth century, the rise of absolutism, and the
beginning of what Tocqueville thought of as the ‘old regime’ of France.” 11 Van Kley asserts that
the desacralization of the monarchy through the demolition of divine right theory—from
Calvinist and Catholic attacks on the religious authority of the monarchy to the Jansenism
controversies of the 1770s and 1780s which undermined the credibility of Bourbon absolutism—
explains how the “polarization over the Revolution’s ecclesiastical legislation accounts for why a
Revolution with so many religious—even Christian—origins, became the first revolution to
undertake dechristianization.” 12 Van Kley’s theory on the collapse of absolutism elucidates more
than just the dialectical relationship between religion and the Terror. While Desan’s definition
of religion illustrates the dynamic and fluid nature of belief, Van Kley’s breakdown of the
religious origins of the Revolution sheds light on how militant atheists infiltrated the government
and briefly attained a share of power in France late in 1793. The failure of divine right theory
created a situation in which the most basic definition of atheism—the absence of a belief in
God—became possible in a practical reality, through the debate over the very source of political
authority.
11
12
Van Kley, Religious Origins of the French Revolution, 7.
Ibid., 13.
66
Van Kley, then, provides the ultimate question regarding the existence of atheistic belief
in an age of Christian religion—how was it that “a state and society still so apparently Christian
and specifically Catholic as was France in the eighteenth century could manage to give rise to the
first revolution that turned against Christianity and produced a campaign to ‘dechristianize’ its
entire culture?” 13 The answer, in part, exists somewhere amid the cultural identity version of
religion that Desan presents, the Enlightenment critique of divinity and absolute power, and the
religious origins explanation of Van Kley himself. Enlightenment criticism of orthodox, divine
explanations of power and natural phenomenon, along with political and theological conflicts
within Catholicism and between the Church and the state, as Van Kley explains, provided the
foundation for questioning of the source of state power. If the power of King, the Church, and
the government at large were not sanctioned by theology, the Bible, or traditional beliefs in the
Gospel, then how was power justified and from where did this justification originate? The
answer provided by Enlightenment philosophes, particularly Rousseau, and repeated in the
National Assembly was “the People’s will,” but this new perspective meant the elimination of
divine power from state authority over the beliefs of the people. The removal of divine right and
sacred rule theories from the political equation paired closely with the debates of the early
revolutionaries charged with righting a political, social, and economic disaster. Disrespected by
the clergy and aristocracy, bolstered by a strong sense of anticlericalism, and needing immediate
financial equity the Third Estate seized Church lands for the government, thus beginning a
counter-revolutionary response that resulted in paranoia, fear, chaos, and eventually war. 14 Unity
13
Dale Van Kley, “Christianity as Casualty and Chrysalis of Modernity: The Problem of Dechristianization in the
French Revolution,” American Historical Review, Vol. 108, No. 4, (October, 2003), 1081-2. For another
complimentary review essay on the topic of religion and Enlightenment, see Jonathan Sheehan, “Enlightenment,
Religion, and the Enigma of Secularization: A Review Essay,” American Historical Review, Vol. 108, No. 4
(October 2003), 1061-1080.
14
Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary, 273-301; Simon Schama, Citizens, 472-513.
67
under the colors of the Revolution trumped religious difference, and the counter-revolutionary
Church became a target of not only further anticlerical sentiment, but atheism as well. The
official institution that prevented atheists from showing themselves had fallen, and the few true
atheists who existed made use of the opportunity. That practical atheism became a reality in
political France is not to suggest that historians err in claiming that religion continued to reign
supreme in the minds and hearts of the majority of the French people, but rather that the same
collapse in absolutism that Van Kley illustrates as being necessary for the Revolution’s attack on
the Church also allowed atheists to find a minority niche in politics and society. Creation of this
niche became possible when the nature of state power itself was debated in the National
Assembly and the press between 1789 and 1791.
2.1 Bigots and Fanatics: Atheism as Counter-Revolutionary Political Label
The French revolutionaries of the early Revolution, which Edmund Burke labeled an
atheistic group of "bigots," "libelers," and "fanatics" who "preferred atheism to a form of religion
not agreeable to their ideas," were far from being an irreligious association of fanatical men. 15
Instead, the Third Estate revolutionaries who drafted the early decrees of the National Assembly
consisted primarily of lawyers mixed with an array of merchants, judges, notaries, farmers,
bankers, doctors, and only a few Enlightenment-influenced men-of-letters. Though most were
Catholic of varying degrees of enthusiasm, many of the new legislators were Protestants, deists,
or of ambiguous religious belief, promoting a more secular perception of the relationship
15
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. by Frank M. Turner, ( New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2003), 77, 126.
68
between Church and state. 16 In the early stages of the French Revolution, the attempt to
nationalize the Church remained primarily a political and economic reaction to financial crisis,
the arrogant resistance by the bishops and some clergy to the political legitimacy of the Third
Estate, and decades of—sometimes perceived and sometimes real—decadence and official abuse
of religious authority by the Church. 17 In a decade of economic calamity, the Church continued
to collect enormous fees and tithes, owned ten percent of the land, and existed under the control
of bishops who dominated their dioceses with their wealth and power. The revolutionaries came
to see the decadent bishop and ignorant priest as symbols of the corruption that was inherent in
the system itself, though separating the gangrenous scourge of abuse in the Church and political
body from the necessity of religion and central rule was problematic. As noted by Van Kley,
however, the process of challenging the relationship between the Church and the monarchy and
politics of France originated over a century before the Revolution, a fact which did not go
unnoticed by those promoting significant change in the organization and authority of the
government. The traditional dominance of the French political machine over the Gallican Church
was duly noted by the Assembly members, who frequently utilized Jansenist and Protestant
arguments condemning divine rights and promoting freedom of conscience, to bolster their
insistence that the power of the government supersede that of the Church itself. 18 In this vein,
the Jansenist Armand-Gaston Camus criticized Don Gerle’s attempt to have Catholicism declare
the official religion of France, condemning the Church’s dogma as being against the Gospel, and
sympathizing with non-Catholic citizens. 19 Furthermore, Catholic officials naturally represented
16
See Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary,50-54, 59-70, 314-322.
See Aston, Religion and Revolution in France, 103-139; Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary, 100-113, 119-132,
Van Kley, Religious Origins of the French Revolution, 344-362.
18
Van Kley, Religious Origins of the French Revolution, 7, 58-72, 371-372.
19
Armand-Gaston Camus, Opinion de M. Camus, sur la motion faite par D. Gerle, relativement à la religion
catholique, (Paris: Leclere, 1790), 1-8.
17
69
a potential obstacle to the growing influence of the Third Estate. Though some members of the
clergy joined the Third Estate in forming the National Assembly in 1789, the vast majority of the
religious authorities personified social tradition and hierarchal politics. 20 Thus when the EstatesGeneral convened on May 5, 1789, in order to debate and negotiate the political crisis that
quickly would escalate into revolution, atheism was not a major issue aside of being a rhetorical
tool for the bishops, nobles, and clergy who feared the potential changes they faced. 21
The stakes, however, were high. The organization of government, the distribution of
wealth and taxation, social and political identity of the nation, the source of power, and the
precise role of religion in society were all contested. The status of the Catholic Church in France
was the primary “religious” concern, although the majority of the advocates involved on all sides
considered this a political and economic issue. Anti-clericalism, easily mistaken for religious
skepticism, was a common theme in the debates, although anti-clerical discontent usually broke
down into arguments regarding corruption, greed, property rights, clerical education, and utility.
Subsequently, the actions taken by the National Assembly with regard to the Catholic Church
erupted around economic issues regarding public debt, as well as the establishment of
government authority. 22 Thus, in August of 1789 the French Revolution's first major assault on
the Ancien Régime, the famous Declaration of the Rights of Man, declared that “the principle of
all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body or individual may exercise any
authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.” 23 The belief that authority originated
in the “nation” became a key point of contention between the revolutionaries and Catholic
20
Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary, 24-27, 65-73,129-131.
Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary, 183-184, 264; McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment, 33-34, 100-101.
22
Nigel Aston suggests that the Revolution may never have turned so violent had the National Assembly simply
maintained the corporate body of the Church and worked more closely with the clergy in the first eighteen months.
Anti-clericalism and the insistence on establishing the exclusive authority of the Assembly may have cost “scores of
thousands” of lives. Aston, Religion and Revolution in France, 161-162.
23
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Article 3, 1789.
21
70
officials, who felt the Church should be exempt from this point on account of divine right, and
this disagreement soon escalated. Michel Vovelle notes that the Assembly’s “objective was not
the destruction of the religious superstructure or a fortiori of religious belief, nor even that of
separating the Church from the State,” but that the Declaration of the Rights of Man “risked
injuring the monopolistic hegemony of the Catholic religion by declaring that ‘no one may be
harassed for holding opinions, even religions ones.’’ 24 No doubt the writers primarily concerned
themselves with protecting the rights of Protestants and deists, as well as paving the way for the
Assembly to challenge the Church’s economic power, but atheists certainly took notice of the
wording of the Declaration. The atheist philosophe Naigeon, for example, dared to write his
Adresse concerning freedom of the press and the usage of God’s name in the Declaration soon
after. By November of 1789, on the grounds of exercising the sovereignty of the National
Assembly, the nation’s representative, the revolutionaries decreed their first official attack on the
power of the traditional Gallican Church, the seizure and nationalization of Church taxes and
property. 25 The Assembly deemed this challenge to Church power economically necessary, and
there is no available evidence that it even occurred to them that atheists would be emboldened by
these developments. 26
Regardless of the potential implications of its wording, the Declaration of the Rights of
Man did not set off an avalanche of atheist writings or activity, nor did the seizure of Church
property rights by the government, but in addition to political and economic distress, fear of
24
Michel Vovelle, The Revolution against the Church: From Reason to the Supreme Being, (Columbus, OH: Ohio
State University Press, 1991), 13.
25
See McManners, The French Revolution and the Church, 24-37; Nigel Aston, Religion and Revolution in France,
129 -137.
26
Examination of the Assembly debates finds virtually no references to atheism, with the discussions regarding
religion and the Church dominated by manners of money and abuse of power. The exceptions were clergy from the
right. For some key examples, see the speeches and debates from February 6-13, 1790, in Archives
Parlementaires,Vol. 11, 460-466, 700-709; June 9 1790 in Vol. 16, 153-159; July 1, 1790 in Vol. 16, 587-598; July
17, 1790 in Vol. 17, 179-184.
71
irreligious repercussions caused an outcry from the orthodox supporters of Church privilege,
who leaned heavily on divine right theory to bolster their position. 27 That God sanctioned the
rule of the monarchy and the political power of the Church was a fundamental argument in
conventional eighteenth-century thinking—although the precise nature of the relationship
between God’s divine power, the Church, and the state had been contested since the sixteenth
century—so the impact of political change in regard to God’s will was a primary concern for
traditional authorities and anti-revolutionaries. As did contemporaries of the eighteenth century,
historians debate the “absolute” nature of the monarchy throughout the early-modern period, and
some suggest that the perceived sacred nature of the monarchy declined throughout the
eighteenth century. 28 Despite, or even because of the contested relationship between religion and
the state, some opposed to relieving the Church of its economic power argued in favor of the
holy authority of religion itself in establishing government. The administration of law could be
debated, but the sovereign connection to divine powers could not, and it was asserted that the
elimination of the link between religion and the state was certainly a sign of growing irreligion.
Relying on an argument of historical relevance, one anonymous pamphleteer wrote against
27
Divine right theory held that the monarchy, and therefore the government, received its power directly from God.
This was the key argument to the defense of absolute sovereignty, which both the monarchy and Church claimed to
possess. Writing in the sixteenth century, Jean Bodin defined absolute sovereignty as the ability to make or not make
law, unbridled legislative power, and answering to no other earthly power. Once the king received power from the
people, his power never diminished, could not be shared, and was not bound by legality. Only divine and natural law
reigned over the monarchy. Jean Bodin, On Sovereignty, ed. and trans. by Julian Franklin, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992), 1-16.
28
The historical discussion on the nature of absolutism and divine right is too large in scope to discuss in detail here,
but a summary of the debate can be found in the following: David Parker, The Making of French Absolutism (1983);
William Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France: State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in
Languedoc (1985); Hilton L. Root: Peasants and King In Burgundy: Agrarian Foundations of French Revolution
(1987); Yves-Marie Bercé, The Birth of Absolutism: a History of France, 1598-1661 (1992); J. Russell Major, From
Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy: French Kings, Nobles, & Estates (1994); John M. Smith: The Culture
of Merit: Nobility, Royal Service, and the Making of Absolute Monarchy in France, 1600-1789 (1996); Donna
Bohanan: Crown and Nobility in Early Modern France (2001). For perhaps the best discussion on the
desacralization of the monarchy leading into the French Revolution, see, of course, Dale Van Kley, The Religious
Origins of the French Revolution, and also Merrick, Desacralization of the French Monarchy in the Eighteenth
Century.
72
nationalization that whoever “bears a grudge against the religious state, attacks religion itself and
reveals their irreligious nature. The state has its foundation in the Gospel… it is even older than
the Church.” 29 The author implied “irreligion” as a causal culprit for the attack on the Church
and argued that the connection between church and state originated in holy scripture and ancient
history. Due to the perceived connection between divinity and rule, the writer concluded that
irreligion must be the motivation for assaulting the Church’s power, for why else would the
Third Estate dare challenge the status quo? Another critic complained, arguing in part from their
interpretation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, that:
The decree of November 2, 1789, robbed the clergy of France of the
ownership and administration of their property, and appears to us to
violate the public faith. Substituting the mistake of skepticism against our
holy religion of our forefathers, this decree casts shame and humiliation
on the character of our ministers. 30
This opponent to nationalization further identified skepticism, considered a synonym by many
for irreligion and atheism, as a moniker of evil. This skepticism, the writer argues, is naturally in
league with the attack on the Church. Thus, irreligion became the label to describe all those who
proposed to take away the Church’s authority and the property of the clergy. The elimination of
the Church’s political authority to manage its own lands and money was noticeably radical and,
in the view of the opposition, posed both, practical and theoretical apprehensions. If the new
government could now effectively control the Church’s own property, what prevented the
revolutionaries from destroying the ability of the bishops and clergy to carry out their holy work?
29
30
Anonymous, Observations Reflechies Sur Différentes Motions de M. L’Evêque d. Autun. (Paris: 1790), 18.
Anonymous, Le Cri de la Patrie et de la Religion; ouvrage dédié au clergé de France, (Paris: Chez Carré, 1790).
73
What did this mean for the relationship between the Church, state, and the will of God? And,
perhaps most importantly, why was this attack on Church, and therefore religion, happening? 31
Other writers expressed similar concerns over the perceived elimination of God’s will
from the activities of the state. If God was the ultimate arbiter of all things, and the Church and
Catholic religion were the mouthpieces through which God expressed his will, and the monarchy
was the executive force through which God implemented his sovereignty, then how could the
nationalization of the Church by the previously powerless Third Estate be accepted? Most of the
members on the left of the National Assembly naturally saw no issue here, believing that God
either supported the will of the people or distanced himself from the activities of man, but for
many of the Church leaders involved in the debate, the perceived paradox of “the people”
deciding the business of religion could not be reconciled. 32 One commentator stated that the
biggest problem with taking power and property away from the ministers, priests, and
administrators of the Church would be a disaster for one reason—these political moves “were not
of God.” 33 “One must never violate with impunity the laws of nature and of God,” another author
contended, reminding the revolutionaries that God is the judge of all, seamlessly assuming
linkage between legal politics and religion. 34 Yet one more critic accused the revolutionaries of
“mustering themselves to speak a language only a person can hear, but daring not to pronounce
the name of God, the Supreme Being, the sovereign principle.” 35 Many authors expressed
concern over God’s will and sovereignty in government, and worried that changes would
displease the “Supreme Being.” The arch-bishop of Lyons, Yves-Alexandre de Marbeuf, warned
31
Darrin McMahon discusses how anti-philosophes and counter-revolutionaries consistently relied on the language
of prophecy, conspiracy, and apocalypse to explain their anxiety over the skeptical and rational nature of the
Enlightenment, as well as that of the French Revolution. McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment, 56-72, 90-106.
32
Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary, 65-72.
33
Anonymous, Mémoire sur la vente des biens ecclésiastiques, (Paris, 1790), 15-18.
34
Anonymous, La Vieille Bonne Femme de 102 Ans, Soeur du Curé de 97 Ans, (Paris, 1789), 3.
35
Anonymous, Lettre de Gros-Jean à son Curé, (1789 or 1790), 27-28.
74
that the revolution would “consecrate a unanimous, impious, and sacrilegious revolt” against
God, who would strike back with “celestial vengeance,” eradicating everyone—“philosophes,
politicians, and so-called patriots.” 36 God, however, rarely received definition in these
writings—the existence of the deity was presumed to be tacitly understood—and the vague
theological language of the Right seemed irrelevant to the revolutionaries in light of their views
of the Rousseau-influenced “general will,” and the economic needs of the nation. This
ambiguous religious discourse and the assumption of homogenous belief proved a stumbling
block for conservative political combatants who never seemed capable of comprehending the
change that occurred so swiftly within the political boundaries of the National Assembly.
Underlying all the religious arguments employed to undermine the legitimacy of the Third
Estate’s seizure of Church power and property was the implication that the revolutionaries were
more than just political miscreants. Terms such as “Spinozist” “irreligious,” “sacrilege,”
“blasphemy,” and “atheist” crop up in the writings of counter-revolutionaries who naturally saw
the attack on the institutional Church as being something greater than just a political adjustment.
“Can he (the revolutionary man) come to the mind of a man of good taste,” the same abbé who
favored institutional regeneration asked, “as the citizens assemble to balance and fix the highest
destiny of this great kingdom, while deteriorating into the childishness of the passions, until
wanting to establish themselves the executors of irreligion?” 37 The argument that a link existed
between “irreligion” and “the passions” was a common diatribe against the Revolution, and
traced its roots to the Enlightenment, when philosophes and theologians frequently accused one
another of being quintessential examples of gluttony and greed, with many Church writers
36
Yves-Alexandre de Marbeuf, Les Malheurs actuels préedits par le prophète Isaïe et le célèbre Fénelon, ou Extrait
du mandement de M. l’archevêche de Lyon, du 28 Janvier 1789, sur l’examplaire imprimé à Lyon. (n.p., 1789), 3-4.
See also McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment, 57.
37
McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment, 11.
75
claiming that atheists ceased to believe in God simply in order to excuse decadent behavior.
Even if the details regarding the institutional utility of the Church were open for debate, the
possibility of general religious decline weighed heavily on French Catholics. Early in 1789,
some expressed confidence that the French people would reject radical change to their religion.
“When in Church, some progress has made among us a philosophical enemy of divinity, but
without a doubt more than three quarters of the French still maintain a Christian heart, and
therefore will never consent to its destruction.” 38 When the National Assembly officially
nationalized the Church on November 2, 1789, this optimism faded into anger against what many
perceived as growing blasphemy and irreligion. In his defense of the ancien régime, Arthur
Dillon declared, “It is therefore in the name of the religion, and of my duties, that I repulse the
sacrilegious hand.” 39 The “sacrilegious hand” in this case meant all those who opposed Catholic
theology, good morals, and charity. Without the Catholic religion, Dillon reasoned, decadence
and anarchy would follow. It should be noted, too, that not all conservative opponents of the
nationalization of the Church blamed atheists and irreligion for the fall of the Gallican Church.
One commentator blamed Protestants, claiming that by “purchasing Church property, you realize
their destructive projects, aid them in destroying religion, and let them overthrow the Church.” 40
This view of Protestantism as being “atheistic” through not being Catholic, believed by many to
be the only true religion, originated during the Religious Wars, and demonstrated the vague way
in which atheism was used as a derogatory slur. 41 The fear expressed here remained common and
familiar—somehow, it was thought, the Revolutionary attack on the authority of the Church was
38
Anonymous, Mémoire a L’Assemblée Nationale, Dans lequel on établir que la Nation n’est pas moins intéresse
que le Clergé, (1789), 13.
39
Arthur Dillon, Appel à la Commune, Aux Districts de Paris, Aux Futur Départémen,(Paris: 1790), 29.
40
Anonymous, Les Doutes É Clericis, ou Réponse à M. ****, Adminastrateur du Département de ***, sur
plursieurs questions importantes, (Paris: Chéz Pichard, 1790), 10. Italics mine.
41
McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment, 77-79; Amos Hofman ####
76
more than just a political or economic scheme. Rather, nationalization of Catholicism and the
commandeering of Church lands would presumably contribute to the downfall of religion itself
and the end of morality and order. Conservative factions wavered between blaming a Protestant
conspiracy and simply deeming this development as “irreligion,” or atheism. Another allegedly
impartial citizen lamented that, “It is proposed that we regenerate twenty-four million
inhabitants, three-quarters of which already live without religion, without morality; and the
monks, those men who have renounced any state not engaged in only the most austere practices
of the Gospel, oppose all necessary and desired reform with invincible strength.” 42 The
perception that France suffered from a religious decline brought on by philosophie did not
originate in this discourse, but remained a common theme throughout the revolutionary period. 43
Thus, as the debates on the National Assembly floor transpired, it was easy for those who feared
change to assume that the revolutionary government that pushed political change found their
motivation in Enlightenment skepticism and irreligion.
2.2 Religion, Politics, and the Early Revolutionaries
The early French Revolutionaries were not, to repeat, atheists by any stretch of the
imagination. Speakers such as the flamboyant Honoré Mirabeau and the Jansenist theologian
Camus, for example, did not refer to the writings of Diderot or the Baron D'Holbach as evidence
that political authority should lay outside religion and the Church. Instead, they referred to
French history and scripture, generally embracing theistic belief as a key component of society,
while adapting their viewpoint of what religion encompassed to the political circumstances,
42
43
An impartial citizen, Les Véritables Intérêts de la Nation (1790), 60.
McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment, 32-42, 65-73, 100-101.
77
Mirabeau stating, "The theater changes, but the everything remains the same; everywhere I find
daggers and assassins, but everywhere I will carry courage, fidelity to my God, to my king, and to
my duty." 44 As Van Kley argues, the revolutionary politicians utilized Protestant and Jansenist
ideals, and moved that apostles of Jesus Christ established in the early days of the Church that
religion was for the people and should remain small, localized, and in the hearts and minds of the
citizens, and that the hierarchical nature of the Catholic Church as currently constructed was
contradictory to the Gospel. They asserted that under the weight of Papal politics, decadent
priests, and economic corruption, the Church lost sight of its true purpose—ministering to the
spiritual needs of the people themselves, as the disciples of Jesus had done. The Church had no
business interfering with political and economic issues, which needed to remain in the hands of
the government formed to contend with them, but rather bishops and priests should focus on
spiritual matters alone. The Revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries both frequently referred
to the words of Jesus himself, who stated, according to the Gospel--"Render unto Caesar that
which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's." 45 From the viewpoint of Mirabeau, Sièyes,
Camus, and other significant members of the National Assembly, as the representatives of the
sovereign people of France, they were the new Caesars.
Like the counter-revolutionary pamphleteers, conservative members of the National
Assembly struggled to reconcile the divide that separated traditional Catholic hierarchy from
rapid political changes that impacted the religious establishment in radical ways, opening up
debate over the relationship between property, morality, and political authority. The abbé JeanSiffrein Maury, perhaps the most influential member on the right of the National Assembly,
diligently argued against the "ruination" of the Catholic Church, hoping to force a compromise.
44
Archives Parlementaire, Volume 16, 270. Italics mine.
Archives Parlementaire, Volume 16, p. 265; Volume 17, 181, Volume 21, 90; Revolutions de Paris, No. VI, (Paris,
1789), 14.
45
78
As early as 1789, Maury preempted Burke's scathing criticism of the Revolution, expressing his
fear that the nationalization of Church property would lead to the obliteration of Catholicism and
religion. He claimed that the seizure of the clergy's property would lead to "fruitless dissipation
of their goods," and that the territorial reallocation of the institution would lead to uncertain
salaries, the compromising of public worship, and the annihilation of religion itself. "Soon the
eagerness of irreligion would reduce these holy functions to nothing," he argued, "not merely
reducing the extravagance of worship services, but most certainly resulting in the proscription of
all worship." Naturally, Maury assumed, these events would further end with famine,
bankruptcy, and moral degradation of society, all for the simple suspension of clerical ownership
of Church property. 46 In addition to the practical "reality of the potential for this legislation to
result in atheism and lawlessness,” Maury also contended that the legislative body simply did not
possess the power and authority to make such drastic decisions regarding the economic and
administrative welfare of the Church. "They say that the nation has the power to destroy a body,"
he noted, "but are we able to change religion? Do our constituents give us this kind of power?
We are a regenerative legislature, not a destructive one." 47 Again, the implication underlying this
argument is that nationalization of Church property would do more than break down the
organizational power and economic prosperity of the Church, but would lead to degeneration of
the political body of the nation itself. Maury felt that it was immoral and despotic to deprive the
Church of its property-- contrary to the ideal of property rights for which the Revolution alleged
to stand--but the fundamental issue that Maury attempted to bring to the fore was simply this-what is ultimately the source of authority? Is it the people, or something else?
46
47
Archives Parlementaires, Volume 9, 430. Italics mine.
Ibid., 610.
79
For the most part, however, the clergy and defenders of the Church in the National
Assembly attempted to argue their case in practical terms, while implying the fundamental issue
that Maury proposed—that the legislature simply lacked divine authority to implement sweeping
change in the Church. François de Bonnal, the bishop of Clermont, publicly recognized that the
Church belonged to the people, but his lack of faith in the nation to properly handle the funds
caused him to protest that the nationalization of Church property simply would not solve the
economic problems that France faced. The elimination of the control of Church taxes by the
bishops would merely transfer this power to those who did not understand how the economics of
worship worked. "It is the duty of the bishop to manage Church property and taxes," Bonnal
explained, "because this operation would be disastrous to the Catholic religion. The people
would only release the burden of taxation from themselves, and there would be no divine
worship, no ministers, and no more religion." 48 It is not certain why Bonnal felt that insulting the
sensibility of the tax payers could sway his audience, but the underlying message is clear—the
Church may "belong" to the nation, but the people would reject religion if given the power to do
so, because ultimately the Church’s authority to handle its own affairs was an intricate part of the
nation’s respect for the Catholic institution and its control over the minds of the people. Charles
Voidel, the deputy from Moselle, added that "religion is the basis of the morality of our actions,"
and cautioned that calamity would occur if the Assembly relieved the Church of its power. The
nationalization of the Church was a crime against the fathers of religion, as well as the people of
France, and would result in the overthrow of all social order. 49 Again, religion was held up as the
key to moral order, which was crucial to the maintenance of a happy society, and the Church was
the sole provider of the spiritual guidance necessary to maintain religion in the heart of the
48
49
Ibid., 484.
Archives Parlementaire, Volume 21, 3.
80
nation. The crux of the argument these men and others made was that even if the regeneration of
politics and economy was essential, the utility of maintaining social order and guarding the
morality of the people themselves necessitated the preservation of the traditional Church.
Underlying this point was the idea that Church authority derived from divine sources, and could
therefore not be altered in the least.
Revolutionary leaders were not moved by these pleas, which many viewed as mere
verbosity aimed by untrustworthy officials at creating fear and doubt about political change,
using the concept of “divinity” as a weapon for maintaining power—thereby confusing religion
with authority. Mirabeau responded to Voidel's attack with disdain.
Gentlemen, on every side the enemies of public liberty accuse you
of having sworn to destroy religion. I stand and beg you, on behalf
of the homeland, to endure, with all the force of the nation behind you.
Religion is more threatened by its own ministers, never wavering
under the blows of the pride and fanaticism that the priests have too often
displayed. 50
On one hand, Mirabeau represented the anti-clerical sentiments of many revolutionary
supporters, who viewed the political aspirations of the Church hierarchy as a symptom of the
corruption of the government as a whole. He viewed many of the clergy as being political zealots
bent on oppressing the people. On the other hand, Mirabeau's words reveal how the moderate
Revolution did not seek to destroy religion, but rather to regenerate it in its own image—as a
progressive means for promoting the liberty and prosperity of the nation. The problem, Mirabeau
argued, was not that religion was irrelevant or unnecessary, but rather that the Church’s ministers
used the excuse of "spiritual power" to justify sedition against the nation. This "systematic
50
Ibid., 10.
81
duplicity," he added, was not truly in line with God's will or the principles of Christianity, and he
accused the leaders of the Church of being the ones truly guilty of ruining religion, sarcastically
"chastising" the National Assembly in the "words" of the bishops.
You confess ... that God is as necessary as liberty to the French people,
yet it is this moment that our bishops choose to denounce you as
transgressors of the rights of the religion, to label you with the character of
the former persecutors of Christianity, to ascribe you consequently the
crime of having wanted to dry up the last resource of public order and to
extinguish the last hope of unfortunate virtue! 51
For Mirabeau and the majority of the National Assembly, the accusation that they were attacking
the foundations of religion itself was hypocritical and inaccurate. In fact, they reasoned, public
order and the happiness of the people--the two things alleged to be provided by religion—were
in reality threatened by the sedition of bishops who objected to reasonable political change that
was separate from the act of worship itself. It was the sacred space of worship and prayer that
defined religion, in the mold of the primitive church, not the hierarchy and property of the
Catholic Church, the latter lying in the realm of politics. 52
After the Assembly finalized the nationalization of Church property, members of the
Assembly started pushing for more controls over the structure of the religious establishment,
while even some of the more liberal members of the Church began to question the motives and
direction of the revolutionaries, although the language of the debate over religion’s role in the
Revolution remained more or less the same. By the beginning of 1790, the discussion turned
toward total reorganization of the Church and the establishment of a Civil Constitution of the
51
Ibid., 10.
Ibid., 10-14. For more on defining religion in eighteenth-century France, see Nigel Aston, Religion and Revolution
in France, 35-39; Suzanne Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred, 96, 163.
52
82
Clergy, which would lay down rules regarding how the government expected the Church to
organize and participate in this new political environment. Within a year and a half, this led to
the requirement of an oath to the government by all clergymen, which according to John
McManners, marked the moment where civil war and schism became inevitable. 53 Archbishop
Jean de Dieu-Raymond de Cucé de Boisgelin, an initial supporter of the National Assembly,
turned on the Revolution quickly after the nationalization of Church property. As the government
began discussing the regeneration of the religion of the nation, Boisgelin noted that abuses were
a problem, but feared that the proposed Civil Constitution would render the Church ineffective
and useless by eliminating discipline, traditional hierarchy, and order. Citing the history of the
Church and scripture, Archbishop Boisgelin concluded that even in regenerating the political
nation, traditional government must remain, because "the sovereign law in which everyone else
orders and walks, must assist and serve; to the Church belongs the decision; to the prince the
protection, the defense, and the execution of the canons and ecclesiastical rules." 54 Boisgelin
essentially accepted that change was necessary, but that the Church and king, as per historical
and scriptural tradition, had to implement the rules and laws that applied to religion.
Naturally, the leading members of the National Assembly disagreed, presenting two
arguments concerning the authority of the Church. The first observation regarded the abuses of
the Church, which included corruption, simony, political manipulation, and the continued
ignorance of many local priests. The revolutionaries proclaimed that these serious issues negated
the authority of the leadership of the Church, because ineffective control was more dangerous to
the virtue of religion than the transferring of control to the political legislative. "For me, Sirs,"
exclaimed Jean-Baptiste Treilhard, a moderately radical politician who played a significant role
53
54
John McManners, The French Revolution and the Church, (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 38-46.
Archives Parlementaire, Volume 15, 724.
83
in the abolition of monastic vows early in 1790, "I claim that the enemy more fatal to religion
will be the one that...will dare to attempt to suspend an evidently useful reformation, because it
concerns some abuses of which it takes advantage." 55 Treilhard’s statement implied that the
abuses of the Church were something utilized by the religious establishment for maintaining
their control, and that reform was necessary within the Catholic Church itself, because the abuses
of the institution itself posed many problems for the religious welfare of the people. It was,
therefore, hypocritical for the clergy to preach that the National Assembly's interference in
religious matters would prove disastrous, when the social and political situation of the Church
was already untenable as a result of poor management by the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
The second, and perhaps most important, observation involved the relationship between
political administration and worship itself—what belonged to God and what to Caesar?
Underlying this argument was the idea that the Supreme Being cared little for the process of
administration, but rather focused on the spiritual results. Treilhard, again, observed, "Nothing is
more opposed in object to temporal authority than that which one calls spiritual jurisdiction.
Temporal authority is established for the maintenance of the country and social harmony, and for
the happiness, during the course of this life, of all the individuals that compose society: this is an
indisputable truth." 56 The revolutionaries, therefore, put forth that Church organization and
economics were, by nature, temporal subjects that had nothing to do with the necessary acts of
worship, prayer, and care for the needy. Treilhard added that "The purpose of religion is quite
different [from temporal politics], and although it may contribute to human happiness in this
world, this is not what it proposes. Its real purpose is the salvation of the faithful and is wholly
55
56
Archives Parlementaire, Volume 15, 746.
Ibid., 746.
84
spiritual in its end and in the means it employs to achieve this." 57 For Treilhard, religion was
simply the means with which salvation in the next world is achieved. The economics, politics,
administration, and organization of the Church were all irrelevant to religion. Furthermore,
Treilhard made the Protestant-inspired argument that it was the right of the nation to "choose the
one who speaks in the name of God." 58 Ultimately, the desires and welfare of the nation overrode
the independence of the Church, and the revolutionaries did not believe the Church needed to be
self-sustaining. In their analysis, political power lay with the people, and all that was necessary
for the Church was for its ministers to pray and conduct worship.
Although the National Assembly never appeared to desire a break from the theistic view
of the universe, the underlying issue in all these reactions for and against an independent Church,
was the source of political power and authority itself. Archbishop Boisgelin elegantly summed
up the problem from the perspective of the clergy in a speech to the National Assembly on May
29, 1790.
If you recall the ancient discipline, you must recognize the ancient
principles, and the first principle is that even the essential authority of the
Church, which creates the rules that the bishops, pastors and the faithful
must follow, derives from religion. This is the holy truth, I speak its
language. Jesus Christ is the eternal pontiff who communicates his
priesthood to the bishops and to the ministers. He alone gives them his
mission for the good of the faithful. He transmits to them the right to teach
his dogmas, to manage his sacraments, and to govern his Church. He does
57
58
Ibid., 746.
Ibid., 746.
85
not at all entrust his strengths to the kings, to the magistrates, or to all the
powers of the earth. 59
Boisgelin essentially argued that all power to legislate on spiritual and Church matters came
from above, from Jesus Christ himself. Jesus, through Peter and Paul, established the traditional
hierarchy and Church governance, and throughout history this organizational discipline thrived.
It flourished because God, the source of all power, bestowed upon the bishops and the Church
the ability and authority to govern the souls of the people. That delegation of spiritual authority
could not be destroyed, transferred, or deferred. This was the most fundamental argument that
conservative priests, clergymen, and bishops made against interference by the Assembly in
Church matters and organization. Other clergy and nobles in the National Assembly endorsed
this view on the power relation between God, the Church, and government. L'abbé LeClerc,
deputy from Alençon, declared that:
Such a jurisdiction can only come from Jesus Christ, so (spiritual
jurisdiction) is independent of social institutions. To intrude on this
jurisdiction would go against the intentions of the Church and its founder.
The princes, protectors of the rights of the Church, and all who support
them, would be thieves. 60
The separation of Church and royal authority from the legislature became hotly contested, with
many conservative figures echoing the claim that religious matters belonged solely to the
Church, and that this included maintenance of Church property, taxes, and organization. If the
government removed these basic economic and political decisions from the Church, the Right
argued, all religious credibility would soon be eliminated as well. François de Bonnal, bishop of
59
60
Ibid., 724.
Archives Parlementaire, Volume 16, 2.
86
Clermont, contended that "spiritual things and faith belong to religion," and that Christianity
could not be maintained without making this distinction, though he and many of his colleagues
failed to understand that the revolutionaries made the same argument. The definitions of "faith,"
"spiritual," and divine power were the fundamental issue. 61 In light of the abolition of noble titles
in June of 1790, Comte François d'Escars applied the same basic argument to the nobility and
temporal jurisdiction, claiming that he and his constituents "did not believe that there was human
power able to prevent them from transmitting to their descendants the quality of gentlemen, that
they had received only from God." 62 The count utilized historical arguments to those of the
clergy to justify noble connection to the divine source of power, but in light of the difficulty the
Church had in making this point, the nobility stood little chance of success.
The consequences of passage of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, according to
conservative orators and writers, would be severe. Blaming Enlightenment philosophy for the
problem, Joseph-Alfred Foulon, the bishop of Nancy, claimed that the breaking up of Chuch
authority would introduce social disorder and precipitate citizen refusal to perform military
service and other civil commitments, on the grounds that if religion can be contested, then so can
politics and general morality. 63 L'abbé Goulard argued that not only schism and heresy, the usual
suspects of change harkening back to the Reformation and Religious Wars, but also "spiritual
anarchy" would occur. He pleaded with the National Assembly to stay out of the Church’s
affairs, warning that the people themselves would reject attempts to make politicians into
bishops, thereby leading to civil war.
Do not attempt to exercise spiritual power; I beg of you, in the name of
the God of peace, to reject any innovation that would alarm the faithful
61
Le Moniteur Universel, (Paris: July 11, 1790), 788.
Archives Parlementaire, Volume 16, 380.
63
Le Moniteur Universel, (Paris: February 14, 1790), 181.
62
87
ones, and would prevent us from enjoying the fruit of our works. The
constitution of the civil state must suffice for your zealousness. The people
vociferously request that the intention of the nation not be at all to convert
you into pontiffs, and this assembly into council. 64
To turn the assembly into an ecclesiastical council or the revolutionaries into spiritual leaders,
Goulard, argued, would make the government the possessor of spiritual authority. The separation
of power between the Church and the government must remain intact to avert the end of
religion—though whether Goulard meant religion as a whole or the Catholic religion is
unclear. 65 For some conservatives, the issue was merely a matter of the end of French
Catholicism. L'abbé Colson, for example, argued that "we cannot annihilate the Church hierarchy
without ceasing to be Catholic." 66 Letters arriving from priests and bishops from the dioceses in
Nimes, Montauban, and Uzès confirmed this belief, and demanded that Church hierarchy be
restored and that Catholicism be declared the state religion. 67 Maury agreed, and in a debate with
Mirabeau accused the National Assembly of hypocrisy and "sophism" on the grounds that failure
to maintain Catholicism, the religion of choice for the French people, contradicted the stated
goals of the Revolution. "What kind of rights denies the people their religion?" he asked. 68 For
some, however, the potential end of Catholicism was only one of a myriad of problems with the
legislative assault on the Church. Voidel declared that the Assembly “criminally abused a purely
spiritual mission, converting its passions into weapons," which would no doubt result in
64
Conservatives frequently referred to the Reformation and Religious Wars as an ominous example of what could
happen if the Revolution challenged the tenants of traditional religion. "Schism" and "heresy," from the language of
the past, frequently appear in the writings and speeches of those opposed to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy,
further illustrating the intellectual and political break in the understanding of discourse between conservatives and
the revolutionaries. For further concerns with "schism" and "heresy," expressed by the likes of Massieu the curé of
Sergy, M. Duval d'Eprémesnil, and even the l'abbé Gregoire, see Archives Parlementaire, Volume 16, 16-17.
65
Archives Parlementaire, Volume 16, 11.
66
Ibid., 225.
67
Ibid., 232-262.
68
Le Moniteur Universel, (Paris: November 29, 1790), 1376-7.
88
"excommunication, prohibition, domestic strife, civil wars, heresies, schisms, all the horrors of
bigotry, all the scourges that for so many centuries and in so many ways, desolated the
Empire." 69 Underlying the clergy’s fear of a situation similar to the Religious Wars of the
sixteenth century lay a deeper dread of the potential for something even more sinister—the end
of religion as a whole. François Fontanges, archbishop of Toulouse, noted that the destruction of
the traditional Church was more than merely an attack on Catholicism. Fontanges began with the
argument that spiritual and temporal power existed as separate entities from one another, one
dictated by the Church and the other by civil government.
It exists therefore in any religion a power and right to legislate the laws
on all that concerns religious duties. This power, which by its essence and
nature, is independent of the civil power, in the sense that spiritual power
does not derive from the people, but that it exercises itself directly on the
conscience which is outside any action of the temporal power. In the true
religion, it is only God who confers directly or indirectly this power to
those he pleases; in the false religions, opinion attributes to him the same
origin. 70
Though labeling oppositional religious denominations as "false" religions, Fontanges
acknowledged that other spiritual interpretations existed, and noted that even in these other
examples the essence of the relationship between religion and civil government remained the
same. Spiritual power derived from God, not from the people or the nation or the government.
Furthermore, he added, destroying the Catholic Church would not only damage the primary
69
70
Archives Parlementaire, Volume 21, 3.
Ibid., 17.
89
belief system of the French, but would render the people "indifferent to all religion." 71 As
religion, Catholic or not, was the fundamental basis for all morality and social order, to allow
this to happen would be catastrophic. At the very least, Maury added, the Assembly should wait
for word from the Pope. Concurring with these arguments were bishops from Nantes, Tulle,
Vienne, Soissons, Châlons-sur-Marne, and Lisieux.72
The revolutionary orators found Boisgelin's perspective on power and authority and
Fontanges' stated fear of religious breakdown to be hypocritical, and an appeal to the Pope was
out of the question. Treilhard believed that political administrators were just as likely to be called
by God as bishops, and exclaimed, "Does God not have the right, either by himself or by his
ministers, vicars, and representatives, to send the one who should talk in his name? This is a
paradox unheard until now in the Catholic Church!" 73 To Treilhard, the abusive clergy were no
more holy than the politicians who protected the welfare and liberty of the nation itself. The
Jansenist theologian Camus, however, argued instead that the Civil Constitution of the Clergy
was in accord with the New Testament, and that if anyone contradicted the scriptures, it was the
bishops and clergy themselves by committing abuses against the people. He ceded the basic idea
that spiritual jurisdiction derived solely from the scripture and Jesus Christ. Mirroring the
arguments of the clergy and bishops against the reform, Camus agreed:
Jesus Christ, in the course of his mission on the earth, did establish
apostles, and, besides these apostles, seventy-two disciples, to preach his
doctrine. The Church always saw in the bishops the successors of the
seventy-two disciples. It is therefore the essence of the religion of Jesus
Christ that the Church has bishops and priests for ministers: ministers who
71
Ibid., 16-17.
Ibid., 21-33.
73
Archives Parlementaire, Volume 15, 746.
72
90
established the one to the first row, the others in second row; but the one
and the others received their mission and their power from Jesus Christ.74
Camus understood that the tradition of the Church was important and powerful in establishing
the existing hierarchy, but beyond this point he strayed from the perspective of the Church,
arguing from a different political and geographical understanding of history and scripture. "The
essence of religion is not the division of dioceses and parishes," Camus put forth, "rather it is the
essence of religion that there are bishops and priests to preach, baptize, and perform other
functions of ministers of Jesus Christ." 75 In other words, the existence of hierarchy and bishops
was, indeed, in accordance with the wishes of God, but the partitioning of the various parishes
and dioceses was a political activity separate from scripture, and therefore the Church
organization was subject to the state. The Great Commission of Christ was not to form specific,
geographical centers of Church power, but rather to preach, baptize, and pray. In the end, Camus
felt that this was simply not a religious issue at all, but merely a political one in which the
bishops utilized religious arguments to sway the people. 76
Perhaps even more significant than matters of geographical hierarchy, however, was the
belief of many revolutionaries that the will of the people overrode the Church's authority, and
arguably God's power. Rabaut-Saint-Etienne, the prominent Protestant leader from Nîmes,
commented that "the free people are the only ones who love their laws, because they are the only
ones who should be consulted in their formation. It is with religious veneration that the citizen
considers the holy rule of law; and this love of the Constitution is identified with love of
country." 77 Rabaut was a veteran of the religious toleration debate—the Calvinist pastor had
74
Archives Parlementaire, Volume 16, 4
Archives Parlementaire, Volume 16, 4.
76
Archives Parlementaire, Volume 21, 96.
77
Ibid., 592
75
91
worked closely with Louis XVI’s minister, Malsherbes, in pushing through the Edict of
Toleration just two years before the Revolution in face of stiff resistance. He naturally supported
furthering religious tolerance and, as did most of the revolutionaries, believed that the will and
needs of the people were sacred, trumping all attempts by the first and second estates to justify
the traditional past through arguments of alleged holiness. The revolutionary definition of
“sacred” and the relationship between the people, government, and God remained ambiguous,
however, and the lack of emphasis on establishing the connections between God and the power
of government made reconciliation with the religious authorities impossible.
Despite strong objections from the orthodox religious community, the summer of 1790
became a monumental season of radical change to the political structure of the French
government and Catholic Church, and tension between "religion" and "reason" intensified into
the ensuing year. On June 19, 1790, the National Assembly abolished all nobility and honorary
titles. This was quickly followed by the official publication of the Civil Constitution of the
Clergy on July 17, after nearly a year of debate. By the fall, protests against these measures
became severe enough that the revolutionaries felt the need to decree legislation on November 27
requiring that all clergymen take an oath of allegiance to the French state. By the spring of 1791,
even the minting of coins became a religious issue, with one abbé demanding that the words "Sit
nomen domini benedictum," which translates to "Blessed be the name of the Lord," be inscribed
on the coins to recognize God's involvement in national affairs and man's "duties to the divine."
The Assembly rejected his proposal, with Château-Renaud declaring that he would rather honor
"French genius,” and Goupil arguing that it was unnecessary to put God on money, as his divine
92
will was implied by promotion of "universal reason." The Assembly instead voted to imprint
coins with, "The Nation, the Law, and the King.” 78
It is during these momentous events that accusations of irreligion, materialism, and
atheism began to develop on a larger scale in pamphlets and journals, driven by a perceived
“confirmation” of the philosophe goal of total destruction of Christianity that many had feared
since the Enlightenment. 79 The opening chapter of the abbé Thomas Marie Royou and Galart de
Montjoie's pamphlet, L'Ami du le Roi, first published in June of 1790, proposed to trace, in the
time leading up to the French Revolution, the connection between the Enlightenment and the
revolutionary attack on religion. 80 They described this "incendiary epoch" as a period of
Epicureanism, materialism, deism, and atheism littered with "apostles of philosophy," the
representative example being the materialist La Mettrie, who they criticized for suggesting that
man was merely a soulless animal and that the world would never be happy without being
atheistic. This line of thinking, they argued, was inherent in philosophical thought and
contributed to the potential for society to eventually commit a "blasphemous" assault on the
Church. 81 The conservative Journal ecclésiastique declared in horror that the “enemies of God”
triumphed, and accused the “new Revolution” of possessing the “depravity of an atheist of the
heart,” and for “associating with an empire of immodest women, like you, without God.” 82 It is
not a coincidence that Charles Chassanis wrote his Essai historique et critique against
philosophie during this volatile period, listing example after example of ancient states falling
under the weight of irreligion and Epicureanism. Man, he argued, “needs faith and the light of
78
Le Moniteur Universel,(Paris: April 11, 1791).
See McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment, 24-36, 65-77.
80
The attack on the French Revolution by Royou and Montjoie is not solely a diatribe against atheism and the
Enlightenment however, as they also blame the rise of Calvinism in France and single out the perceived failings of
the Duke of Orléans. Thomas Marie Royou et Galart de Montjoie, L'Ami du le Roi, (Paris, 1790), pp. 1-52.
81
Ibid., p. 1-2.
82
Journal ecclésiastique, January 1790, 16, 31.
79
93
reason” to avoid new systems of government that emphasize materialism, Pyrhonnianism,
irreligion, and atheism. 83 The oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy was the breaking point
for many conservative leaders. Despite the absence of overt atheists arguing for reform in the
National Assembly, the specter of atheism filled the minds of many religious writers who feared
the rapid political, social, and cultural change that they now witnessed. 84 By April of 1791, the
Pope officially condemned the decrees of the French Revolution, and there was no turning back
for either side. In light of the Catholic Church’s formal rejection of the radical changes to the
politics and religion of France, it was only natural that theistic writers would fear that the worst
was yet to come.
The French Revolution can be seen to mark the culmination of two centuries of debate
over the issues of when, where, whether, and how the Supreme Being delegated, expressed, and
legislated his power and in what sense this translated into earthly, political power. Keith Michael
Baker defines “politics” as “the activity through which individuals and groups in any society
articulate, negotiate, implement and enforce the competing claims they make upon one another
and upon the whole.” 85 This characterization of politics accurately describes the discourse
between the revolutionary government and the counterrevolution in the debates and pamphlets
supporting and challenging the nationalization of Church property and the Civil Constitution of
the Clergy, and in this sense the revolutionaries were correct in asserting that the issue was a
political one. Returning to Suzanne Desan’s definition of religion, however, it cannot be stressed
enough that the concepts of “sacred space” and “divine aid” that play such an important role in
the religious experience were able to do so due to the participants’ belief that a real, existent
83
Charles Chassanis, Essai historique et critique, sur l'insuffisance et la vanité de la philosophie des anciens ,
comparée à la morale chrétienne, traduit de l'italien avec un discours préliminaire et des notes du traducteur, par
l'auteur de la Morale universelle..., (Paris: Froulé, 1790) , p. IV, 29, 169-172.
84
John McManners, The French Revolution & the Church, 38-46, Tackett, 263-272, 288-296.
85
Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, 4.
94
entity acted within that space and provided that aid. Considering the complex relationship
believed to exist between this entity and the “public ritual,” so long controlled by the
institutionalized Church, it is natural that challenging the “communal prestige” of the ministers
and attempting to redefine the space in which religion existed in the revolutionary political
sphere lead to charges of atheism. 86 Although the revolutionaries denied atheism, aside of a few
attempts to connect their actions to the ideals of the primitive Christian church, they did little to
demonstrate their dedication to Church and religion in language deemed appropriate by their
opposition, choosing instead to define the “sacred” in terms of the nation, promoting toleration of
new ideas (including religious ones), and transforming religion into a mere personal choice of
conscience. They did little to “prove” to the right side of the Assembly that God himself willed
these changes to occur. Ultimately, the two sides were simply not speaking the same political
language. Perhaps this was the ultimate legacy of the Revolution’s debate between politics and
religion—not that the two concepts were incompatible, but rather that through the disparity
between the two sides’ linguistic terms of engagement, the discourse over the relationship
between the government and the Church provoked disagreement and doubt over the sacred
nature of temporal and spiritual power, the nature of religion, and the very nature of God
himself. As the French Revolution became more radical, the conflict between religion and
politics intensified, and the space opened for true atheists to experiment with public, political
expression, subjects to be examined in subsequent chapters of this dissertation.
It was within this context of religious and political upheaval that the second apotheosis of
Voltaire occurred in 1791, and it clearly illustrates the dual nature of the political discourse of
the moderate Revolution. On one hand, the frequent stops along the route taken by Voltaire’s
86
See Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred, 1-29, 96, 217-230; Ozouf, Festivals, 126-157; Durkheim, Elementary Forms,
3-16.
95
corpse mocked the “stations of the cross,” the people’s adoration mimicked the treatment of a
holy saint, and obvious religious symbolism suggested the replacement of the traditional Church
with the newly “canonized” philosophe who had famously commanded his readers to “crush the
infamous thing,” referring to the Catholic Church. On the other hand, the fact remains that the
revolutionaries attempted to straddle the line between religious reform and sacrilege. Despite the
perception of the religiously devout, prior to 1793 the revolutionaries were not attempting to
destroy religion or deny God his place in society, culture, and the human heart. They merely
wanted to restructure the institutional position of religion within the framework of a new
democratic political body. In this sense, the inscription on Voltaire’s final resting space clearly
stated the intentions of the French revolutionaries regarding religion, at least as of July 11, 1791.
They wanted to “expand the human spirit,” and demanded liberty, freedom, and toleration. They
wanted to put an end to fanaticism, feudalism, tyranny—and atheism. Oddly, the written record
of the discussions in the National Assembly regarding the remains of Voltaire makes no mention
of atheists or irreligion. When Pierre-Fra nçois Gossin and the young attorney, Regnaud,
introduced the idea of honoring Voltaire, they used virtually all the language that eventually
made its way to the sarcophagus. Gossin called him “the man who prepared men for tolerance
and freedom,” and the “fighter of fanaticism.” added that, “by him, serfs became men free from
feudalism.” 87 The exception was any mention of his being an enemy of atheism. Thus, it is
impossible to say with certainty why atheism was singled out. Perhaps they included this last
item as one last statement against their detractors, formally declaring their desire to maintain
theism and religion, despite counterrevolutionary accusations to the contrary.
87
Archives Parlementaires, Vol. 26, 610-611.
96
CHAPTER THREE
ETERNAL REASON: ATHEISM AND THE DECHRISTIANIZATION MOVEMENT OF
1793
On November 11, 1793, noted philosopher and atheist, Anacharsis Cloots, formerly the
Baron Jean-Baptiste Cloots, stood before the National Convention. Formerly known as the Baron
Jean-Baptiste Cloots, the Prussian-born deputy to the Convention had the year before renounced
his aristocratic heritage and changed his name, honoring the Scythian philosopher who traveled
to Athens looking for knowledge and, like Cloots, was known as a foreigner. On this day,
however, Cloots acted as the deputy of the department of Oise, and gave a speech in which he
detailed his being persecuting by the Church throughout his life. In his speech he made the usual
references to religion that seemed almost a requirement during the Revolution—accusing the
bishops of the Catholic Church of propagating false revelations, deception, and fantastic terrors.
Yet Cloots went even further than any deputy before him would dare while standing on the floor
of the Convention. He admitted that he had frequently preached that there was no God , except
for perhaps nature and the people, and that “religion is the biggest obstacle to my utopia.” Not
just Catholicism or Christianity, but all religion. What is more, he openly declared that a statue
should be erected in the Temple of Reason—which had just been formerly inaugurated during
the grandiose Festival of Reason the day before—and that this statue should honor the atheist
priest and author, Jean Meslier. 1 Meslier had written his Testament denouncing his religion and
declaring that there was no God over seventy years prior, but remained a pioneer and inspiration
for unbelievers all over France. Naigeon may have been brave to publish an atheistic tract in his
1
Archives parlementaires de 1787 à 1860 ; Convention nationale. Série 1 / Tome 79, (Paris: P. Dupont), 371-2.
own name three years before, but Cloots stood in person on the national stage itself and
effectively admitted his atheism in public. The response was hardly overwhelming—the
Convention deferred his suggestion for a statue honoring Meslier to the Committee of Public
Instruction and nothing became of it—but the fact that Cloots dared and was able to stand before
his peers and publicly make such a declaration was, perhaps, yet another watershed moment in
the history of atheism and philosophy spurred on by the anticlericalism and religious chaos of the
French Revolution.
Cloots was not the only citizen moved by the Festival of Reason. In the final two months
of 1793, the National Convention received many letters from individual citizens expressing a
plethora of opinions for and against the establishment of the Cult of Reason and the closing
down and pillaging of their traditional Christian churches. Although many revealed confusion
and frustration with the attack on religious custom, many also agreed with the decrees, providing
written support and publicizing their disdain for the Christian Church, demonstrating a variety of
shades of anti-Catholicism. Most provided vague, but enthusiastic support for the Cult of Reason
or asked for instructions on how to decorate a Temple to Reason, but some expressed
sophisticated views on religion and society. 2 One author named Dautun wrote an “Homage to
Reason” late in 1793 and sent it to the Convention, declaring that:
All revealed religion is a human invention and a sham in principle. And of all the
superstitious religions, Catholicism is the most superstitious. It is incompatible
with a system of reason and freedom, because it absorbs the entire soul and
enslaves the faculties. 3
2
3
Archives Nationale D XXXVIII, (1). (Henceforth abbreviated A.N.)
A. N., C 280, dossier 827.
98
Dautun appeared to be a skeptic, but unlike Cloots, he was no atheist and criticized Catholicism
for its ability to drive “even a strong man to atheism and despair,” and further added that:
If there is an infinite intelligence that is the soul of this universe, as I have the
irresistible and gentle conviction, he is nothing like this chimera—jealous,
capricious, vindictive, cruel and full of contradictions—that religious fools call
God. 4
Regardless of his theism or deism, Dautun obviously supported the dechristianization movement
and his views resembled the beliefs of many within the National Convention itself. Other
addresses submitted in 1793 and 1794 also proclaimed the Cult of Reason supreme while
implying atheistic archetypes. Deputy Henri-Pierre Burnel of the Commune de Rocher-de-la
Liberté produced a speech in which he stated:
The Cult of Reason, there is our religion. The Declaration of the Rights of Man
and of the Citizen, there is our Bible. Liberty, equality, security, property, there
are our rights. Finally, resistance to oppression, there is the duty of all of society,
and all this we owe to reason. 5
Burnel further denounced “prejudiced religion” and its ministers for forcing ignorance and
superstition on the populace, as well as the cruel actions and bloody sacrifices implemented in
the name of “divinity.” He called the Christian God a “cruel tyrant” and mocked the accusations
of “blasphemy” against “a god” so marvelous and yet so abominable as to be utterly
unbelievable. Burnel also described reason as being “immortal,” however, so the language of the
eternal and divine, along with his caustic references to “that religion” continue to make it
4
Ibid.
Henri-Pierre Burnel, Nécessité du culte de la Raison, discours prononcé dans le temple de la Raison de la
commune du Rocher de la Liberté, ci-devant St-Lo, le 1er décadi de ventôse de la deuxième année de la République
française, une & indivisible, (La Roucher-de-la-Liberté, France: Chez Gomont, 1793), 38-39.
5
99
difficult to attribute degrees of atheism to his beliefs. 6 Other attacks in the name of “reason”
reveal even more intermixing of atheism with theism, all in the name of dechristianization.
Alphonse Aulard gives the examples of Junius Dupérou and Pierre Jault, both supporters of the
Cult of Reason, with the former clearly espousing atheism in declaring that “the duties of men
are based on reason, not in the belief in God,” while the latter argued the cult of virtue is “the
only cult in the presence of the Supreme Being.” 7 It can be concluded from the diverse examples
of support for the Cult of Reason that the supporters of dechristianization represented a spectrum
of beliefs, including atheism, publicly proclaimed by citizens with little retribution—albeit by a
small minority—for the first time in continental European history. 8
This chapter will analyze the writings and political activities of major participants of the
most radical period of the French Revolution, the dechristianization movement of the Terror,
which escalated after the death of Marat in July of 1793, peaked in November of that same year
with the Festival of Reason celebration at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, and came to a crashing
end by March of 1794 when Robespierre and the Montagnards had Jacques Hébert and many of
his associates executed for treason at the guillotine. Atheists will be identified, but also
significant leaders of the dechristianization movement who did believe in God, because
ultimately atheism in the French Revolution cannot be fully understood without investigating the
connections between disbelief and belief. The line between politics and theology in the
eighteenth century, and all centuries, is frequently blurred and atheists intermingled and shared
their political views with others of subtly different doctrines and creeds. Deists, theists, and
6
Burnel, 8, 14, 16-20.
Aulard, La Culte de la Raison, 74-75. More similar proclamations from the various communes of France can be
found in the following: Michel Vovelle, The Revolution Against the Church: From Reason to the Supreme Being,
(Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 98-101; P. Dupont, ed. Archives Parlementaires, Vol. 80, (Paris: 18751888). 42, 91-92, 96, 138, 154, 343, 351, 382-3, 551, 555. (Henceforth abbreviated A.P.)
8
Matthew Turner, an English doctor who wrote a treatise on the merits of atheism in Britain, predated the French
Revolution by seven years. See Matthew Turner, Answer to Priestley’s Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever,
(London: 1782).
7
100
atheists alike expressed not only anticlericalism, but extreme hostility toward Catholicism and
Christianity as a whole. They shared oppositional beliefs about the existence of a Supreme
Being, but shared common views and goals regarding the clergy, ritual identities, and the role of
religion in the social and political realms. For the vast majority of these revolutionary radicals,
theistic identity simply did not matter, and more practical common needs trumped theological
debate. Furthermore, the fact remains that few atheists such as Cloots or Naigeon or Maréchal
openly expressed themselves, perhaps in fear of rejection by their theistic counterparts. After all,
“atheist” had been a dirty word for centuries, even among many philosophes. It may be,
however, that many who were atheists in the sense of being in a state of absence of belief in a
deity may not have identified themselves as such, being unable or unwilling to develop a sense
of self separate from the majority religious body of society. 9 Thus, to cover the spectrum of
belief and unbelief, a variety of key politicians and writers will be examined, including FrançoisXavier Lanthenas , Joseph Fouché, Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette, Anacharsis Cloots, AntoineFrançois Momoro, François-Nicolas Vincent, Charles Ronsin, Fabre d’Églantine, Gilbert
Romme, Leonard Bourdon, Jacques Thuriot, Jean-Baptiste Carrier, and Bishop Gobel. These are
all politicians and writers who directly participated at the federal level to promote
dechristianization and anticlericalism at the height of the Terror, many of them inspired by the
Enlightenment, but also by economic considerations, patriotism, counter-revolutionary events,
personal vendettas, and political ambition. As did the philosophes before them, their journal
articles, pamphlets, and published political debates reveal a strong sense that priests, Catholics,
and in many cases all Christians were “superstitious,” but they also concerned themselves with
the fact that many Catholics were contributors to or perceived backers of the counter-revolution.
9
Again, see Gordon Stein for the most commonly used contemporary definition of atheism by proponents of
atheism, which stresses absence of belief over a strict identity centered on active disbelief in God and the
supernatural. Stein, Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Vol. I, 27-29
101
Based on their philosophical influences and radical support of dechristianization, if there were
major atheists involved in the politics of the Revolution, then these were the likely suspects.
Close analysis of their actions and words illustrates that a few were, indeed, identifiable as
atheists, but that the majority of those participating in the governing and political propaganda of
the dechristianization period were either theists or whose personal beliefs on theism and atheism
are undetectable.
Thus this chapter asks the following questions. Who were the atheists of the
dechristianization period? How are they to be distinguished from other dechristianizers of the
period? What was their role and impact on dechristianization, the Terror, and the French
Revolution as a whole? The first question breaks down to only a few revolutionaries who can,
with little doubt, to be categorized as atheists in the sense of persons who clearly lacked a belief
in God and who maintained that conviction as a significant part of their self-identity.
3.1 Historiography of Atheism and the Dechristianization Period
The historiography of dechristianization reveals some major issues that have to be
addressed in order to understand the link between atheism and the Revolution and justify the
significance of examining this topic. In his America Historical Review essay, “Christianity as
Casualty and Chrysalis of Modernity: The Problem of Dechristianization in the French
Revolution,” Dale Van Kley addresses a key and vexing point of debate in the historiography of
the French Revolution—how is it possible to explain “how a state and society still so apparently
Christian and specifically Catholic as was France in the eighteenth century could manage to give
rise to the first revolution that turned against Christianity and produced a campaign to
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‘dechristianize’ its entire culture?” 10 Observing the current historiographical near-consensus that
Christianity and the Enlightenment were not always necessarily in opposition to one another,
Van Kley emphasizes the complexity of the interplay between religion, Enlightenment, and the
Revolution, citing historians who argue in favor of a multitude of Enlightenments, others who
note religion’s active involvement in the development of the modern world, and still other
scholars who emphasize religion’s survival throughout the French Revolution. 11 Nigel Aston,
one of the historians highlighted in Van Kley’s article, stresses the importance of religion during
the French Revolution, posing the possibility that the Enlightenment may have even been
irrelevant, noting that "the break between the Revolution and Christianity—especially the
Catholic Church—was essentially contingent, unintelligible without reference to the specific
events and vicissitudes of the Revolution itself.” 12 In other words, the Enlightenment and
economic past is not what made the French Revolution, but rather it was the particular political,
social, and cultural circumstances of the period between 1787 and 1799 in France that created
10
Dale Van Kley, “Christianity as Casualty and Chrysalis of Modernity: The Problem of Dechristianization in the
French Revolution,” American Historical Review, Vol. 108, No. 4, (October, 2003), 1081-2. For another
complimentary review essay on the topic of religion and Enlightenment, see Jonathan Sheehan, “Enlightenment,
Religion, and the Enigma of Secularization: A Review Essay,” American Historical Review, Vol. 108, No. 4
(October 2003), 1061-1080.
11
For examples of authors arguing in favor of multiple Enlightenments, some in Kley’s article and some not, see:
Poxock, Barbarism and Religion: The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon; Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment;
Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments, (New York:
Vintage Books, 2005. For examples of authors claiming a link between religion and the development of modernity,
see: J. C. D. Clark, English Society 1660–1832: Religion, Ideology and Politics during the Ancien Regime, 2d edn.
(Cambridge, 2000); James E. Bradley, Religion, Revolution, and English Radicalism: Nonconformity in EighteenthCentury England (Cambridge, 1990); Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution; Knut Haakonssen,
ed. Enlightenment and Religion: Radical Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain, (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996); Porter, The Creation of the Modern World; James Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible: Translation,
Scholarship, Culture, (Princeton University Press, 2007). For examples of those illustrating the strength of religion
throughout the French Revolution, see: John McManners, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France, 2 vols.
(Oxford, 1998); Nigel Aston, Revolution and Religion in France; Suzanne Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred; Timothy
Tackett, Religion, Revolution, and Regional Culture in Eighteenth-Century France, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1986); David A. Bell, The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680-1800,
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). Again, the exception to this near-consensus on religion’s role in
eighteenth-century France is Jonathan Israel, who views atheism, dechristianization, and the decline of religion as
key elements of the Enlightenment and French Revolution. Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 8-17.
12
Aston, Revolution and Religion in France, xii.
103
this revolutionary phenomenon. Van Kley counters, however, that “neither the Terror nor its
dechristianizing phase can be entirely understood without reference to the multi-secular conflicts
within French Christianity as well as those between Christianity and eighteenth-century lights.
Nor for that matter is the French Enlightenment entirely intelligible except in relation to the
prerevolutionary conflicts within the Gallican Church.” 13 In contrast to Aston, Van Kley believes
that the past did influence the future, but implies that the complexity of the past makes for an
equally complex present. In any case, Van Kley and Aston agree on one thing: religion was
indispensable in the development of the French Revolution and its aftermath. 14
If religion was so prevalent during the French Revolution, was atheism irrelevant? As
Van Kley and the majority of the historians he references contend, religion was alive and well in
the French Revolution and cannot be assumed to be separate from the intellectual and political
developments of the last quarter of the eighteenth century, but at the same time it is imprudent to
speculate that the fears of spreading atheism expressed by Burke and Robespierre were solely the
result of their imaginations. 15 Atheists existed and played a significant role in the French
Revolution in developing and complicating its ideals, and this needs to be addressed. In order to
examine atheism, however, atheists must be identified, but this proves a difficult task even
during the most radical period of the French Revolution—the dechristianization phase of the
Terror. It is true that there were atheists participating in the attack on traditional religion and that
a small few of them even intended to attempt the installation of an atheistic culture in the
political regime of the Republic. Yet even among the most radical of the dechristianizers, only
13
Van Kley, “Christianity as Casualty,” AHR, 108
For a more complete view of Van Kley’s version of the causation of the French Revolution, see Dale Van Kley,
The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to the Civil Constitution, 1560-1791, (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1996).
15
The introduction to this dissertation discusses Edmund Burke’s accusations of a “cabal of atheists” in France,
while the chapter following this essay examines Robespierre’s attack on the atheists of the dechristianization
movement.
14
104
the following leaders of the movement can clearly be identified as true atheists: Pierre-Gaspard
Chaumette, Sylvain Marèchal, and Anacharsis Cloots, though others such as Fabre d’Egantine
and Antoine Momoro may or may not have been as well. Other atheists were active participants
in the French Revolution, but did not contribute much to the dechristianizing aspects of the
Revolution in which atheism was a fundamental factor. Condorcet and the Marquis de Sade were
eliminated from political influence due to their moderation. Jacques André Naigeon was still
alive and writing, but refrained from active participation in the political process of
dechristianization and revolution. After the publishing of his Adresse à l'Assemblée nationale sur
la liberté des opinions in 1790, he chose instead to write a massive philosophical encyclopedia,
the Dictionnaire de philosophie ancienne et moderne, which he worked on throughout the early
years of the Revolution, completing it in 1794. Other potential atheists proved uncommitted to
their unbelief. Joseph Fouché exhibited some signs of being atheistic, but later recanted, making
it unclear whether he was truly an atheist or simply attempting to prove his radicalness through
extreme actions against the Christian faith. Other major proponents of dechristianization,
including Jacques Hébert, did not reveal any strict atheism. Nonetheless, those atheists who were
present and influential in the period interacted with other radicals, shared in their anticlericalism
and disdain for organized religion, and played a major role in the subsequent developments of
the Terror of 1793 and 1794. This active participation in the political system by atheists was a
first in Western history, and this fact is what makes the French Revolution an important
landmark in the history of atheism.
In a sense, the identification of atheism and the analysis of its impact on society and the
Revolution are as difficult as defining the dechristianization movement as a whole and in fact
these issues are naturally intertwined. The nature of the dechristianization movement and the role
105
atheism played in its creation have been long debated, but the current view of most historians
who address religion in the Revolution is that dechristianization was an exceptional occurrence
and that atheism was not an essential component of the Terror or the attack on churches, priests,
and Christian symbols and rituals of the period, Jonathan Israel being the major exception. 16 As
far back as the early twentieth century, Alphone Aulard felt that most dechristianizers were
deists and noted the ambiguity in interpreting the nuances of eighteenth-century religious
skepticism, asking:
What was natural religion? Was it the philosophical religion of Voltaire? Or that
of Rousseau’s Christian formulation? We cannot distinguish and honor both
Voltaire and Rousseau. Chaumette, if anti-Catholic, was somewhat a disciple of
Rousseau, while the Voltairian Hébert liked to boast about the ‘sans-culotte Jesus
Christ.’ Christianity claimed primitive and natural religion, and all this
intermingled in the imagination of the sans-culottes in 1793, becoming
iconoclastic as much by patriotism as by free-thinking, and in Paris, more by
destruction than by building. The worship of Reason was almost everywhere Deist
(not materialist or atheist). 17
Aulard recognized the complexity of the dechristianizers in a manner still relevant a hundred
years later, noting the subtle differences between the principle actors and the reasoning behind
their attack on the Church. This intricacy has been reviewed by more recent historians who
describe how the religiosity of the majority of French people remained fairly constant throughout
16
Key proponents of the view that the dechristianization period of 1793-1794 was an exceptional occurrence and not
indicative of the ideals of the Revolution as a whole include, among others, Cobb, People’s Armies, 442-447, 474479; Aston, Religion and Revolution in France, 259-261. Jonathan Israel, on the other hand, essentially defines the
French Revolution around the idea of dechristianization, though he claims the Terror to be a separate, profanity
implemented by disciples of the moderate Enlightenment. Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 24-26, 931.
17
Alphonse Aulard, Le christianisme et la Révolution française, (Paris, 1927), 102.
106
the time period, thus highlighting how unusual the existence of dechristianization really was, at
least in the extreme form it took during the Terror. John McManners’ influential Church and
Society in Eighteenth-Century France depicts a nation full of religion and Christianity even
throughout the Revolution, and attributes the dechristianization period to “the pressures of a war
for survival and fear of dissidence and treachery.” He perhaps hinted at the existence of atheists
in the movement by describing it as “the fanaticism of a day and of a minority which could never
be revoked,” though McManners never says whether or not he meant that unbelievers or just
dechristianizers as a whole were the minority in question. Regardless, to McManners
dechrisitianization was an exception to the rule regarding the religiosity of France and not a key
representation of religious tendencies of the people. 18 McManner’s student, Nigel Aston, blames
dechristianization on “Jacobin zealots” and notes that those attacking churches and priests
actively sought alternatives to Christianity, not the end of religion or theism. The view of an
“atheist” France was a matter of perception as the Catholic devout fled the nation and reported
the atrocities against the Church and its clergy. 19 Dale Van Kley, discussing the work of Bernard
Plongeron, is quick to point out that “at the high tide of the Terror during the revolutionary year
II (1793–1794), with most of the clergy in hiding and all of the churches closed, French lay men
and women undertook religious education, continued to baptize their newborns, celebrated
unconsecrated or ‘white’ Masses, and bought catechisms and rituals in numbers that appalled the
Parisian police.” 20 In other words, despite belligerent outbreaks against the organized religious
18
McManners, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France, Vol. II, 117-118.
Aston, Religion and Revolution in France, 194, 261.
20
Van Kley, “Christianity as Casualty and Chrysalis of Modernity,” AHR, Vol. 108, No. 4, (October, 2003). See also
Bernard Plongeron, with Astérios Argyriou, Vivianne Barrie, Dominique Bourel, Christian Chanel, Mikhaïl
Dimitriev, François-Georges Dreyfus, Hanna Dylagowa, Bernard Heyberger, Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, Claude
Michaud, Alfred Minke, Antón M. Pazos, Mario Rosa, and Yves Saint-Geours, Les défis de lamodernité, 1750–1840,
vol. 10, in Histoire du christianisme des origines à nos jours, J.-M. Mayer, Ch. and L. Pietri, A. Vauchez, and M.
Venard, eds. (Paris, 1997). 541–63, 595–600, 794–818, 203–11.
19
107
institution during the Terror, “religion” among the people continued as it always had, whereas
non-atheistic upheaval at the level of religious authority, theology, politics, and doctrine existed
long before the Revolution began. Additionally, as this chapter will examine, identifying actual
atheists and separating active disbelief in God from the anti-clericalism, anti-Catholicism, and
anti-Christianity—none of which are by necessity atheistic—is a complex and difficult task,
because even among this “fanatic minority,” religious language remained a part of the rhetoric
for believer and unbeliever alike.
The story of François-Xavier Lanthenas demonstrates just how difficult it can be to label
the philosophical and religious views of individual revolutionaries. A medical doctor from Haute
Loire who served in the National Convention for much of the French Revolution, Lanthenas was
the manifestation of the stereotype that French Revolutionaries came from bourgeois
backgrounds and formulated their standards from progressive Enlightenment ideals. His father
was a wax merchant and François-Xavier apprenticed with his father’s business before, with the
help of influential manufacturer Jean-Marie Roland, deciding to study medicine instead. After
graduating from Reims, he practiced as a physician in Paris in the years leading into the French
Revolution, before taking on a position as an administrator of public education. 21 When the
Revolution began, Lanthenas took the side of the Revolutionaries, joined the Jacobin Club, and
people knew him for his liberal anti-slavery stance and affability to blacks. The departments of
Rhone-et-Loire and Haute-Loire elected him to represent them in the National Convention in
September, 1792. Lanthenas became a radical and approved of the execution of Louis XVI and
was friendly with Marat, who saved François-Xavier from the suspicion of the Montagnards
when they turned on his former mentor, Roland. Lathenas based much of his politics on
Enlightenment reason, and especially admired the philosophes, claiming in a speech to the
21
A.N. Cote F1bI 2.
108
National Convention on the role of morality in society that philosophie was what “made freedom
for mankind” and “turned the darkness of prejudice into the light of reason.” 22 On the surface,
Lathenas sounds like the atheist D’Holbach, calling some believers “credulous,” and suggested
that they are subject to ignorance of the ways of nature. However, this same radical promoted
religious freedom as well, claiming that the new government should “promote the eternal
principles which are present in all religions.” 23 He argued that the most free nations would never
preach atheism, using the United States as an example, but also went so far as to suggest that
skeptics and believers both had a place in a free society. In this same speech, on the subject of
the need for social morality in the republic, Lanthenas addressed the belief in God, deriving
through the etymological history of the word “Dieu” that the belief in a greater being was
transcendental and innate, but he did so by making “God” a remote subject that could represent
“intelligence in nature” or “goodness” or “a perfect universe,” as if God were an idea, not an
existing “thing.” 24 He continued:
In the eyes of pure philosophy, when nothing supernatural speaks either in mind
or naked heart, religions appear to all to be the same, taken from the phenomena
of nature and the spectacle of the universe. This is demonstrated today purely by
philosophers, those whose work involves researching this topic, and who give us
an explanation of the ancient mythologies. 25
This separation of the idea of God and the reality of nature, as well as the suggestion that
philosophers can objectively “explain” the origins of these “myths,” implies skepticism on the
part of Lanthenas. Yet his speech goes on to suggest that deists and atheists are not as different
22
Archives Parlementaires, Vol. 70, 620.
Ibid., 620.
24
For more on the eighteenth-century move toward treating religion as an “object” of study, see Peter Harrison,
‘Religion’ and the religions in the English Enlightenment, (Cambridge University Press, 1990), 1-5, 77-85, 126-130.
25
Ibid., 621.
23
109
as people might believe, because they both derive their belief in morality from the “spectacle of
the universe.” He expounds that the atheist is still subject to his “interests and passions,” whereas
the deist provides “fidelity of his conduct” by maintaining that space between religious principle
and skeptical reason. 26 It soon becomes apparent that Lanthenas was likely a deist who did,
indeed, believe in God and the idea that goodness derived from that Supreme Being, though he
does hint that he may see the deity as being merely a matter of etymology symbolizing the
unexplained principles of morality. Without an explicit admission of theism or atheism and
taking this one discussion regarding the origins of the idea of “God,” however, it would be
impossible to say with one hundred percent certainty that Lanthenas was or was not an atheist—
and most revolutionaries never publicly reveal even this much of their theological stance, with
many of them simultaneously preaching religious tolerance while burning the relics of the
Church and attacking its priesthood.
Despite the shades of gray between believers and non-believers, some historians still
maintain that the Revolution, and especially the dechristianization movement, demonstrates a
decline in religiosity and a rise in secularism during the eighteenth century, though the definition
of “secularism” varies. Prior to the 1970s, historians frequently argued that religion was entirely
antagonistic and contrary to the evolving concepts of liberty, democracy, reason, and science. 27
To them, the century was marked by the decline in “superstition” and the rise of Enlightenment
and progress, even within the process of revolution. 28 Historians who support the idea of a rising
26
Ibid., 620-624.
The exception being many Marxist historians who viewed the dechristianization movement as being a farce put
forth by corrupt officials such as Hébert and Chaumette in order to divert attention away from their own fraudulent
dealings. Seeing economics as the driving force behind history, the Marxists were naturally suspicious of the
philosophical ideology of the so-called Hébertists. See Albert Mathiez, The French Revolution, 403-425; Albert
Soboul, The Sans-Culottes: the Popular Movement and the Revolutionary Government 1793-1794I, (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1980), 13; Daniel Guérin, Class struggle in the first French republic : bourgeois and
bras nus 1793-1795, (London: Pluto, 1977), 31-34.
28
See Joseph Marie Maistre, Considérations sur la France (Lyon, France: J. B. Pélagaud et Co., 1852), 66-79;
27
110
secularism during the period of the French Revolution since then are more subtle in their
analysis. Michel Vovelle, for example, notes that prior to the dechristianization movement of
1793 and 1794, the revolutionaries created the Civil Constitution of the Clergy not for “the
destruction of the religious superstructure or a fortiori of religious belief, nor even that of
separating the Church from the State (the first thought of this arose from the dechristianization
crisis) but rather to position the cult, the established cults, in a privileged place within the new
state which had been born of the Revolution.” 29 Notwithstanding this moderate early approach
toward reconciling Catholicism with the Revolution, after the resulting schism, attacks on the
Church and especially religious iconography escalated and Vovelle gives a simple reason: the
people found that “these vestiges of superstition were both superfluous and ridiculous.” 30
Ultimately, while noting the complexity of French society and the inconsistency in the data,
Vovelle still views the dechristianization movement as “one of the major turning-points in the
collective sensibility of France” and argues that it “heralded, as an extension of this war of
movements, a long and multi-secular war of changing positions,” resulting in a “lowering of
esteem for religion which lasted well into the nineteenth century, and which was at the root of
that other, longer-term dechristianization which has been in progress since that time.” 31 Despite
this view that dechristianization is a marker of the past two centuries and not just an anomaly of
the Terror, Vovelle never attributes the process to growing atheism or the presence of zealous
atheists.
George Havens, The Age of Ideas: From Reaction to Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France (New York, 1955);
Kingsley Martin, French Liberal Thought in the Eighteenth Century: A Study of Political Ideas from Bayle to
Condorcet (New York, 1963); and Paul Hazard, La crise de la conscience européenne (Paris, 1935), or The
European Mind, J. Lewis May, trans. (Cleveland, Ohio, 1963), Peter Gay, The Enlightenment, Volumes I and II, (W.
W. Norton and Company, 1966).
29
Michel Vovelle, The Revolution against the Church: From Reason to the Supreme Being, trans. by Alan José,
(Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1988/1991), 13.
30
Ibid., 58.
31
Ibid., 174-176.
111
Nevertheless, allusions to atheism do occur in other works of secondary literature
regarding the dechristianization and the Terror, and these references should be noted in order to
demonstrate the necessity for an examination of actual atheists. If most current historians do not
view the Revolution as atheistic, then why are there so many insinuations regarding atheism? For
example, one of the original historians of the Revolution, Alexis Tocqueville, compared the
political revolution of the period to a religious revolution, noting that its aim of regenerating
humanity was like a religion, “an imperfect religion, to be sure, without God, cult, or afterlife.” 32
His belief that irreligion was a dominant, widespread phenomenon in eighteenth-century France
is outdated among most historians today, for sure, but his assessment that the “universal discredit
into which all religious beliefs fell at the end of the last century undoubtedly exerted the greatest
influence on our entire Revolution; it marked its character,” remains a popular stereotype in
popular culture. 33 R. R. Palmer treats atheism as merely a political accusation used by
Robespierre and his associates in order to discredit the ultra-revolutionary colleagues of Hébert,
while still considering the French Revolution to be the “transmitter” of the Enlightenment into
the nineteenth century. 34 Michael Kennedy briefly describes an “atheistic twinge” to
dechristianization, but recognizes that “the number of atheistic utterances was tiny compared to
deistic ones.” 35 Yet Hugh Gough makes the claim that “most of the leading activists in deChristianization were closer to atheism in their beliefs,” although he does not go into detail
regarding why he believes this. 36 Richard Cobb is one of the few to discuss atheists in any detail,
32
Alexis Tocqueville, The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution, trans. by Arthur Goldhammer, (Cambridge
University Press, 2011), 21.
33
Ibid., 136-142.
34
R. R. Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1969), 120-123; R. R Palmer, Catholics and Unbelievers in Eighteenth-Century France,
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1939), 222-223.
35
Michael Kennedy, The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution 1793-1795, (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000),
174-175.
36
Hugh Gough, The Terror in the French Revolution, (London: MacMillan Press, 1998), 49.
112
describing the fears of “militant atheism” that gripped the religious victims of the Terror as well
as concerned the Committee of Public Safety, which became concerned that the unbridled
violence of the dechristianization in the communes represented the “seed-beds of military
atheism.” 37 Cobb also contends that most French revolutionaries were merely anticlerical, and
asserts that as far as the urban masses concerned themselves, “Enlightenment thinking seems to
have played no part in the development of this anticlericalism and anti-Catholicism,” nor “did
atheism hold any more attraction for the révolutionnaires than theology,” despite the fact that
these artisans and shopkeepers were as invested in dechristianization as the Jacobins. 38 Cobb
does not minimize the impact of atheists, however, noting that some of the key répresentants and
commissaires who led the dechristianization movement were actual atheists, and exclaimed that
“atheists were individualists and anarchists, agreeable men who found themselves in the
vanguard of a spontaneous revolutionary moment,” while laying much of the blame for the
violence on their heads. 39 Thus, most of the historians who reference atheists tend to identify
them as exceptional, which they were, and as perpetrators of violence when they did appear—
this latter argument being more questionable, as shall be seen.
Again, Jonathan Israel, who has written three volumes on the “radical Enlightenment”
and the influence of Spinoza’s universal materialism on the intellectual and political thought of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, believes in the significance of atheistic, radical
Enlightenment in the French Revolution. He disputes both that the Revolution formed based on
the specific political and economic events of its time and that it resulted from a complex past in
which religion may have played a significant part. In his most recent work, Democratic
37
Richard Cobb, The People’s Armies: the Armées Révolutionnaires: instrument of the Terror in the departments
April 1793 to Floréal Year II, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 442-447.
38
Cobb, The People’s Armies, 450-451, 470-5.
39
Ibid., 450-1, 470-479.
113
Enlightenment, Israel argues that rather than religion, economics, or circumstances specific to the
Revolution, “la philosophie was the primary cause of the [French] Revolution. It was indeed
overwhelmingly the primary factor….” 40 For Israel, la philosophie is one and the same with the
radical Enlightenment that he puts forth in his previous volumes as being the essential
development of modernity, defined by philosophical reason, rejection of supernatural agency,
equality of mankind, secular “universalism,” comprehensive toleration and freedom of thought,
personal liberty of lifestyle, freedom of speech, and democratic republicanism—none of which
would be possible without the radical Enlightenment. 41 Religion, faith, prayer, church, God—
these things were antithetical to modernity and the radical Enlightenment. Atheism, on the other
hand, is critical to the development of modernity in all three of Israel’s volumes, though in his
latest work he hedges his bets by noting that “adherents to radical ideas did not have to be
atheists and were almost never willing to admit (as Spinoza was not) to be atheists,” though he
cannot help himself in exaggerating the significance of the atheist Naigeon and his atheistic
treatise on freedom of the press. 42 Israel’s application of his thesis to the French Revolution,
however, is flawed in that his analysis ignores countless counter-examples and stops at 1790,
essentially ignoring the events that occurred the following decade which make up the bulk of the
Revolution. Israel does not examine the political decrees and debates of the Assembly and
Convention, which are full of counterexamples to his hypothesis, choosing instead to cherry-pick
the philosophe pamphlets that support his view, nor does he do more than hint at the
dechristianization period that contradicts his viewpoint that la philosophie radicale was the endall, be-all of modernity and toleration. Israel desperately wants to separate his radical
40
Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 17.
Jonathan Israel, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670-1752,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 866.
42
Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 12-13, 776-778..
41
114
Enlightenment from Robespierre—who was adamantly against atheism—and the Jacobins who
“perverted” his version of the Enlightenment, but nonetheless Israel is quick to hold up the
atheist philosopher Cloots and Prudhomme’s Revolutions de Paris as examples of radical
Enlightenment influence, while ignoring their roles and those of other similar radicals influenced
by the Enlightenment in perpetrating the event that defined the Revolution for thousands of
victims and their families—the Terror. The problem is a matter of oversimplifying the diversity
of Enlightenment and revolutionary ideology. As the example of François-Xavier Lanthenas
illustrates—Lanthenas being both, a religious skeptic and a likely theist who, like Israel, believed
that philosophie was the key to progress— radical Enlightenment ideals and their antitheses were
fluid, capable of mixing with various shades of belief and unbelief, ultimately resulting in a
modernity much too complex to be attributed to one small group.
3.2 The Paris Commune and the Dechristianization of 1793
Dechristianization was the most radical event of the French Revolution in that it
attempted to destroy the cultural foundations of the past several centuries and transform France
into a new, secular image. For the purpose of this essay “dechristianization” refers specifically to
the systematic attempt at removal of Catholicism, Christianity, and all forms of traditional
religion and ritual from French society and politics. This should be considered separately from
the passing of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy during the early years of the Revolution,
which was an attempt to reconstitute the religious organization of the realm, and not an attempt
to end religion and Christianity. The Civil Constitution was an effort by the moderate
revolutionary government to find a way to reconcile their ideals with the status quo already in
115
place. Religion was a key component of early-modern culture, and as noted above, many of the
early revolutionaries were either theists or were apathetic toward religion. Their desire to create a
government that represented the people, the majority of whom held strong religious beliefs,
necessitated a compromise, but legislators were unwilling to concede on issues of power and
authority. When the Pope formally rejected the Civil Constitution, however, the counterrevolution was strengthened, which forced the French Revolutionaries to stand their ground and
fight it out for the minds of the people. This situation was further aggravated by bread shortages,
economic upheaval, betrayal by the monarchy, and eventually foreign invasion in 1792. The
turmoil these evebts created opened the door for radicals to have their say in forming a
republican government, and although the majority of radicals were anticlerical, few of them were
atheists. However, some of them were. Ultimately, the uproar over the Civil Constitution of the
Clergy contributed to an environment in which radicals used the fear of invasion, economic
chaos, and a return to the oppression often associated with the Church to break down the last
remnants of the ancien régime, destroy the monarchy, and set up a republic in which they
controlled the majority of the Assembly. This radicalization, which resulted in suspicion and
paranoia over the motives of the clergy and other religious persons and activities, in turn allowed
for atheists to attempt to assert power and influence for themselves in the political realm to an
extent never possible before in the history of Western civilization. The possibility of the political
presence of atheism was never more evident than within the Paris Commune.
In August of 1792, after multiple attempts by Louis XVI to resist legislation that broke
down the traditional walls of authority, Parisian radicals took over the Paris Commune in order
to organize the elimination of the monarchy, and on August 10 aided in the storming of the
Tuileries and successful overthrow of the king. Their subsequent role in French politics became
116
to promote the will of the sans-culottes and defend the revolutionary legislation of the National
Assembly, so long as it conformed to their collective wishes. Although historian Alphonse
Aulard’s contention that it was the whole of Paris possessed “philosophical unbelief [which] was
amused by Hébert’s childish pranks” is an exaggerated claim, it is true that within the Paris
Commune that the small number of “militant atheists” hinted at in the secondary literature gained
a small foothold on power, actively participating with other radicals in order to create a more
“reasoned” and secular state and society. 43 After Marat’s death in July of 1793, members of the
Paris Commune represented some of the most prominent promoters of the Terror and the
movement to eliminate Christian religion from France. The most notable leaders were PierreGaspard Chaumette, Anarchasis Cloots, Jacques Hébert, Antoine-François Momoro, Charles
Ronsin, and François-Nicolas Vincent—the first two being atheists, the second pair likely not,
and the last couple being impossible to determine due to a lack of available evidence. 44
Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette is the Paris Commune politician most commonly noted for his
atheism and he was the most influential, but the truth is that the evidence of his atheism explored
by Chaumette’s two biographers is, for the most part, circumstantial. Stephen Smiley is skeptical
of Chaumette’s alleged atheism, suggesting that his letters immediately prior to the Revolution
expressed basic religious beliefs, and noting that Chaumette’s enemies exaggerated his actions
during the dechristianization period. 45 Fritz Braesch, the editor of a published version of some
of Chaumette’s papers, sees him as undeniably atheistic in nature by the time of the
43
Alphonse Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison et le Culte de l’Être Supreme *1793-1794), (Paris, 1904),
Besides Alphonse Aulard’s Le Culte de la Raison et le Culte de l’Être Supreme, for an excellent breakdown of the
events surrounding the Paris Commune and its role in the dechristianization movement, see the dissertation of
Charles Anthony Gliozzo, The Anti-Christian Movement in Paris during the French Revolution, 1789-1794, (Ann
Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, Inc., 1966). Note, however, that Gliozzo names former Paris Commune leader
Pierre Manuel as certainly being an influential atheist, using as his evidence Manuel’s editorship of La Feuille
Villageoise, a newspaper printed in Paris and circulated in rural areas to spread the laws and doctrines of the
National Convention. My analysis of Manuel’s paper, however, revealed little more discussion of religion other than
typical anticlericalism. Also see Albert Mathiez, Les Origines des Cultes Revolutionnaires, (Paris: 1904), 70.
45
Stephen Smiley, Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette, (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1974), 515-525.
44
117
dechristianization movement, though Braesch, too, recognizes that Chaumette had not been born
and raised a disbeliever. Baesch cites the extremity of Chaumette’s anticlericalism, the changing
of his name to Anaxagoras (the ancient Greek philosopher who introduced materialism to
Athens), and his close relationship with known atheists such as Anacharsis Cloots and Sylvain
Maréchal. Maréchal even dedicated his poem, Contre Dieu, to his friend Chaumette. 46
Subsequently, Chaumette’s personal papers reveal a letter written to him which could be
interpreted as further evidence of Chaumette’s atheism. It quotes Maréchal’s poem against God,
suggesting that its words encouraging the reader to be the “author of truth” and the “enemy of
imposters” could be the epitaph on Chaumette’s tomb. 47 Another letter written to him by an
unknown author attempts to explain how it is possible to be a philosophe and a Christian at the
same time, while one additional piece of correspondence tries to illustrate how priests can still be
patriots, and additionally several more attempt to argue against irreligion and materialism. Did
Chaumette need convincing of all these matters? 48 It makes sense, indeed, that if the public knew
Chaumette to be an atheist that he, a public figure, would receive correspondence from
detractors. On the other hand, in most of these cases it simply cannot be ascertained who wrote
the letters and when. There is also a short treatise attributed to him, but not in his handwriting, on
“Les Beaux Arts,” which declares that the arts are not “from the serpent or monster of God,” but
rather they are “the imitation of nature.” 49 Interestingly, neither biographer mentions the fact that
Chaumette’s own friend, Sylvain Maréchal, does not list Chaumette as one of the atheists in his
1800 publication, Dictionnaire des Athées anciens et modernes. 50
46
Fritz Baesch, Papiers de Chaumette, (Paris: 1908), 87-91; Smiley, Chaumette, 500.
A. N. T 604, Folder 3, (27). The handwriting of the signee of the letter is illegible.
48
A.N. T 604, Folder 3, (7).
49
A. N. T 604, Folder 3 (page not numbered, titled “Origine de Pöesie.”).
50
Sylvain Maréchal, Dictionnaire des Athées anciens et modernes, ed. by J. B. L. Germond, (Bruxelles: J. B.
Balleroy, 1833), 109-110.
47
118
There is, however, one short treatise written by the hand of Chaumette that exposes his
feelings on the “principles of existence” that reveals him to be a true atheist, perhaps aimed at the
writer of the letter on Christian philosophes. The treatise consists of long, hand-written pages
dedicated to the topics of existence, belief, nature, materialism, and religion. Titled “Key to a
Book on Errors and Truth,” these pages appear to be a rough draft, being poorly organized with
scratched out words that are often difficult to decipher, but a close study divulges the basic
ponderings of a man reasonably certain that religion simply was not necessary because there was
no God, only nature. There Chaumette declared that “life, light, and movement are all made from
nature,” and that "in order to be happy, there is no need to know a Supreme Being.” 51
Materialism, he argued, makes more sense than the philosophy of a priest, because it derives its
conclusions from nature. Religion, on the other hand, finds its roots in the minds of primitive
man, who imagined that his intellect existed separate from his body. In this way, Chaumette
proposed, man was guilty of attaching his soul to more and more objects, until the idea of the
soul was distant enough from reality to be perceived as belonging to a greater being. In time, this
being became the explanation for all the mysteries of nature, eventually being manipulated by
“imbeciles,” “imposters,” and “false philosophes.” Chaumette closed by stating that if he
allowed that religion could be holy to a true philosophe, he would have to ignore the abuses of
the “superstitious ministers and their rotten ambition.” 52 It is not certain why this treatise was not
published in Baesch’s edition of Chaumette’s papers nor why Smiley does not discuss it, as both
utilize the document’s location in the Archives Nationale among their sources, but although this
is only one source of evidence, “Key to a Book on Errors and Truth” seems to put the matter of
Chaumette’s atheism to rest.
51
52
A. N. T 604, Folder 3 (page not numbered, titled “Livre des Erreurs et de la Vérité.”)
A. N. T 604, Folder 3 (Ibid.)
119
Despite this evidence, Chaumette never really specified that atheism was essential to the
Revolution. His background was that of a sans-culotte, born in Nevers to a shoemaker and his
wife, who supported Chaumette’s revolutionary politics later in his life. He studied under the
monks at the Collège de Nevers, and the classical philosophy he learned there influenced his own
thoughts on politics and religion. He went on to study medicine and anatomy with the intentions
of being a surgeon. Nonetheless, he fits under the familiar category of a young professional who
believed the ancien régime prevented him from advancing according to his education and merit,
and he felt patronized and persecuted by the priests and monks who played a significant role in
his education. Yet prior to the French Revolution, evidence suggests that Chaumette was no
atheist at all, as many of his poems and letters to his friends prior to the Revolution invoke God
and reference Biblical passages in a positive manner. 53 An undated religious speech written
before the Revolution even suggests that Chaumette may have refuted atheism and that his
“morality tends only to revere the supreme architect and not to confound him with matter,”
though this was not written in his handwriting. 54 Little is known about Chaumette’s activities
and beliefs in the earliest years of the Revolution other than that he permanently relocated from
Nevers to Paris. 55 When he emerged as a public figure in 1791, however, invocations of God
had disappeared from his language, he befriended known atheists such as the before-mentioned
Cloots and Maréchal, and his actions and words reveal a philosophy that went beyond simple
anti-clericalism. Instead, Chaumette outright denounced revealed religion, Christ, and the
necessity of God—though an absolute denial of a supreme being never materialized in any public
record of Chaumette’s speeches or public writings, or in the private papers that he left behind.
53
Stephen Smiley, Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette, P. I, (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1974,), 16-61.
A.N. T604, Folder 4.
55
For more on Chaumette’s life, see Smiley, Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette, as well as Fritz Braesch’s introduction in
Fritz Braesch, Papiers de Chaumette, (Paris: Société de l'histoire de la Révolution française, 1908), 11-94.
54
120
Along with Jacques Hébert, Chaumette’s most significant role in the Revolution was his
promotion of the dechristianization movement, which he sanctioned in the Prudhomme journal
Révolutions de Paris. From August of 1792 until the first few months of 1794, Chaumette was
the leading figure within the Paris Commune, serving as procureur (essentially the president),
and his opinion on political matters were influential in the National Convention, particularly
among the most radical members of the Left. Regardless of his interest in reconstituting religious
feelings in France, the majority of his speeches and writings did not center on religion at all, but
rather on economics, education, abolitionism, and the maintenance of the power of the Jacobin
clubs and sans-culottes. Nonetheless, Chaumette was instrumental in endorsing and pushing
through decrees that ordered all clergy to evacuate their religious residences, as well as the
suppression of all secular and religious orders. 56 Chaumette also strongly advocated for the
removal of the strings of education from the hands of curés and nuns and the formation of a more
secular public welfare system, effectively creating a cleft between the Church and the people. 57
Naturally, the motivation for this lied in placing the control of the people’s minds and needs in
the hands of the revolutionary government, rather than under the influence of the Catholic
Church. Throughout October, 1793, Chaumette and Hébert further pressed through orders to
eliminate all religious monuments from public spaces and to remove all gold and silver objects
from the churches, though the latter plan was carried out largely for economic purposes.
Chaumette utilized his influence on the sans-culottes to violently put down any oppositional
sentiments in Paris, and the opinions of priests and ministers were considered especially suspect
in this period of paranoia of conspiracy. Thus it was decreed that the clergy would be held
personally responsible for any unrest due to religious opinions. By the end of November, 1793,
56
57
Gliozzo, 86.
Gliozzo, 96-98.
121
Chaumette and his supporters had shut down all the churches in Paris, promising to have anyone
who resisted arrested as a suspect, and were clamoring for a new religion dedicated to reason,
rather than to the Christian God. 58
Leaders of the Paris arc of the dechristianization movement such as Chaumette seem at a
glance to lend some credibility to the idea of an atheistic Revolution beginning in 1793, but other
members of the Paris Commune prove harder to label. Jacobin Leonard Bourdon also played a
significant role in the spread of dechristianization, serving as an example of someone as extreme
in his radical religious politics as Chaumette, but without the “smoking gun” that proves his
atheism. While participating in the National Convention and Committee of Public Instruction,
Bourdon proposed decrees to progressively revitalize the educational system, eliminating
“fanaticism,” “ignorance,” and “superstition” by instituting more secular and reasonable schools,
and drew up the manual to instruct French youth on the heroic actions of the French
revolutionaries, focusing on patriotism and civic activities, and being meant to replace the
“superstitious” lives of the saints and Catholic martyrs. 59 He was also very active in discussions
regarding dechristianization activities and responded harshly against curés who criticized these
measures. 60 He is thought by some to have been among the men who coerced Bishop Gobel into
abdicating the priesthood and renouncing the Church at the height of the dechristianization
period, a huge symbolic victory for the anti-clerical radicals. 61 Bourdon, however, was a member
of the Jacobin Club bent on proving his worth amidst somewhat justified fears that Catholics
were instigating counterrevolution around every corner, and it may be this that motivated him
58
A. N. T 604, Folders
Leonard Bourdon, Rapport de Léonard Bourdon, au nom de la Commission d'instruction publique : prononcé le
premier août, (Paris: 1792), 1-16; Leonard Bourdon, Discours sur l'institution commune, (Paris: 1793), 1-14;
Alphonse Aulard, La Culte de la raison et le culte de l’être suprême, (Paris, 1892), 34-35.
60
A. P. Vol. 77, 550.
61
See A. Mathiez, La Révolition et l’eglise, (Paris: 1910), 80. M. J. Sydenham, a biographer of Bourdon, denies this
is true. See M. J. Sydenham, Leonard Bourdon : The Career of a Revolutionary, 1754-1807, (Wilfrid Laurier
University Press, 1999), 207.
59
122
more so than irreligion. Despite his involvement in the extremism of 1793, he never denied that
God existed, and promoted the freedom to choose one’s religious beliefs, rather than the
elimination of all religion.
Yet Bourdon’s beliefs, like those of most of the revolutionaries, were not static, simple,
or clear; but rather were fluid and changeable as the political climate evolved. Unlike Chaumette,
when Robespierre and the Convention began to turn on the so-called “Hébertists,” Bourdon
backed down and towed a more moderate line. By 1797, even his writings on education were
virtually free from discussions of religion, let alone instigating attacks on theology. 62 It is
impossible to determine from his apparent change of heart whether he was a theist or merely
protecting himself from suspicion of extreme radicalism, the latter possibility being a fate that
reveals how quickly the tides of belief altered. 63 The only written evidence of his thoughts on
theism comes from a three-part play written by Bourdon, with the help of Pierre-Louis Moline
and Plancher de Valcour, in which he addressed the Pope, claiming that “Jesus was an honest
man, but he was no god,” which hardly proves atheism. 64 The play goes on to praise Jesus the
“sans-culotte” and legislator—a common portrayal of Jesus during the Revolution—and denied
his divinity, but rather claiming that “reason, equality, and liberty—these are the real trinity.” 65
The anticlericalism and anti-Catholicism of the play is undeniable, but little can be attributed to
atheism any more than the play could be claimed to be evidence of deism, Unitarianism, or even
Judaism. Bourdon, then, proves to be complex in thought—neither atheistic nor religious, both
Enlightenment-inspired and politically pragmatic, and capable of changing his views in response
to the situation. He validates the characterization of the French Revolution, as well as the
62
Leonard Bourdon, Pétition au Conseil des Cinq-Cents, sur l'éducation commune, (Paris: 1797), 1-14.
Sydenham, 199-210.
64
Leonard Bourdon, Pierre-Louis Moline, and Plancher de Valcour, Le tombeau des imposteurs et l'inauguration du
Temple de la vérité , sanculotide dramatique en trois actes, mêlée de musique, (Paris: 1793), 92-93.
65
Ibid., 92-93.
63
123
dechristianization movement, as being an ever-evolving set of ideas and political thoughts
shaped by current events, past ideologies, and individual synthesis of extremes.
Other key members of the Paris Commune who influenced the dechristianization
movement were also members of the so-called Hébertists. The atheistic stigma connected with
the Hébertists, a “faction” made up of Jacques Hébert and colleagues who were members of the
Paris Commune or otherwise associated with the dechristianization movement, may have begun
as a result of political differences between Hébert and Robespierre, who accused Hébert and his
associates of atheism in order to discredit them. 66 The likes of Antoine-François Momoro,
François-Nicolas Vincent, Charles-Philippe Ronsin, Pierre-Jean Proly, François Desfieux, and
Anacharsis Cloots contributed heavily to the anticlericalism and dechristianization of the Terror,
but despite Robespierre’s accusations most of these men are also difficult to identify as atheists.
Vincent, primarily a military figure, left little writings behind in which to analyze his beliefs.
Ronsin was the general of the Revolutionary Army, but was also a writer and orator. His play La
ligue des fanatiques et des tyrans : tragédie nationale en trois actes et en vers mocked priests for
their “fanaticism” and “hypocrisy,” but otherwise remained a typical attack against the excess
and influence of the Church, and not necessarily antagonistic toward religion in and of itself. 67
The same can be said about François Desfieux, a wine merchant and president of the section of
La Peletier, who dedicated the busts of Marat and Le Peletier. His speech contained the usual
references to “ignorance” and “tyranny” of the past and the “light” and “virtue” of philosophy,
and like many other radicals, anticlericalism and vague secularism are easy to find in his public
proclamations, but disbelief in religion is absent. 68 Finally, Desfieux’s close friend, the Belgian,
66
This is discussed in more detail in the previous chapter on Jacques Hébert.
Charles-Philippe Ronsin, La ligue des fanatiques et des tyrans : tragédie nationale en trois actes et en vers, (Paris:
1792), 1-44.
68
François Desfieux, Discours prononcés par Desfieux, président de la section Lepelletier, le jour de l'inauguration
67
124
Proly, was a banker and instigator who seemed content to manipulate events in order to profit
and increase his influence, rather than to spread the seeds of dechristianization. 69 Proly illustrates
that there were many possible incentives for participating in the radicalism of 1793, particularly
dechristianization, and the appearance of zealous patriotism and the desire to build credibility in
the escalating extremism of the French Revolution in order to attain more influence and power in
the ever-changing political landscape may have been the motivating factor for many of the
Hébertists, who “had watched their erstwhile colleagues ascend to grander things.” 70
A more likely candidate among the Hébertists than Vincent, Ronsin, Proly, and Desfieux
for possibly believing in atheism was Antoine-François Momoro, a principal Cordelier Club
member and one of the primary creators of the infamous Festival of Reason that turned the
cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris into a “Temple of Reason” that mocked Christian rituals and
promoted a more secular civil religion. Momoro was a well-respected printer in Paris—he even
wrote a printer’s manual—and is likely most famous for coining the phrase, “Liberté, Égalité,
Fraternité.” 71 Like other Hébertists, he never officially identified himself publicly as an
unbeliever. He did, however, reveal a strong intolerance for the priesthood as early as 1791,
when he argued against Abbé Sièyes on freedom of religion for refractory priests, claiming that
these priests only asked for religious liberty as a pretext for maintaining “torches of fanaticism”
and their influence over the public. 72 His anticlericalism is also evident in his report on the
Vendée rebellion in 1793, where he lays the bulk of the blame for the revolt on the shoulders of
des bustes de Marat et Lepelletier, (Paris: 1793), 1-6.
69
Mathiez, French Revolution, 279, 300-304, 341, 407-424.
70
David Andress, The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France, (New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 2006), 132.
71
Mathiez, The French Revolution, 122, 204-211; Edward Latham, Famous Sayings and their Authors, (London:
Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1906), 147.
72
Antoine-François Momoro, Réflexions d'un citoyen sur la liberté des cultes religieux, pour servir de réponse à
l'opinion de M. l'abbé Sieyes : suivies de quelques observations sur les personnes en place et sur les élections
prochaines, (Paris: 1791), 1-3.
125
“those horrors of humanity, the priests,” who he lumps with the nobility among the “chiefs of the
rebellion,” motivated by a desire to “avenge their outrageous religion.” 73 Thus, it is clear that
Momoro was outspoken against the priesthood and viewed Catholicism, if not Christianity, as
being “outrageous,” but it is not so clear whether he felt this way due to unbelief in a supreme
being. His participation in the planning of the Festival of Reason is the only event that could
imply an atheistic mind, and it was Momoro’s wife who served as the “Goddess or Reason” who
ascended above the crowd at Notre Dame Cathedral. Despite this act of extremism, Momoro
worked on this project closely with journalist Jacques Hébert, another radical dechristianizer
who was strongly anticlerical, but not likely an unbeliever. So it is not difficult to suspect that
Momoro was merely a radical deist, rather than an atheist.
The exception to the rule was Jean-Baptiste du Val-de-Grâce, the Baron Cloots.
Philosopher, politician, and certainly an atheist, Anacharsis Cloots was a major perpetrator of the
dechristianization, and one of the few who was clearly motivated, in part, by his active disbelief
in God. Cloots and the poet and playwright Maréchal were the most overt atheists directly
involved with the French Revolution, but Cloots was much more influential than the flighty
Maréchal, who stayed out of the political wrangling between the Girondists and Jacobins. Cloots,
on the other hand, was a Jacobin and radical who, despite being born and raised in Prussia as an
aristocrat, openly supported the republic and served in the National Convention. Early in the
Revolution, Cloots wrote a short treatise against Edmund Burke called Adresse d'un Prussien à
un Anglais in which he criticized Burke’s condemnation of the Revolution, in part on the basis
that Burke used contradictory theological arguments about the unsubstantiated nature of God. 74
Cloots later claimed in his Bases constitutionnelles de la République du genre humain, which he
73
Antoine-François Momoro, Rapport sur l'état politique de la Vendée, fait au Comité de salut public de la
Convention nationale. (Paris: 1793), 2-3.
74
Anacharsis Cloots, Adresse d'un Prussien à un Anglais, (Paris: 1790), 4-13, 37.
126
wrote during the radical stages of 1793, that “mankind is the only God,” and that the only
atheists were the aristocrats (that he, too, originated from the aristocracy seemed to escape him),
implying that they were antithetical to a proper republican government for their alleged
“disbelief in mankind,” and advocated that the “divinity of the fantastic” needed to be replaced
by a “political divinity.” 75 He scorned all the religions of the world for preaching “the pretend
rights of God” at the expense of those of the people, and unlike any of the other
dechristianization supporters, he laid his religious beliefs out for all to see, claiming that “I can
prove through a variety of writings that God does not exist” and that “the name of ‘God’ is
merely a phantom.” 76 This, when Cloots tried to convince the Convention to erect a statue to
Jean Meslier, France’s first overt atheist, for being the “first priest to have the courage and good
faith to denounce his religion,” he 77 Cloots remained active in the Jacobin Club, National
Convention, and also served as a representative on mission to spread the newly instituted rules
against traditional Christian religion, until finally running into trouble due to his being foreign
born. 78 It seems safe to claim that Cloots was the only member of the Paris Commune that truly
supported dechristianization for the purpose of instigating a more atheistic society.
That Cloots was so exceptional, however, demonstrates how the Paris Commune can
never be labeled as an atheist institution, despite its active participation in some of the
Revolutions’ most radical and extreme acts against orthodox religion. It is true that the Paris
Commune of 1793 played an overwhelmingly significant role in the formation of the Festival
and Cult of Reason, and that it was certainly a safe place for atheists to convene. But there is no
75
Anacharsis Cloots, Bases constitutionnelles de la République du genre humain, (Paris: 1793), 1-44.
Ibid., 32.
77
Archives parlementaires de 1787 à 1860 ; Convention nationale. Série 1 / Tome 79, (Paris: P. Dupont), 371-2.
78
See George Avenel, Anacharsis Cloots: L’Orateur du Genre Humain, (Paris: Éditions Champ Libre, 1980);
François Labbe, Anacharsis Cloots le Prussien Francophile: un philosophe au service de la Révolution français et
universelle, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998).
76
127
evidence that atheism was a primary goal or that it was even desired at all by the majority of its
members. Close analysis reveals that many of the members-Momoro, Hébert, Bourdon
particularly—were not atheists at all. Chaumette likely was an unbeliever, but never made any
formal declaration to the extent that Cloots or Maréchal did, and never followed up on the most
atheistic aspects of the Cult of Reason he helped promote. The vast majority of the other
significant members of the Commune simply never made statements, took actions, or committed
to writing any evidence either way. The Paris Commune should, indeed, be recognized as one of
the first public institutions to accept atheism and atheists into its membership—a pioneering act
in and of itself. Atheism, however, lived side-by-side within the Commune with deism,
agnosticism, and considering the proportion of the population who still adhered at least loosely
to traditional religion, likely even Christianity. In a rather bizarre paradox of principles, the Paris
Commune was revolutionary in its form of religious tolerance, while at the same time spearheading the attack on orthodox religion.
3.3 The Atheism of the Representatives on Mission
In addition to members of the Paris political clique, the representatives on mission were often
strong proponents of dechristianization, often implementing some of the most violent and
extreme actions in its favor, and therefore present themselves as possible candidates for the label
of “atheist.” Joseph Fouché, for example, whose activities while as a representative on mission to
Nièvre, Nevers, Moulins, and later Lyons made him a famous and influential radical beginning
in 1793, is easy to classify as an atheist, but he makes for an interesting case study to compare to
128
Chaumette. 79 Fouché fanatically demonstrated his radicalism, and even atheism, by closing down
churches and religious houses across the country, even before Paris shut theirs down in late
November of 1793, and is well-known for his decreeing to place signs on cemeteries that read,
“Death is an eternal sleep,” signifying that there is no heaven or God waiting for your soul once
the body breaks down and dies. 80 This was a poignant and direct method for declaring the nonexistence of the divine and the foolishness of religion. Throughout the dechristianization
movement, Fouché remained on mission, but sent back forceful letters praising the Convention’s
attacks on religion and glorifying the Revolution by attacking the legitimacy of religion. He
aimed to “moralize the people through philosophical institutions, civil festivals, and the measures
of the Revolution,” and criticized the aristocracy for resorting to “religious fanaticism” instead of
“the mind and philosophy” in their attempts to control Nièvre. 81 Thus, in a move that would
soon be copied in Paris and other places, Fouché ordered the removal of all ecclesiastical
vestiges and Christian symbols from public places, which resulted in the destruction of many
articles of religious art and history, as well as demanding the secularization of formerly religious
public activities, such as funerals and marriages. Fouché forbade priests from wearing
ecclesiastical garb, and refusing to obey his order could mean imprisonment or even death. 82 If
this was not enough evidence to suggest Fouché was an atheist, there is also the testimony of
Socrate Damour, a pronounced unbeliever and former commissaire from Nevers, who named
Fouché in his confession of materialism to the Committee of Legislation a year after the Terror.
“As to the materialism which I am accused of having taught,” he stated, “I answer that my
79
For a summary of Fouché’s activities in the French Revolution, see Jean Tulard, Joseph Fouché, (Paris: Fayard,
1998), 7-69.
80
A. P., vol 76, 685-686.
81
James Guillaume, ed. Procès-verbaux du comité d’instruction publique de la convention nationale (July 3, 1793 –
November 20, 1793), Vol. II, (Paris: 1891-1907), 630-631.
82
Ibid., 630-1.
129
lessons on the errors of human knowledge were taken from Locke, Condillac, and Helvétius,
which were approved by the répresentant Fouché.” 83 Thus Damour implies that Fouché
sanctioned the writings of Helvétius and Condillac, believed by many to be atheists. On the
whole, the nature of Fouché’s attack on the rituals of the dead and the Christian culture of the
regions he visited suggests atheistic motives, but Fouché proves to be more complex that a
simple atheist, if such a thing even exists.
Unlike Chaumette, Fouché had a strong religious background, making his ideological
transformations especially difficult to track. He trained as a priest with the Oratorians in Nantes,
and taught school in Niort, Saumur, Vendôme, Juilly, and Arras. In Arras he met Robespierre,
and by 1790 the Oratorians transferred Fouché back to Nantes in order to curb his increasing
radicalism, but by 1792 the government dissolved the order and Fouché renounced his
priesthood. Nonetheless, after the French Revolution, Fouché recanted the most radical of his
actions when he later became a prominent member of Napoleon’s regime. It has been argued that
Fouché may only have acted so radically during the Terror at the urging of the influential
Chaumette, as Fouché had never written a word of religious extremism until Chaumette met him
in Nevers in September of 1793 when the two jointly revealed a bust of Brutus on the church
altar of Saint-Cyr. 84 He may, too, have been trying to prove himself in light of his past as a
member of the clergy. It seems unlikely, however, that such a stark transformation could have
occurred in merely a month if Fouché did not harbor at least some measure of religious
skepticism. David Andress, noting that Fouché had actually supported the role of the clergy in
education early in the Revolution, attributes the transformation to Fouché’s first-hand experience
83
84
A.N. D III 181 (1) (209). Also quoted in Cobb, The People’s Armies, 471.
Glizzo, 111-112.
130
with “fanaticism” in the Vendée where he was almost killed by rebels. 85 Whatever the reasons
were for his atheistic turn, Richard Cobb blames Fouché above all répresentants for the antireligious expedition outside of Paris. 86 Yet less than a decade later, Fouché would recant it all,
and in his memoires blamed his entire experience as a radical on youth and “the character of the
times.” 87
Chaumette did not survive as Fouché did, so we can never know whether he might have
returned to some form of theism after the fervor of the Terror died down, but Fouché’s sudden
foray into atheistic militancy, followed so quickly by his return to the fold of Catholicism,
suggests that some “atheists” of the French Revolution only turned to active disbelief in God in
order to prove their extremism and loyalty to the secular state. After all, what could be more
“radical” than denying God in favor of the Revolution? When analyzing the views of the
individual members of the dechristianization movement, it proves impossible to distinguish
between the true atheist, the practitioner of Rousseau’s brand of the Enlightenment, and the
young radical simply carried away with patriotic fervor. Atheism, from the beginning of the
Revolution, represented the most extreme philosophy available—the characteristic, as Burke
exclaimed, that could bring down orthodox civilization. Adopting atheism suggested a clear,
unquestionable break from the Catholic past and a willingness to do whatever was necessary for
the reborn nation. In a sense, the old stereotype of the “practical atheist” who only claimed to
disbelieve in God in order to justify worldly actions may have proved to be a reality. Subjects
such as Fouché shed light on the multitude of facets possible when attempting to analyze atheism
during the Revolution by calling into question the sincerity of ideology when compared directly
to the political landscape in which individuals expressed said ideology. This, however, does not
85
Andress, The Terror, 203.
Cobb, The People’s Armies, 475-478.
87
Joseph Fouché, Memoires of Joseph Fouché, Duc of Otranto, (London: Gibbings & Company, Ltd., 1894), 7.
86
131
mean that atheists did not exist or matter, but rather that atheism’s impact on the Revolution
cannot simply be linked to Enlightenment radicalism, but also must be understood in the context
of individuals and political events.
Another stereotype of the revolutionary atheist is that of the “violent” renegade, with
répresentant, Jean-Baptiste Carrier manifesting this role. Infamous for his cruelty and hatred for
the clergy, Carrier was responsible for the execution of thousands of Catholic and royalist rebels
in Rennes and Nantes by having them guillotined, shot, or drowned. Despite this barbarity, he
frequently expressed a strong belief in “genius philosophy.” 88 Carrier especially reviled priests
and clergymen, and defined the “triumph of philosophy and freedom” by noting the arrest of
conspirators and the marrying of priests, and reveled in the deaths of the refractory priests who
refused to submit to his will. 89 He wrote with pride to the Convention regarding his witnessing of
a marriage between a Catholic priest and a young woman in Rennes, calling the bishop who
opposed the arrangement a “fanatic” and an “enemy of nature.” 90 He went so far as to place the
burden of blame on the priests for the uprising in the Vendée, writing to the Convention in
December 1793 that “it is good that you know that it is the women with their priests who have
planned and supported this war.” 91 His correspondence brims with declarations of the “poison of
fanaticism” and superstition of the priesthood, but he also accuses the conspirators against the
Revolution of being “sacrilegious.” 92 He readily embraced the deification of reason and
philosophy, and relished the conversion of the priests in his region of work to the new civil
religion. 93 Carrier may, indeed, have been an atheist, but it never can be certain. He never delved
88
Jean-Baptiste Carrier, Correspondence of Jean-Baptiste Carrier, ed. and trans. by. E. H. Carrier, (John Lane,
1920), 62.
89
Archives Parlementaires, Vol. 76, P. 153., Jean Baptiste-Carrier, ed. by 149-150.
90
Carrier, Correspondence, 62-63
91
Archives Parlementaires, vol. 81, 549-550.
92
Ibid., 47, 52, 117, 120, 150, 190-1, 214.
93
Ibid., 120.
132
into theology and never discussed God or even Christianity, but almost solely focused on the
elitism of the clergy and their political potential for counter-revolutionary activities, while
simultaneously supporting the “sacred” religion of liberty. It was not the discourse of the
répresentants like Carrier that established them as the potential “militant atheists” to which
historian Richard Cobb alludes, but rather the extreme nature of their actions, illustrating again
the perception of atheism as being connected to the most dangerous of radical fanaticism.
Other representatives on mission prove equally problematic to label. Jacques-Léonard
Laplanche, one of the first répresentants to implement acts of extreme dechristianization, utilized
the Army of the People to put down any who resisted the dechristianziation movement. Yet only
a year before, Laplanche submitted a report to the National Convention suggesting religious
toleration and separation of Church and state, rather than the elimination of religion in its
entirety. “Ultimately, citizens,” he wrote, “consider that the Catholic religion, no longer existing
within the government, would become necessarily a religion out of the law. Its ministers would
no longer be hidden as agents, and therefore very dangerous agents.” 94 History knows the
infamous Claude Javoques as one of the most violent perpetrators of the Terror, who once railed
against theistic policies of the Committee of Public Safety.
I do not understand the proclamation of the Committee of Public Safety, which
can only slow down the progress of the Revolution. Apparently Couthon needs
some sort of religion in order to hold up the reign of the swindlers. Talking about
civil wars of religion is the best way to encourage them. The chameleons who call
94
Jacques-Léonard Laplanche, Opinion de Jacques-Léonard de Laplanche, député du département de la Nièvre à la
Convention nationale : sur le projet de Cambon relatif aux prêtres, (Paris: De Champigny, 1792), 20.
133
themselves apostles of different sects will evade all the various coercive measures
that you take against them. It would be much simple just to shoot them.95
Nevertheless, Javogues hardly hesitated to tone down his rhetoric when the political tide turned
against him, subsequently confessing his faults to the very Couthon whom he lambasted within a
year. 96 Cobb lists these men, as well as Mallarmé, Châles, Dartigoëyte, Baudot, Isabeau, Tallien,
Vadier, Collot, and Albitte as all being significant contributors to the violence and destruction
aimed at religion, but although he notes that some may have been atheists, he argues that others
may only have been individualists and anarchists. He never indicates which labels applied to
which men—it would have been an impossible task. 97
3.4 Atheism, the National Convention, and the Revolutionary Calendar
The Paris Commune and the representatives on mission were not the only ones insistent
on creating a more secular and non-Christian society, as the National Convention itself
participated in the dechristianization movement as many of its members sided with Chaumette
and Fouché during the latter months of 1793. Charles Gilbert Romme, one of the Revolutionaries
frequently labeled an atheist by books and websites dedicated to naming influential atheists in
history, participated in the Committee of Public Instruction—the agency instrumental to
spreading knowledge on how the citizens should react to new laws implemented by the National
Convention. He trained as a mathematician and medical doctor, and then travelled to Russia to
serve as the tutor to Paul Stroganov, before returing to Paris in 1788 to become a politician. 98
95
Quoted in Vovelle, The Revolution Against the Church, 127.
Ibid., 127.
97
Cobb, The People’s Army, 474-479.
98
See Alessandro Galante Garrone, Gilbert Romme: histoire de la révolutionnaire, 1750-1795, (Paris: Flammarion,
96
134
Romme sponsored many of the anti-Christian measures recommended by the Committee,
including rules to suppress the recruitment of priests by the Church, the shutdown of theological
schools, and the removal of priests and nuns from the educational system. These sanctions were
readily accepted by the National Convention. 99 Romme’s suggested curriculum emphasized
utility and reason, focusing on language, science, philosophy, and natural history instead of
theology. 100 Nonetheless, none of Romme’s recorded suggestions or decrees declares religion a
falsehood or God non-existent, and as with many revolutionaries of the 1790s, his motivation for
promoting anti-Christian measures was as likely based on a desire to break from the traditions of
the ancien régime than to formulate the destruction of Christianity or theism.
Gilbert Romme’s greatest contribution to the culture of the French Revolution, and the
one most often cited when labeling Romme as an atheist, was his creation of the Revolutionary
Calendar, which replaced the “Roman-Christian” calendar and replaced it with one focused on
the ideals and events of the French Revolutionaries, as well as on practical concepts of culture
and society, such as agriculture and labor. Alphonse Aulard called it the most anti-Christian
measure produced by the National Convention. 101 Romme adopted his calendar from notable
atheist Sylvain Maréchal, as it was Maréchal’s Alamanac of Honnêtes Gens which established
the blueprint from which the calendar-makers started their project. Maréchal’s Almanac,
published in 1788, was similarly organized and also replaced the holy saints with alternative
subjects, for which Maréchal had been imprisoned. Romme edited his calendar and presented
the first draft of his revised version on September 20, 1793. His presentation listed many reasons
1971).
99
Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison, 34-47.
100
Gilbert Romme, Projet de décret sur les écoles nationales, (Paris: 1793), 2-10; Gilbert Romme, Rapport sur
l'instruction publique, considérée dans son ensemble ; suivi d'un Projet de décret sur les principales bases du plan
général [de l'instruction publique], (Paris: 1793), 4-32.
101
Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison, 33-34.
135
for adopting such an approach, including providing a simple method of instruction for the people
on the Revolutionary principles, civil virtues, and festivals. His recommendation calls the old
calendar “vulgar,” and makes a brief remark against the influence of priests, but otherwise
refrains from attacks on Christianity and religion. 102 Otherwise, it lacks any reference or
condemnation of religion, as does the farmer’s almanac he published the following year to detail
the meaning of each of the days of the new calendar and their practical association with
agriculture. 103 Nonetheless, it is difficult not to read between the lines and see the implied attack
on Christianity, which had been the basis of the calendar for centuries and was now completely
eliminated from all connection to time and republican identity. Whether that equates to atheism
is questionable. After considerable debate and revisions, the National Convention approved the
calendar in October, 1793.
The Revolutionary Calendar project was Romme’s innovation, but others aided him in
creating the particulars of the calendar, including artist and politician Fabre d’Eglantine. Fabre
was an actor, poet, and playwright who embraced the French Revolution and the Enlightenment,
writing plays and poems that promoted both long before the radicalization and Terror began. As
early as 1783, Fabre praised the Comte de Buffon, the Enlightenment botanist, naturalist, and
writer, in a poem entitled L’etude de la Nature. In the poem, Fabre personifies nature and
applauds its beauty, wisdom, and charm, and asks it to “ever protect the divine fields.” 104 Indeed,
the sacredness of nature would be an important theme for l’Églantine when he defended the
Revolutionary Calendar a decade later, decrying that the poor farmers of France attributed the
“miracles of nature” to the priests. 105 It was Fabre who recommended the usage of agricultural
102
Gilbert Romme, Rapport sur l'ère de la République : séance du 10 septembre 1793, (Paris: 1793), 2-21.
Gilbert Romme, Annuaire du cultivateur, pour la troisième année de la République, (Paris: 1794).
104
Fabre d’Eglantine, L’étude de la Nature, (London, 1783), 1-14.
105
Moniteur Universel, No. 35?, (October 26, 1793), 144.
103
136
terminology to rename the days, because they represented the “richness of nature.” 106 As with
many Enlightenment-inspired lovers of nature, however, Fabre did not necessarily reject religion,
but he did reject traditional religion. If Romme did not intend the calendar to specifically be an
attack on Christianity, l’Églantine certainly did, arguing:
The Gregorian calendar fills the memory of the people with many images which
are the source of religious errors even today. It is therefore necessary to substitute
in place of visions of ignorance the realities of reason, and for sacerdotal prestige,
the truth of nature. The priests assigned to each day of the year the
commemoration of an alleged saint, but this presented neither utility nor method.
It was, instead, a collection of falsehood, trickery, and charlatanism. 107
Yet though this passage implies that the commemoration of the saints is “trickery” and “religious
error,” it does not give enough information to determine Fabre’s view on religion as a whole.
Was he specifically against religion or merely anticlerical? Fabre’s anticlericalism played a
significant role in his argument for the necessity of the revolutionary calendar, and he went on to
call all priests “imbeciles,” “superstitious,” and tyrants who used the images of miracles and
purgatory to manipulate and control the people. He criticized the promotion of these
“falsehoods” under the guise of “Corpus Christi,” hinting at the possibility of atheism.
L’Églantine focused more on the crimes of the clergy than he did on theology as he argued:
The priests have a goal that is universal and permanent , and that is to subjugate
the human race and keep man chained within their empire by instituting the
106
Fabre d’Eglantine, Calendrier de la république française, une et indivisible, au nom de la commission chargée de
sa confection, (Bruyéres, France: Vve Vitot et fils, 1794), 7.
107
Fabre d’Eglantine, Rapport fait à la Convention nationale dans la séance du 3 du second mois de la seconde
année de la République française, au nom de la Commission chargée de la confection du calendrier, (Paris: 1793),
1-2.
137
commemoration of the dead in order to inspire disgust for earthly things and
worldly riches, so that they can more abundantly enjoy these things themselves. 108
He further accused the priests of subjecting the youth to “religious slavery” and threatening
farmers with punishment for signs of disbelief. Was Fabre espousing atheism by casting doubt
and derision on the celebration of death and the afterlife, and by sympathizing with skeptical
farmers? The theism of Fabre l’Églantine can never be ascertained from his speech to the
Convention, because he refrained from expanding on his criticism to reveal his thoughts on the
existence of God, choosing instead to focus the argument, as many dechristianizers did, on the
vague “crimes” of the priesthood, rather than on the specifics of what made the beliefs of the
clergy “superstitious” and “fanatical.” 109 His main goal in his promotion of the new calendar was
to demonstrate its utility and how it differed from that identified with the ancien régime, not
specifically as commentary on the nature of religion. If he were an atheist, however, he serves as
further proof, along with Condorcet and de Sade, that one did not have to be a so-called
Hébertiste to be an unbeliever, as Fabre d’Égantine was a friend of Danton and among those who
reported acts of “foreign espionage,” directed at radicals such as Cloots and Proly.
One of the most dramatic events in the progression of anti-Christian and anticlerical fervor in the
National Convention during the autumn of 1793 was the abdication of Jean-Baptiste Gobel, the
Bishop of Paris. In early November, National Convention members Pierre Proly, Jacob Pereira,
Leonard Bourdon, and François Desfieux all called for the suppression of the salaries of all
clergymen, regardless of which church they represented. Their calls went unheeded, but they
nonetheless formed a committee in order to convince Bishop Gobel and his vicars to give up
their positions as a statement of support for the Revolution. Most secondary accounts addressing
108
109
Moniteur Universel, No. 35?, (October 26, 1793), 144.
Eglantine, Rapport fait à la Convention nationale, 3-6.
138
the event note that Gobel agreed, but did so reluctantly, though whether this was because of
desire not to lose power or some inkling of attachment to his former religion is unknown. 110 He
gave a speech in which he revealed his “love of liberty and equality” and his recognition of the
“sovereignty of the people,” but never did he deny the validity of Christianity or the existence of
God. 111 Though it would not be unprecedented for a member of the clergy to be an atheist—Jean
Meslier, France’s first known atheist at the beginning of the century, was a priest—Gobel is an
unlikely candidate, though it is worth noting that in his 1791 letter supporting the Civil
Constitution of the Clergy to the other ecclesiastics of his diocese, he never discussed theology
and only mentioned God once, at the end when he urged his flock to follow the new government
and “let God do the rest.” 112
Regardless of Gobel’s ambiguity in his speech to the Convention, his abdication and that
of his vicars was a symbolic moment of victory for the radical politicians of 1793. PierreAntoine Laloy, president of the Convention, affirmed Gobel to be a “man of reason” and
proclaimed that “reason will be the national religion.” Fabre l’Églantine declared, “Today eternal
reason took a big step and philosophy is triumphant, while superstition has been defeated.” 113
Both Momoro and Chaumette of the Paris Commune wrote letters of support to the Convention,
praising the victory of “reason and philosophy” over the “tyranny of superstition.” Momoro
praised Gobel and declared that the “French Republic will have no other cult than that of liberty,
equality, and truth drawn from the bosom of nature, and fed through your work, we will all soon
worship.” 114 The Dantonist Jacques Thuriot agreed, but added with caution:
110
Mathiez, French Revolution, 411; Aulard, Le Culte, 44-46; Glizzo, The Anti-Christian Movement in Paris, 123.
A.N., carton C 280, dossier 766.
112
Jean-Baptiste Gobel, Lettre circulaire de Monsieur l'évêque métropolitain de Paris, à M.M. les curés & autres
ecclésiastiques de son diocèse, (Paris: Cl. Simon, 1791), 15.
113
A. P., vol. 78, 555.
114
A. P., vol. 78, 550.
111
139
I rejoice to see each day reason and philosophy coming to break the altars of the
country and the baubles of superstition, but this homage to the truth must not harm
the national interest. Applaud the man who abjures from error, but let us hope that
we will soon see the citizens preaching the morality of reason in public places. 115
Thuriot, who had served as president of the Convention in July and as a member of the
Committee of Public Safety, was a shrewd lawyer and politician who knew that a true victory
over the Christian religion’s influence over politics could not be had until the people themselves
supported its decline.
Perhaps Chaumette heeded Thuriot’s warning, because within days of Gobel’s
abdication, Chaumette proposed that the Convention also commemorate “reason” in its new
calendar, as it was through the calendar and the usage of festivals that the new revolutionary
ideals and decrees were to be spread to the citizens of France. 116 Together with Antoine
Momoro, Jacques Hébert, and Anacharsis Cloots, Chaumette conceived of an entirely new cult
dedicated to reason, and began planning the production of a magnificent festival in Paris
dedicated to the commencement of what only a few years before would have been considered an
oxymoron: a new religion of philosophy. The date was set for November 10, and the location
was the cathedral of Notre Dame, to be renamed the “Temple of Reason.” The festival that
morning mimicked those of religion in multiple ways. Busts of philosophes, including Voltaire,
Rousseau, and Benjamin Franklin, were set up to replace those of the saints. These were lit by a
“torch of truth” and were set at the base of a “mountain” built from pillars, scaffolding, and
drapes. At the top was a “temple” from which descended the “goddes s of reason” dressed in
flowing robes. A choir sang hymns of praise to her, bestowing upon her “immortal power” and
115
116
Moniteur, No 49, (November 9, 1793), 198.
Moniteur, No 49, (November 9, 1793), 198.
140
declaring that she, “sacred liberty,” would be the “goddess of the French.” 117 The performance
was repeated for the Convention that evening, and Chaumette gave a speech in which he
affirmed this natural religion, insisting that:
We have not offered our sacrifices to vain images, to inanimate idols. No, it is a
masterpiece of nature that we have chosen to represent her and this sacred image
has inflamed all our hearts. A single wish and a single cry is heard from all sides.
The people said: No more priests, no other gods other than those that nature offers
us. We ask you that the former metropolitan church of Paris be consecrated to
Reason and to Liberty. 118
In and of itself, the speech does not necessarily imply atheism, but it is difficult not to assume the
insinuation of a universal nature devoid of God in his perspective. Perhaps Chaumette was too
clever to be more specific about his beliefs in public, knowing that the sans-culottes were not
ready for such a sudden and extreme break from the religion of the past, or maybe his views
were malleable, complex, and ever-evolving and never permanently settled on atheism. It is
impossible to determine, but it can be said that the Festival of Reason and the dedication of the
Cult of Reason by Chaumette was the closest that France ever came to being declared an atheist
state—though it really did not come that close at all.
3.5 Civil Religion versus the New Dawn of Atheism
The next several months after the Festival of Reason were marked by constant assaults on
the Catholic Church, its priests and followers, and the basic tenants Christianity and religion.
117
118
A.N., AD XVII, 49. Also see Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison, 54.
Moniteur, (November 13, 1793). (PAGE??)
141
Churches in many cities across France closed, sans-culottes murdered priests, and zealous
revolutionaries established their own temples of reason. Oaths to the republic declared there to
be no religion other than nature, and prayers and catechisms mimicking those of Catholicism
instructed the people in the doctrine of republicanism and patriotism. 119 The Popular Society of
Blois, for example, inaugurated its own Temple of Reason and wrote to the National Convention
that its people now found religion to be “silly and full of absurdities,” and that they no longer
wanted “steeples, processions, and other signs of the Catholic religion.” 120 The citizens of
Rochefort put on their own Festival of Reason and composed a letter to the Convention to praise
the “victory of eternal morality over superstition and tyranny as light takes advantage over the
priests,” and declared a “religion of liberty and fraternity.” 121 In places that resisted, the armées
revolutionnaire—the people’s army of the Revolution—enforced attacks on Catholicism and
religious institutions across the nation, despite the fact that they were “neither philosophers nor
theologians and had little concern for literature; their enthusiasm seems rather to have come from
a very widespread anticlericalism and a marked hostility to the Catholic religion.” 122
Dechristianization, and whatever atheism did exist within the boundaries of its influence, was
certainly not restricted to the city of Paris.
Despite these attacks on the Church and many of the basic tenants of Christianity itself,
many of these radical revolutionaries did not reject “religion” so much as redefine what it meant.
When Marie-Joseph Chénier, a poet and dramatist who wrote an entire book of poetry dedicated
to the Cult of Reason, addressed the Convention on November 5, 1793, he did not declare an end
to religion, but rather proposed that Catholicism be replaced by a revolutionary cult to be built on
119
Jacques Hébert, La Père Duchesne, no. 347,
Archives Parlementaires, v. 80, p. 351.
121
A. N., C 282, dossier 786
122
Cobb, The People’s Army, 447.
120
142
“the ruins of fallen superstition.” 123 His poems, though dedicated to the concepts of “reason” and
“nature,” were filled with allusions to “immortality,” and one even reassured believers that “they
never pretended to deny the good people, the existence of the supreme being, supreme engine of
all things.” 124 Meanwhile, in the department of Haut-Rhin, a pamphlet circulated to explain the
actions taken against the churches and priests with a “Jacobin curé” explaining that this was not
intended as an attack on God, but rather an attempt to prevent “charlatan abuses of the name of
God.” 125 Thus, God was not necessarily being rejected, but rather he was being reconstituted as a
part of the Republic itself. Instead of a barbarous man in the sky who arbitrarily struck sinners
down like a madman, he was reimagined as XYZ. Emulating Émile Durkheim proposition that
religion translates human needs and prohibitions, Albert Mathiez argued a century ago that the
culte de la patrie, “is a religion without mysteries, without revelation, and in which the act of
adoration or faith is not applied to a supernatural object, but to a political institution, namely, the
Nation, conceived as the source of moral happiness as well as material happiness.” 126 The
government and even the dechristianizers retained the fundamental activities of religion—
namely the concepts of hymns, “religious” art, and festivals to encourage the community. This
“church of the Nation,” however, also retained much of the language of religion—continually
referring to patriotism and the Revolution as being “eternal,” “divine,” and “sacred.” So in a
sense, the “mysteries” essentially remained, as the Revolutionaries continued to view their new
123
Quoted in Alphonse Aulard, The French Revolution, 104. Also see, Marie-Joseph Chénier, Office des décades, ou
Discours, hymnes et prières en usage dans les temples de la raison, (Paris: 1793-4).
124
Chénier, Office des décades, 7-8.
125
A. N. D XXXVIII, (5), (65).
126
Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 3-14, 45; Albert Mathiez, “Coup d’oeil critique sur l’histoire religieuse de la
Révolution française,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, VII (1905), 127. It should be noted here that
some historians reject the view that the culte de la patrie contained a religious facet to it. For example, Mathiez’s
contemporary, Alphonse Aulard, argued that dechristianization and the revolutionary cults were merely responses to
the need for national defense. Fifty years later Albert Soboul concluded that the sans-culottes themselves only
emphasized the civic nature of the festivals and ceremonies retained and reconstituted from the Catholic ones. (ADD
OZOUF). See Alphonse Aulard, La Culte de la raison et le culte de l’être suprême, (Paris, 1892), pp. xvii, 199-203.
Albert Saboul, “Sentiments religieux et cultes populaires pendant la Révolution: saintes patriotes et martyrs de la
liberté,” Annales historiques de la Révolution française, XIXX, (1957), 193-213.
143
“religion” as being the ritualistic worship of something immortal and omnipotent. Instead of
focusing on “God” as the sacred, however, many of these Revolutionaries centered their concept
of “sacred” on the French state, the people, and the ideals of the Revolution itself. Although they
did not understand modern conception of “culture,” they instinctively recognized the connection
between the customs and behaviors of the people of France and the need to cultivate a unified
identity to support the laws and activities of the new government. Theoretically this left the
existence of God open to the individual participants—a theist could worship God as the ultimate
creator of the culte de la patrie, while the agnostic or atheist could ignore the deity, distant and
unnecessary to the ritualistic festivals and activities involved with the promotion of liberty,
equality and fraternity. Behind the absurd and wretched political hypocrisy, mass violence,
government betrayal, and bloody rebellion was a reasonably sound proposition.
So if the French Revolution during the infamous dechristianization period did not discard
religion, what exactly did it reject? The problem with this question, which so many historians
have attempted to answer, is that it ultimately came down to the beliefs of individuals, factions,
and cliques that did not always agree on the answer. The evidence shows that many of these
activists were deists and unorthodox theists rejecting the traditional view of the active,
interfering God of the Bible. There certainly existed atheists, but most kept their atheism to
themselves, either in fear of their theistic peers or due to a passive sense of atheistic identity, and
merely sought a government and society in which they were free to believe what they wanted
while others believed what they willed. The previous regime did not provide such a culture, and
so these atheists sided with the Revolution, eager to promote a Cult of Reason in contrast to the
Catholic Church that repressed them for so many centuries. It can be argued as well that some
so-called “atheists,” such as Fouché, were undeclared politicians manipulating the situation to
144
increase their power, spewing the most extreme thoughts they could to prove their innovative
radicalism, only to recant when the climate turned more moderate. Some were, indeed, atheists
who publicly did not believe in a deity or the divine. Of these, a small few actively worked to
find a way to promote the skepticism of a God as being the most reasonable and useful system of
belief for a happy and productive society. One atheist, a man named Caroy, wrote a letter to the
Committee of Public Instruction to request that the government quickly implement in the
constitution what amounted to principles of atheism in order to destroy prejudice and protect the
people of France from “imbecile priests” and their “ignorance and fanaticism, which will always
be incurable.” 127 Utilizing proofs such as, “if God is eternal and in nature, then he cannot exist
because it is impossible to exist in nature without being contained because the cosmos is finite,”
Caroy attempted to convince the Committee of the futility of allowing theistic religion to
continue. Like today’s atheists, he argued that religion could be replaced by physics, chemistry,
geometry, and calculus, adding:
In order to strengthen the French constitution and ensure peace, reason, justice,
and truth, we must accept that the ‘god’ of the philosophes and the God of the
Christians are not one and the same. 128
This is truly a phenomenal moment in history—an atheist citizen actively writing to his
government to recommend the implementation of a system of unbelief, though admittedly he
never used the term “atheism” to describe his proposed society without God or religion. Caroy
even posted the letter with his return address on it. When all this is put together, we find a
diverse revolution in which atheists cannot and should not be dismissed, but also in which they
127
128
A. N. DXXXVIII, (5) (65), Folder 1.
Ibid.
145
remained a minority that cannot be used to label or define even the dechristianization movement.
Perhaps one anonymous song submitted to the Committee of Public Safety stated it best:
We can all be different
Christian, peasant, deist
French atheist or Muslim
Quaker or Jansenist
All cults permitted except
The cult of the Catholics
This is the fruit of equality
Vive la République! 129
In theory, provided one was not an unfortunate Catholic, the dechristianization movement was a
cultural and political step designed to tear down one unified cultural identity and put up one
more diverse and capable of meeting the needs of everyone. It is a shame that war, famine, and
political ambition interfered—topics which will be discussed in the next chapter.
129
D XXXVII, (5), (65), Folder 10.
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CHAPTER FOUR
LA PÈRE DUCHESNE—JACQUES HÉBERT AND THE (A)THEISM OF
DECHRISTIANIZATION
“I am the real fucking Père Duchesne!” So began in emphatic fashion each issue of the
radical journal, La Père Duchesne, written by controversial French Revolution extremist Jacques
Hébert from 1790 until spring of 1794. The authority and profanity of the statement exemplify a
character who was irreverent and self-serving, but also one who knew how to speak the language
of the sans-culottes and rally them to his side. Hébert was a Parisian journalist, politician, and
critic, and among his most despised targets were Christianity, Catholicism, and organized
religion. But did he believe in God? This chapter will focus primarily on one question—was
Jacques Hébert an atheist? The answer is ultimately “no,” though this can never be one hundred
percent determined, but examining the evidence regarding Hébert’s beliefs suggests much about
the complex nature of atheism during the French Revolution, how people viewed atheism and
religion, and how theism played a major role in the cultural and political views of extremists
during the Revolution. What will be discovered is that even the most radical dechristianizers
were not necessarily atheists and that they viewed religion in ways that were both complex and
quite modern in the sense that they did not center on traditional readings of the Bible or the belief
that spirituality had to be attached to a church. If someone in the French Revolution was going to
be an atheist, Hébert was a good candidate, but he ultimately viewed religion and the teachings
of Christ as positive things when utilized for the benefit of society, rather than as a political tool
for the maintenance of power for the noble and clerical elites. His inability to recognize the
complexity of the religious beliefs that he demonstrated, however, is reflected in his hypocritical
actions against traditional Christianity and his self-serving attempt to garner influence. The end
result is a political figure whose religious beliefs are easy to misidentify.
4.1 Jacques Rene Hébert: Biography of an Atheist?
If an eighteenth-century Frenchman was going to be an atheist, Jacques Hébert would have been
a likely candidate. Unlike a few of the famed atheists of the century such as Jean Meslier or
D’Holbach, he was not a priest or a nobleman—two identities which would be dangerous for an
unbeliever who was meant to represent orthodox thinking prior to the Revolution, and which
made Meslier and D’Holbach exceptional people. 1 Instead, like Diderot and Naigeon he was an
author and philosopher who attempted to make a living as a man of letters, but unlike the famed
Enlightenment atheists, he failed at this. Born in Alençon, France in 1757, Jacques René Hébert
was the son of a successful goldsmith. Hébert studied law and became an attorney until a bad
lawsuit resulted in his fleeing from Alençon in disgrace. With his failure at law, Hébert
attempted to become a Grub Street writer in Paris, authoring plays and pamphlets that did not
sell, and lived in destitution on the eve of the French Revolution. 2 Similar credentials led to
many professional, non-aristocratic members of society developing radical ideals during the
latter half of the eighteenth century and writing pornography, atheist tracts, anti-clerical treatises,
and pamphlets against the government. It was from this background that Hébert ascended during
1
Ironically, Robespierre would soon claim that atheism was naturally an aristocratic concept, an argument he would
use to discredit opponents such as Jacques Hébert.
2
Unfortunately, Hébert’s pre-revolutionary writings are not available for study. Subsequently, his early life and
views are typically glossed over. Nonetheless, for the best historical biographies focusing on Jacques Hébert life, see
Louis Jacob, Hébert le Père Duchesne, (Paris: Gallimard, 1960); Charles B. McNamara, The Hébertists: Study of a
French Revolutionary "Faction" in the Reign of Terror, 1793-1794, (New York:1978); Marina Grey, Hébert: le "Père
Duchesne," agent royaliste, (Paris: Perrin, 1983); Morris Slavin, The Hébertistes to the Guillotine Anatomy of a
"Conspiracy" in Revolutionary France, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994).
148
the French Revolution, and it is no surprise that he developed anti-Christian sentiments that
would inundate his revolutionary political writings. He had no particular connection to the
Church, and in fact resented the power and wealth that the religious factions gained while he
struggled to make it as a philosophe. Naturally this meant that Hébert also resented the nobility,
monarchy, and even the more famous writers of the century. In regard to the latter, it should be
noted that unlike some major idealists of the French Revolution such as Mirabeau, Marat, and
Robespierre, to name some obvious examples, Hébert rarely referenced the works of
Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire, or other influential Enlightenment figures. Nonetheless, his
criticism of the Church, the priesthood, and the Christian religion mirrored the writings of the
authors he attempted to emulate. As many historians have observed, however, it is difficult to
determine how influential the Enlightenment was on the French Revolution, and this is no
different when studying the revolutionary ideals of Jacques Hébert. 3
Hébert began his political career in 1789 at the dawn of the Revolution by writing a
pamphlet called La Lanterne magique ou le Fléau des Aristocrates (Magic Lantern, or the
Scourge of Aristocrats), which lambasted the nobles for creating the many ills of the nation,
though it said little about religion. 4 More pamphlets followed, and by the following year Hébert
began to publish his influential weekly pamphlet La Père Duchense. He quickly became
embroiled in revolutionary politics. He signed the petition demanding the removal of Louis XVI
and participated with the republican protesters against the constitutional monarchy that led to the
3
Although Jonathan Israel argues that the Enlightenment is the single biggest influence on the French Revolution, he
stops short of discussing the Terror and radicals such as Jacques Hébert whose influences contradict his thesis. His
view is currently a minority perspective. See Jonathan Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution,
and Human Rights 1750-1790, (Oxford University Press, 2011), 1-35. For a sample of more influential and subtle
works on the relationship between the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, see François Furet, Interpreting
the French Revolution, (Cambridge University Press, 1978), 1, 6-8, 29-46, 62-63, 74-79; Roger Chartier, The
Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, (Duke University Press, 1995), 25-35; Keith Michael Baker, Inventing
the French Revolution, (Cambridge University Press, 1990), 18-19, 126-127, 212-221; Robert Darnton, The
Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996). 169-180.
4
Jacques Hébert, La Lanterne magique ou le Fléau des Aristocrates, (Paris, 1790).
149
infamous massacre at Champ de Mars in July of 1791, joined the radical Cordeliers Club (and
later the Jacobin Club as well), and was granted a seat on the Paris Commune, eventually serving
as assistant procurator and later as president, where his political influence quickly increased. His
attacks on the Church, Christian religion, priests, and the Pope were as fierce as his attacks on
the monarchy and nobility, declaring that the Catholic priests “were the destroyers of half the
earth,” that the Pope was “a devil,” and that the sans-culottes “will destroy the clergy and
priests.” 5 His use of popular language made him popular among the sans-culottes, as did his
flamboyance and familiarity with the politics of the time, which assumed reader knowledge and
intelligence despite its obscenity and simplistic violence, and his sway subsequently grew even
more. 6 His proneness to violence and scheming are illustrated by his politics, as he favored the
September Massacres in 1792 and played a role in the defamation of Marie Antoinette leading to
her execution, claiming that he interviewed her son and found that his mother sexually abused
him in prison. In February, 1793, he was arrested for his part in opposing the National
Convention regarding the Maximum Price Act, which Hébert and his cohorts in the Paris
Commune believed would cause widespread hoarding and resentment among the sans-culottes,
their primary supporters. He was released a few days later after thousands protested his arrest,
and soon joined Jean-Paul Marat in attacking the Girondin faction who had arrested him,
accusing them of elitism, political moderation, and counter-revolution. Like Marat, Hébert
believed that the rich and powerful were prospering from the Revolution, while the nation fell to
foreign invaders and the sans-culottes starved and struggled to survive. Hébert attempted many
times to gain more attention for himself at the national level, losing several bids for election to
the electoral assembly. With Marat’s murder by the hand of Girondin supporter Charlotte Corday
5
6
Jacques René Hébert, La Père Duchesne, #241, #277, #302, ed. by Alphonse Aulard, (Paris: Edhis, 1969).
See Andress, The Terror, 76-77.
150
in July of that year, Hébert found himself in the position to be the primary voice of the radical
left in Paris and seized the opportunity, increasing the intensity of his attacks on religion, and
catapulting himself toward infamy. 7
Historians debate the nature of the Terror and its causes are hotly contested, particularly
its seemingly atheistic nature as far as the dechristianization movement that inhabited it is
concerned, but nonetheless it cannot be denied that Jacques Hébert was an enthusiastic
promoter. 8 He frequently endorsed the “sacred guillotine” in La Père Duchesne and its use in
ending the lives of perceived traitors of the revolution, sanctioned the armées révolutionnaires
with Chaumette and Royer, and was recognized as a leader in creating the Cult of Reason. It was
Hébert and Momoro who supervised the November 10, 1793 (20 Brimaire, An II) Fête de la
Raison in Paris, consecrating Notre Dame as the “Temple of Reason,” leading to the cathedral’s
defacement and the dedication of a “Goddess of Reason” in an elaborate ceremony in the
sanctuary. Similar festivals—as well as violence against churches, priests, and anyone else who
dared to express their overt Catholicism—erupted all over France. The next month the Paris
Commune elected Hébert as assistant procurator-general and his popularity continued to boom as
he became more involved in the National Convention, which garnered him attention from others
rising to power. 9 Although Hébert was never truly the leader of an organized faction, many
7
For more on the activities of radicals like Hébert in the wake of Marat’s death, see Albert Soboul, The SansCulottes; the Popular Movement and Revolutionary Government, 1793-1794, (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books,
1972); Hugh Gogh, The Terror in the French Revolution, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998).
8
The historiography of the Terror is extensive and cannot all be listed here, but for a sampling of historiographical
trends, see Albert Soboul, The sans-culottes; the popular movement and revolutionary government, 1793-1794,
(Garden City, N.Y., Anchor Books, 1972); R. R. Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French
Revolution, (Princeton University Press, 1969); Cobb, The people's armies : the armées révolutionnaires; Gough,
The Terror in the French Revolution; Eli Sagan, Citizens & cannibals : the French Revolution, the struggle for
modernity, and the origins of ideological terror, (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, c2001); David
Andress, Terror : the merciless war for freedom in revolutionary France; Dan Edelstein, The terror of natural right :
republicanism, the cult of nature, and the French Revolution, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009).
9
Some historians of the early twentieth century believe that it was Hébert’s aim to stage a coup against the National
Convention and seize power, while others contend that he would have been content to be offered a significant
position such as Secretary of the Interior. What is certain is that his ambition ultimately led to his conflict with
151
militant radicals, particularly in Paris, and including a few atheists such as Pierre Gaspard
Chaumette and Anarchis Clootz, became associated with him and were known by some as
“Hébertists.” As Richard Cobb writes, “contemporaries firmly labeled the armées and their
leaders as agents of an atheistic, violent and militaristic hébertisme—yet again that allencompassing political tag, which explains nothing and subtly mixes up parties and groups.” 10 In
the end, there were many radical factions involved and Hébert only became the symbolic leader
of all of them when his antagonism toward Georges Danton started to overlap with [or spill into]
criticism of the Montagnards and Robespierre. Whether it was jealousy, fear of Hébert’s growing
power and extreme radicalism, or legitimate concern over the accelerated attacks on religion—
likely all three—that drove Robepierre and the Committee of Public Safety to renounce Hébert is
uncertain, but by the end of the winter of 1794, the so-called Hébertist faction was on the
decline. Robespierre and his colleagues pitted Danton and Hébert against one another, and when
Hébert’s call for a sans-culotte uprising on March 4 went unheeded by the people of Paris,
Hébert and seventeen others, many of dubious connection to the author of La Père Duchesne,
were arrested and guillotined ten days later.
Robespierre and the Montagnards, but few present historians believe that Hébert intended any significant overthrow
of the National Convention. See Alphonse Aulard, Histoire politique de la Révolution française: Origines et
développement de la démocratie et de la république (1789–1804 ) (Paris, 1901), 460–61, 462, 463; Georges
Lefebvre, La Révolution française (Paris, 1951), 375, 376; Albert Soboul, Les Sans-Culottes parisiens en l'an II:
Mouvement populaire et gouvernement révolutionnaire, 2 juin 1793–9 thermidor an II (Paris, 1958), 738.
10
Richard Cobb, 443.
152
4.2 Contemporary Views of the Religious Beliefs of Hébert
The opinion that Jacques Hébert was an atheist permeates popular culture to this day in
the works of many journalists, bloggers, and writers. The idea that Hébert did not believe in God
originates with the source of his demise—running afoul with the political aims of Robespierre,
who declared Hébert and many associated with him “atheists” in his accusations leading up to
the arrest and execution of the Hébertist faction in March of 1794, although in the end the
government executed Hébert as a counter-revolutionary traitor and royalist. 11 In the current
public realm, the misconception that the Terror was an atheistic phenomenon is a common
assertion, and Hébert is often listed as a perpetrator of an attempt at creating a state atheism. The
popular online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, designates Hébert’s actions between 1793 and 1794 as
an “atheist movement” and categorizes him under “Atheist activists” and “French atheists.” 12
One general history blog describes the Cult of Reason as an “atheistic cult” which was
“sponsored by some of Robespierre’s closest friends, Jacques Hébert, Antoine-François
Momoro, Joseph Fouché, and Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette.” 13 Opponents to atheism often list
Hébert as a “militant atheist,” and use him as an example of the perils of atheism when applied to
systems of government and state. 14 One article frequently quoted online piece written by Damon
Linker, a University of Chicago trained PhD who contributes to The New Republic, states that it
“was only in the final years of the eighteenth century, in the late, fanatical phases of the French
Revolution, that a wholly politicized form of atheism—let’s call it ideological atheism—fully
11
See Vovelle, The Revolution against the Church, 123.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Hebert. Accessed 4/11/2012.
13
http://www.cliomusings.com/2012/04/french-revolution-robespierre-becomes.html. Accessed 4/11/2012.
14
http://www.conservapedia.com/Militant_atheism. Accessed 4/11/2012.
12
153
emerged.” 15 Of course, Linker links this “ideological atheism” to none other than Jacques
Hébert. These are but a few of many examples of Hébert being portrayed as an atheist in the
public realm, especially on the internet. For the most part, however, websites and books written
by atheists in favor of atheism do not discuss Jacques Hébert, though it is not certain whether this
is due to the somewhat obscure nature of Hébert in the lore of atheism, the negative connotations
often projected on the French Revolution due to the Terror, or because they do not consider him
to have been an atheist. Although none of these public writers are experts on the topic, it is
notable to mention them because historians are responsible for attempting to correct the errors in
accuracy and understanding that the public retain, and in the academic world the religious nature
of Jacques Hébert, the French Revolution, and atheism remain disputed.
Most academic works, by contrast, are more skeptical about the atheism of Hébert, or
even the dechristianization movement as a whole. Michel Vovelle, perhaps the premier scholar
on dechristianization, only mentions atheism once in The Revolution against the Church, and
never mentions Jacques Hébert personally, though he frequently references the Hébertists. Never
does he label them or the dechristianization movement as being necessarily atheistic in nature. 16
Mona Ozouf notes that, as envisioned by the so-called Hébertists, the Cult of Reason’s “very
name is redolent of militant atheism,” and yet “we know how very ambiguous the birth of the
Festival of Reason was.” 17 She contends that the Cult of Reason had atheistic aspects to it, but
takes no final stand on whether Hébert or the other creators of the Cult of Reason were atheists
or not because the ambiguity and complexity of revolutionary ideals makes it impossible to do
so. Hugh Gough’s brief discussion of Jacques Hébert and the dechristianization movement only
lists three reasons for Hébert and his compatriots’ actions—a desire to break away from the past,
15
http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/atheisms-wrong-turn/. Accessed 4/11/2012.
Vovelle, The Revolution against the Church, 4, 34, 123, 146-149.
17
Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, 97.
16
154
purging the nation of political enemies, and gaining the support of anticlerical militants. All these
could imply atheism, but not necessarily. The only time Gough mentions atheism is in regard to
Robespierre’s personal suspicions for the motives of Hébert and the dechristianizers. 18 As
already noted, Richard Cobb complains that the label of an atheistic hébertisme is grossly
misplaced, and adds that “too much importance must not be attached to accusations which
sought to establish a connection between atheism and Hébertism, and which identified every
ultra-revolutionary with the Cordeliers. Undoubtedly the presence of the révolutionnaires in
these sociétés encouraged zealous minorities and contributed to a certain revolutionary
exaggeration, notably in religious matters.” 19 In fact, Cobb mentions Hébert—a key founder of
the armées révolutionnaires that are the central focus of his work—many times and describes
him as “verbally violent,” “militant,” and perhaps motivated by the desire for personal gain, but
never does Cobb call Hébert an atheist. François-Alphonse Aulard, albeit a century ago, even
went so far as to claim that Hébert’s cynicism and seeming skepticism were not atheistic at all,
but were “emanations of God” and merely the result of anti-clericalism. 20 Finally, Charles
McNamara’s study on the role of the Hébertists denies notes that “there is little evidence in
Hébert’s writings of much more than a violent anti-clericalism, though he does not closely
examine these writings in his examination.21 Ultimately, few historians attempt to label Jacques
Hébert as a theist or atheist, especially in general histories of the French Revolution, preferring
instead to focus on Hébert as a radical political activist acting either in his own interest as a
politician hungry for power or an extremist speaker for the sans-culottes of Paris. 22
18
Gogh, The Terror in the French Revolution, 46-49.
Cobb, The People’s Armies, 428.
20
François-Alphonse Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison et le Culte de L’Être Supreme (1793-1794), (Paris: 1904,) 82-85.
21
McNamara, The Hébertists, 249.
22
Most general histories of the French Revolution that discuss Hébert in detail ignore his religious beliefs altogether.
For some typical examples, see Lefebvre, The French Revolution from 1793 to 1799, 43, 53, 61-106; Palmer, Twelve
Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution, 27, 43, 65-69, 86, 122-125, 174, 257-293; George
19
155
Despite the majority of historians either being skeptical of Hébert’s personal atheism or at
least ambivalent toward his religious beliefs, historical works on the French Revolution continue
to describe Hébert and the movement he supported as “atheist” in nature, some directly and some
indirectly. Some scholars confuse the matter by examining the Revolution through the eyes of
Robespierre, who labeled the Hébertist movement as “atheistic.” Early in the twentieth century,
Jean Jaurès essentially took the attacks on Hébert by Robespierre and the accusations of the
subsequent trial as truth and labeled Hébert as not only an atheist, but a royalist, according to the
accusations against him. 23 Ruth Scurr does not directly label Hébert himself as an atheist, but
implies it by writing that “Robespierre’s outburst was precipitated by the proselytizing of
atheism of Hébert’s faction, especially that of the procurator of the Paris Commune, Pierre
Gaspard Chaumette. A few weeks earlier, the archbishop of Paris, an old man named JeanBaptiste-Joseph Gobel, had been persuaded to proceed to the Convention with an entourage of
prorevolutionary clergymen and renounce his belief in God at the bar.” 24 Chaumette, indeed, was
an atheist, but Hébert, as it will be shown, was likely not. Sylvia Neely, also examining from the
point-of-view of Robespierre, states that as “a sincere Deist, Robespierre disapproved of the
atheism behind the movement. He also opposed it because he disapproved of the Hébertistes who
championed it.” 25 It is unclear here whether Neely is specifically claiming that the Hébertistes—
and subsequently Hébert himself—promoted atheism or whether she means that Robespierre
Rude, The French Revolution: Its Causes, Its History, and Its Legacy After 200 Years, (New York: Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, 1988), 84-85, 93-94, 102-109; Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, 226, 602-604,
710-722, 756-766, 805-825; Aston, The French Revolution, 1789-1804: Authority, Liberty and the Search for
Stability, , 40, 81, 99, 123, 177, 198-199; Andress, The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary
France, 44-45, 76-77, 132-207, 251-269.
23
Jean Jaurès, Histoire socialiste de la Révolution française, ed. Albert Mathiez (Paris, 1924; rpr. with notes by
Albert Soboul, New York, 1973), VI, 406–407, 410, 415
24
Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution, 294.
25
Neely, A Concise History of the French Revolution, 199. Dawson, The Gods of Revolution, 96-97. An older work,
it also uses vague language to describe the religious connotations of the Hébertist movement, making it unclear
whether Hébert or the Hébertists were atheists or not.
156
perceived them as such, and that they may have not been actual atheists. More directly in error,
Jennifer Michael Hecht, a scholar of atheism, declares in her analysis of the history of “doubt”
that “an atheist campaign got under way” in 1793, and that its “three leaders were the selfproclaimed atheists Pierre Chaumette, Josephe Fouché, and Jacques Hébert.” 26 She makes it
clear that this is not a matter of ambiguous writing, however, following up by describing Hébert
as “leader of the sans-culottes (after Marat’s murder), was well known as an atheist.” 27 Hecht
cites no evidence for the claim. Finally, one of Jacques Hébert’s own biographers, the respected
French Revolution historian Morris Slavin, suggests that Hébert’s actions give him away as
being an atheist. He argues that whether “Hébert was a deist, as some historians claim, or an
atheist, as others insist, his actions as an official of the Paris Commune was that of a
dechristanizer. Between the latter practice and the belief in a Supreme Being was an
unbridgeable gulf.” At least Slavin gives a reason for questioning Hébert’s religiosity—for
Slavin, the dechristianization movement that Hébert associated himself so strongly with was
impossible to distinguish from atheism. The view that dechristianization and theism were
inherently in opposition to one another, however, is overly simplistic, and no historical figure
illustrates the complex relationship between theism, religion, and politics better than Jacques
Hébert.
4.3 The Politics of Religion in La Père Duchesne: Proof of Hébert’s Atheism?
It is easy to understand the confusion over Hébert’s religious beliefs when examining
certain passages in his works, for his derision and hostility toward traditional Christianity, and
26
27
Hecht, Doubt: A History, 368.
Ibid., 369.
157
especially Catholicism, was absolute. Jacques Hébert described his religious upbringing in La
Père Duchesne during the dechristianization period in the fall of 1793, peppering the description
with sarcasm.
Mother Duchesne did write with her own hand to ask my dear Jacqueline if we
were going therefore to become ones who do not know god or the saints. 28 We
destroy religion! For that, good god must be angry! Mercy! The Day of Judgment
doubtless will arrive. I believe I hear the trumpet! I see the dead coming out of
their tombs, and it seems to me that I already am in the valley of Jehoshaphat and
that the son of god advances himself on a cloud to judge us all. My mother was
sweet to upset herself and put me in penitence, but I obey my father. Since that
time, I did not have faith anymore in the relics of the religious, and as I aged, my
contempt for them did nothing but increase. I always looked at priests as the end
of the household, because they did not want to take women and be the husbands
of all. I believe no more of their hell and their paradise. If there exists a god,
which is not too clear, he did not create us to torment us, but to be happy. He
worries himself no more for us than for the heretics. The Huguenot and the Jews
live just as we; their children are as plump as ours. They are not hated by the
supposed eternal father, who made all and who destroys all, as the priests say.” 29
The first thing Hébert suggests here is that his own mother viewed him as either being an atheist
(“one who does not know God”) or as potentially moving in that direction, and Hébert does not
immediately deny this. In fact, he responds with sarcasm, declaring that “god” must be angry and
28
The reference to “Jacqueline” is unclear, but may be a nickname for Jacques Hébert’s wife, Marie Goupil, a
former nun who Jacques married in 1792. Morris Slavin suggests that she never gave up her religiosity, but does not
discuss how this may have affected their relationship. See Slavin, 12.
29
Jacques René Hébert, La Père Duchesne, #301, ed. by Alphonse Aulard, (Paris: Edhis, 1969), 2-4.
158
that he could hear the trumpets of the Second Coming calling him to judgment. He then argues
that “if there existed a god,” the divine would want his creations to be happy and Hébert then
referenced the “supposed eternal father” when criticizing the priests’ portrayal of God. 30 Indeed,
these portrayals of the divine creator at least suggest agnosticism, if not atheism. Hébert,
however, does not himself emphasize the “if” and “supposed,” and it is unclear whether or not he
meant these descriptors as hypotheticals, prescriptions, or derision. Ultimately, a complete
analysis of the totality of his writings is necessary in order to determine whether or not Hébert
was a theist, deist, agnostic, or atheist.
Jacques Hébert first published his serialized pamphlets, Le Père Duchesne in September,
1790, and quickly found the writing fame he had sought his entire life. Hébert’s main purpose in
writing Le Père Duchesne was to appeal to the masses in Paris and inflame their passions in
favor of the Revolution. He did so through the use of “popular language,” including
exaggerations, sensationalism, obscenities, and a furious style designed to play on the emotions
of the sans-culottes. In some ways, Le Père Duchesne was a political tabloid, drudging up
scandal, calling the enemies of the Revolution names, and attacking the character of all
aristocrats, clergymen, and supporters of the royal family. On the other hand, it assumed political
knowledge of its readers and Hébert used it to form a strong, complex bond with the sansculottes that catapulted him to fame. La Père Duchense soon came to be representative of the
views of the Paris Commune, revolutionary radicalism, and the extreme left in the Assembly and
Convention.
Le Père Duchesne, however, surprisingly did not express a lot of anti-religious sentiment
in the first two years it was published, and rarely discussed matters of church, worship, or
30
Italics mine. Interestingly, historian Alphonse Aulard uses this same passage as evidence that Hébert was not an
atheist. See Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison et le Culte de L’Être Supreme, 82-85.
159
divinity. Virtually all references to priests, clergy, and Catholicism in the serial referred to
political issues, rather than religious matters. Hébert frequently lumped the priests and clergy in
with the nobility in criticizing all attacks on the dramatic changes occurring in the National
Assembly, but this was common and hardly unusual in light of the breakdown of the estate
system in the early years of the Revolution. The first reference to the Church occurred in the
tenth, unnumbered issue, put out sometime in late November, 1790, in which Hébert lambasted
the Pope for his interference in French politics in regards to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
Three issues later he attacked the King for siding with the Pope and delaying signing the
measure. 31 Similar political attacks by Hébert ensued against the Abbé Maury, a defender of the
Church’s property rights who participated in the debates of the National Assembly on behalf of
the First Estate for the first two years of the Revolution before emigrating to Italy where he
became a cardinal; but these attacks were political in nature, not theological. By the spring of
1791, Hébert frequently referred to priests, nuns, clergy, monks, and all papal supporters as
“fanatics” and “ignorant bigots.” 32 Nonetheless, for the most part Hébert’s early writings are not
anti-religious at all, even if they were anti-clerical. They simply criticized, as many other
revolutionary writings did, the excesses of the First Estate, the economics of the Church, the
political influence of the bishops and Pope, the abuse of the clergy, and the incompetence of the
priests. He labeled all of this as being hypocritical with respect to scripture and reason.
The first time Hébert expressed any opinion on worship itself did not occur until early in 1791,
following the Pope’s official declaration against the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in February.
Hébert’s assault on religious veneration was less an expression of anti-religious sentiment,
however, as it was a frustrated criticism of worshiping citizens who opposed the Civil
31
Hébert, La Père Duchesne, The first fourteen issues were not numbered or dated. The references to the above
occurred in the 10th unnumbered issue, pages 1-8, and the 13th unnumbered issue, pages 1-5.
32
Hébert, La Père Duchesne, #8, 1-7; #35, 3; #46, 2.
160
Constitution and other National Assembly decrees on Church property. He wrote in January,
1791:
Our churchgoers declare us impious because we want to sell their bells, but the
devils do not succeed. The people are clear that they want worship to be simple
and tranquil, which honors the divine. It is not necessary to beat the air with
inopportune sounds to get the sky to rain on the earth. 33
Here Hébert advocated a somewhat modernized view of religion, suggesting that the concrete
and ritualistic aspects of the churches themselves were unnecessary. Tranquility and simplicity
trumped the sounding of the bells in the liturgy for Hébert, although other practical uses of the
ringing of bells—communication of emergencies, for example— he ignored. What Hébert did
not do is deny the “divine.” Rather, he promoted a more contemplative and meditative worship
service, though defense of the economic necessity reclaiming Church valuables influenced his
motives more than redefining religion itself. After the Pope’s official turn against the National
Assembly, La Père Duchesne became more hostile, but again more in regard to the idea that the
Revolution was destructive of religion. He accused the opponents of the Civil Constitution of the
Clergy of spreading lies about what the revolutionary government was attempting to achieve.
It is again these devils of Tartuffe who raise today their devout children and fill their ears with
nonsense of the National Assembly destroying religion, telling them that one cannot in good
conscience hear the mass of the priests that have given the civil oath. 34
In other words, conservative adversaries disseminated the belief that the priests who
swore allegiance to the new constitution were unqualified to administer/officiate the mass,
because the oath tied them to the national government instead of the Church in Rome. Hébert
33
34
Hébert, La Père Duchesne, 14th unnumbered issue, December, 1790, 5-6.
Ibid, #27, 3.
161
saw this as a paradox, however, claiming that the old ways were more sacrilegious in that they
promoted oppression and control of the people at the expense of good works.
When they baptized these poor infants, they ordered them to reject Satan, his
pomposity and his works. What these imposters really want are servants to favor
their own pride, ignoring the iniquity their own works. Is this not what is called a
true desecration? 35
Thus Hébert’s La Père Duchesne began to define his religious views more distinctly, illustrating
a belief that religion should benefit the people who practice it rather than promoting the power of
the Pope or those who would use it for their own evil gains. Nevertheless, this does not
demonstrate Hébert’s theistic stance one way or the other. It does, however, demonstrate
Hébert’s similarities to the Enlightenment philosophes of decades prior in that his criticism of
religion centered on the political oppression of the people by the Church, the need for a
reasonable religion of practical utility, and a healthy amount of natural skepticism.
Jacques Hébert the philosophe, like many Jacobins in Paris, believed in the Enlightenment and
praised the lumières for their contributions to the revolutionary ideal, though not to the extent
that Robespierre and others did. In describing the historical rise of religious criticism,
particularly in regard to the role of church in the state, he was quick to recognize Voltaire and
Rousseau for their influences.
A fellow with a beak and claws and more spirit in his brain than all the prigs of
the Church, a certain Voltaire arrived, the whip in his hand, to jeer all the
impostors who founded their cuisine on the stupidity of mankind. He proved that
hell and purgatory were simply bedtime stories imagined by the priests to scare
old women. Another sans-culotte from Geneva, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the most
35
Ibid., #27, 6
162
candid and best of men, appeared in these times to fight lies and tyranny. He
proved that the true religion is integrity and patriotism. He pronounced the sacred
word of liberty, and to his voice, all the good sans-culottes prostrated themselves
in front of this new idol. 36
Ultimately, however, Hébert was not interested in promoting Enlightenment values, but rather
focused on creating new ones. References to the Voltaires and Rousseaus of history appeared
rarely in his writings, and when they did Hébert always shifted the emphasis to the sans-culottes
themselves and their importance to ending the old ways. Thus, Hébert recognized Voltaire’s
attack on the Catholic perspective on the afterlife and Rousseau’s focus on patriotism and liberty,
but treats them as a starting point, not the conclusion of the evolution of religious thought.
Instead, Hébert believed, like many revolutionaries of the time, that a civil religion centered on
patriotism, nationalism, and the people needed to be created along the vein of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau’s On the Social Contract. The philosophes only mattered when their views coincided
with those of Hébert. It is this focus on “patriotism” and “liberty,” as well as the deriding of
“fanaticism,” that clouds the issue regarding the theistic nature of Hébert and other French
Revolution radicals—or for that matter that of the Enlightenment before them. On one hand they
frequently promoted a decline in traditional religion, and yet they also utilized religious language
to promote reason, loyalty, and the national spirit. 37 Can there be religion without a God? The
answer is, of course, yes—but that does not mean much when so many differing factions and
individuals defined their own religion in such subtle and ambiguous terms.
36
Ibid., #301, 6.
The implications which arose from the changing nature of the language of the French Revolution are an important
topic in the historiography of the political and cultural history of the period. For more on revolutionary language, in
words and symbols, see Olivia Smith, The Politics of Language 1791-1819, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984); Hunt,
Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution, 19-28; Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred: Lay Religion and
Popular Politics in Revolutionary France, 101-103, 110-113, 122-163; Carol Blum, Rousseau and the Republic of
Virtue: the Language of Politics in the French Revolution, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988).
37
163
If there needed to be a civil religion to placate the people or promote cultural unity, Hébert was
clear about one thing—a religion without clergy. That Jacques Hébert, like the philosophes and
most revolutionaries, was anticlerical cannot be denied. The cover of La Pere Duchesne
frequently depicted a man armed with two revolvers and a hatchet, casually smoking a pipe
while a priest kneels beside him begging for mercy. For the priests, however, there would be no
mercy in La Pere Duchesne. “You will destroy the clergy and nobility,” Hébert told the sansculottes, and warned them that “sans-culottes, my friends, you challenge priests; they are not
worth more than one of you, but if you give them a foot, they will take two. It is clear that they
are in accord with the Brissotins to poison you with a king.” 38 Hébert especially concerned
himself with the transformation from religious-run schools to public education.
As early as they can walk, our children should be placed in public schools, where
one will teach them the A-B-Cs of the constitution; this will be their first
catechism. On this subject the priests never approached them, for they corrupted
the youth and taught them to be deceitful and proud. 39
For Hébert and many revolutionaries, the presence of Catholic priests, monks, nuns, and other
religious in the education system was detrimental to raising revolutionary children. However,
Hébert’s antagonism toward the clergy was not always expressed in political arguments and
philosophical expressions. “Fuck the priests,” he wrote in disgust, “they only know how to lie,
cheat, mislead, and kill.” 40
Hébert also rejected Catholicism as a religious and ritualistic institution. He mocked the
clergy and claimed that their rituals and services were soon to be obsolete.
38
Ibid., #241, 2; #244, 8
Ibid., #277, 3.
40
Ibid., #347, 8.
39
164
Those cockroaches will say, ‘Pious souls and Christians, our holy religion leaves
its bread and water, our temples are deserted, and the sans-culottes no longer
know of mass or sermon or confession, but only love their liberty. If this
continues, it will be necessary to renounce the trade.
Hébert reveled in the perceived decline of Catholic rituals, believing them to be unreasonable
and unnecessary. He further mocked the mass itself, declaring that those “who refuse to believe
that I can conjure this god by muttering some words in Latin and seal him in some bread are
declared irreligious and sacrilegious.” 41 To Hébert and many of the dechristianizers of the fall of
1793, the Eucharist was a myth and the Latin language utilized in the worship service itself was
an antiquated waste of time. The very nature of Catholicism, and perhaps Christianity as well,
was absurd to Hébert. Was the God they worshipped absurd as well? Further evidence makes the
answer less clear than his criticism of the Church would suggest.
Despite his support of the dechristianization movement and his strong antagonism toward
Catholicism and the clergy, Hébert sometimes espoused freedom of worship, but whether or not
this supports a belief in God is not so evident. Hébert suggested the following in regard to the
citizens’ rights to decide their beliefs for themselves:
The liberty of worship being allowed, people will choose, when they have reached
the age of reason, which religion will suit them better. If one wants be Christian, if
he believes that some words in Latin and a little toilet water can wash his soul and
obliterate a crime that he did not commit, then he can water his own head. If one
wants be Jewish, he can shorten all that will please him, although nature did
nothing to him. If he wants to adopt the faith of certain Indian peoples that want to
eat flesh or fish, who believe that if they devoured the living intestines of a being
41
Ibid., #301, 3.
165
that it will do them well, then fine. I believe only that men possess the right of all
to destroy and get fat on the blood of animals, and that this matters as much to the
creator as the man that claims to be the king of animals, and he is, in fact, since he
eats them. 42
Yet, while endorsing freedom of religion, it is not difficult to see the mockery and disdain that
Hébert held in regard to all these religions. The idea that a God could be summoned through the
Eucharist or would demand certain rituals and eating habits is obviously senseless to him, but
whether it is because of atheism, deism, or uncertainty is not clear from his criticism. Hébert,
however, does find one religious sect to be reasonably acceptable in their beliefs—the Quakers.
I would not be angry if all the people in the universe were Quakers, for these brave people look
at blood in horror and keep to themselves. Nonetheless, they are Christians and draw their human
principles from the Gospel while the Catholic priests, this same book in their hand, gorge
themselves on half of the earth. Yes, the Gospel, without the priests, would be a better book than
one could give to the young people. It would conform their heart to virtue and they would find in
this divine book perfect models for a sans-culotte. 43
Hébert suggested here that the Gospel, if properly used to promote virtue and human
principles, could indeed be a “divine” book. Did Hébert mean “divine” in the sense of coming
from God, or merely that it was a positive example because of the practical teachings contained
within? Again, La Père Duchesne is vague, and Hébert continued to be elusive in revealing his
true beliefs about God. Ultimately all that is exposed is Hébert’s belief that traditional religion
and ritual were absurd, unnecessary, and evident of influence on the people by evil ministers and
clergy bent on domination of the minds of the citizens.
42
43
Ibid., #277, 3.
Ibid., #277, 5.
166
It is certain that Jacques Hébert, as with many revolutionaries, scorned Catholicism on
the grounds that it played a significant role in preserving the old system of power and was the
perceived source of countless conspiracies against the Revolution. 44 He accused the Pope and the
priests of conspiring together “to reestablish the dixième and canonry, and to profit off our loss
of liberty.” 45 He added:
Another big conspiracy of the priests and congregants of Paris has been
discovered by the Pere Duchesne. The infamous cliques of the Gironde, having
lost their bite and their hold on the Parisians, and unable to set the fire of civil war
on our city; have tried to bring the churchgoers into the game to arm the citizens
against one another. All the defrocked nuns, flagellants, and Church members
share their sabbath with the bigotry of the priests. 46
To Hébert, Catholics of all sorts were responsible for trying to reestablish ancient taxes,
inflaming the civil war, and attempting to turn the citizenry against the Revolution through lies
and gossip. Conspiracy theories enveloped the Revolution with suspicion and fear, perpetuated
by nearly everyone involved. It was only natural that Hébert, while conspiring for power himself,
would spread dread of the counter-revolution through tales of conspiracy and intrigue. To some
extent his fears were real, however, in that counter-revolutionary forces were, indeed, a major
catalyst of rebellion amongst the deeply religious Catholic population. 47 The National
Assembly’s attempts to redefine the role of “religion” in society and government proved
44
For more on conspiracy and the French Revolution, see Peter R. Campbell, Thomas E. Kaiser and Marisa Linton,
eds. Conspiracy in the French Revolution, (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2007).
45
Hébert, La Père Duchesne, #302, 5.
46
Ibid., #244. 1.
47
For more on counter-revolutionaries in the French Revolution, see Jacques Godechot, The Counter-Revolution:
Doctrine and Action, 1789-1804, (New York: H. Fertig, 1971); Jean Sentou, Révolution et Contre-Révolution dans la
France du Midi (1789-1799), (Toulouse, France: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 1991); John Roberts, The
Counter-Revolution in France, 1787-1830, (Basingstoke: MacMillan Education, 1990); McMahon, Enemies of the
Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity.
167
untenable for thousands who strongly believed in God relied on the Catholic Church to provide
doctrine and theology. As with his views on the Papacy and the clergy, Hébert’s articulations on
religious conspiracies against the Revolution side-stepped any statement of his belief for or
against the existence of a deity. At this point, his words only reveal a strong anti-Catholic pointof-view, not atheism.
Hébert went beyond mere anti-Catholicism in his efforts to promote conspiracy theories,
focusing on the “Christian God” and the relationship between religion and the counterrevolution, although this approach only adds to the ambiguity in his stated position on God and
religion. He seemed to blame all of Christianity to some extent, for the counter-revolution in the
Vendée, which constituted a major revolt against the republican government from 1793 until
1796, but it is unclear whether it is Christianity itself or France’s enemies’ usage of Christianity
that he held accountable.
I avow that the impure army that ravages the Vendée does not deserve the name of
French. It is made up of escaped convicts of the galleys, impostor priests,
aristocrats from Gascony and Normandy; all formerly gentlemen, industry
knights, counts, marquis, dukes and princes just the same in the new system as in
the old, but now all crooks and professional thieves. They now compose this band
of Mandarins who took the name of a Christian army and violently pillage and
slaughter in the name of a God of peace. 48
When Hébert disparaged “a God of peace,” was he suggesting that the counter-revolutionary
army was hypocritical in their violence in light of the peaceful nature of the Christian deity, or
was he denying that the Christian God was, indeed, a kind and pacifistic being? Did his usage of
the ambiguous article “a” in “a God of peace” indicate unbelief? Hébert’s usage of the term
48
Hébert, La Père Duchesne, #253, 3-4.
168
“Mandrin” suggests that Hébert’s fury may have been directed more at the “gentlemen” and
“imposter priests” than the Christian religion itself, labeling the conspirators as being “thieves”
that stole the name of Christianity, and perhaps not indicating an inherent problem with the
religion itself. 49 He further argued that the financial authorities and the king’s administrators
manipulated religion to serve their own economic needs, again using the Vendée revolt as an
example.
Those financial rascals and monopolizers make a God out of their moneyboxes
and excite disorder and pillaging to promote the counter-revolution. Their good
opinion of all those who have something to risk will not put their head in a cap
with the sans-culottes, because they will protect their property and defend
themselves. Their great joy is all that remains other than four walls and the eyes to
cry for the former riches of Saumur, which opened the doors of their city to the
bandits of the Vendée and were devastated for it, all in the name of a good God
and the king of straw for which they asked. 50
Here it becomes less certain whether Hébert believed the counter-revolutionaries took advantage
of a legitimate religion or were inventing the religion in order to promote their own power and
influence. His sarcasm and ambiguity either were meant to camouflage his theistic ideals, or
more likely, they merely exist despite his belief or disbelief in God, whose existence is not
necessarily relevant to the greed and evils of the counter-revolution. All that is clear from his
discussion of the Vendée revolt is that Hébert believed the enemies of the Revolution to be
49
“Mandrins” refers to an early eighteenth-century highwayman, Louis Mandrin, who was a popular criminal who
fought against the tax-collectors of Dauphiné until his capture in 1755. This “Robin Hood” of France was publicly
broken and killed on the wheel, and many considered him a folk hero. Voltaire even took up his cause, as he was
viewed as a hero against the Ancien Régime. So it is rather strange that Hébert chose to use his name to vilify the
army of Vendée, though the reference appears to only be used to note his comparison of the counter-revolutionaries
to common thieves.
50
Hébert, La Père Duchesne, # 253, 1.
169
hypocrites who utilized the Christian religion for support, but did not live up to its ideals because
they resorted to violence and oppression to promote their own power over the people.
This confusion over whether God really existed or was simply an unachievable ideal
manipulated by the Revolution’s enemies is only multiplied in Hébert’s criticism of the use of
God’s will to justify monarchy. Hébert wrote:
Which infamous pact is this between court and altar? The one says to the other,
‘As for the doctors, when they dispatch a poor patient, pass me the rhubarb and I
will pass you the salt.’ That is to say, in good French, you, the king, who has the
force in hand of a single word, can destroy thousands of men and can loosen many
armies to devour the people, as your dogs do to the deer and the doe of the woods.
Sire, explain to me—how does erecting scaffolds and lighting pyres to kill, bleed,
and slaughter whoever does not believe bring respect to your church? Does the
God of the universe who created and governs all demand it? 51
Like many before him, Hébert rejected divine right of rule, the evidence for him being the
monarchy’s violent and corrupt actions, but was it because he did not believe that the king had a
direct connection to the creator of the universe, or was it because he did not believe in the creator
at all? It is clear that Hébert disbelieved that the Latin mass was capable of connecting to God, if
he existed. It is clear that Hébert despised the utilization of the Church to promote violence
against the people. It is clear that Hébert opposed any connection between the monarchy and all
cosmological or theological justifications for its existence. In his writings on religion and its
relationship to politics and society, however, Hébert never revealed his personal belief or
disbelief in God in any clearly overt and declared manner. 52
51
52
Ibid., #301, 3
For more on the desacralization of the monarchy leading into the French Revolution, see Van Kley, Religious
170
Only twice in La Pére Duchesne does Jacques Hébert make statements that seem to go
beyond just derision directed at traditional Christians bent on protecting their orthodoxy from the
unorthodoxy of the French Revolution. Perhaps the most atheistic thing Hébert ever printed was
an oath he attributed to Jean-François-Auguste Moulins.
I swear to maintain with all my strength the unity and indivisibility of the
republic. I swear in addition to recognize as my brother any just man and true
friend of humanity, regardless of his color, his talents, or his country. I swear at
last to have no religion other than that of nature, no other temple other than that of
reason, no other altars than those of the nation, no other priests than that of our
legislators, and no worship other than that of liberty, equality, and brotherhood. 53
Even here, however, there is no explicit denial of God’s existence, but merely a rejection of old
religion and the promotion of nature, reason, and the revolutionary state. A deist or agnostic
could make the same declarations. The closest Hébert himself comes to denying the existence of
God in his “theological” and political rants in La Père Duchesne occurred in the fall of 1793. He
condemned those who opposed the movement and continued to support the monarchy and ancien
régime even in the wake of the king’s death by the guillotine.
You who fight for God and the king, is this the cause that you defend? You ravage
your fatherland and sacrifice your brothers. Why? For an old whore [the Church]
who does not have faith or law, and who killed more than a million men. You are
the champions of the murder, brigandage, adultery, incest—and you dare to say
that you fight for God? If there exists such a God that would approve of your
Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to the Civil Constitution 1560-1791; Merrick, Desacralization of the
French Monarchy in the Eighteenth Century; Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution,
particularly chapter 3.
53
Hébert, La Père Duchesne, #347, 6-7.
171
crimes and make sure that you prevail? I would prefer to love a toad than a similar
God, for there could not be a more despicable and hateful monster in the entire
world. 54
Hébert seems at his most skeptical of a supreme being here, writing at the height of the
dechristianization movement, a period when radicals converted Catholic churches into temples to
reason, hunted and killed Catholic priests, and promoted a new civil religion dedicated to the
people and ideals of the Revolution. The language of Hébert mirrors that of the Enlightenment
atheists, such as D’Holbach, who frequently described God, or at least the Christian view of
God, as being a tyrant and an evil monster. 55 Hébert uses the agnostic language of “if” God
exists here, suggesting uncertainty, but also specifies “such” a God, suggesting that it is only the
violent God he perceived as being that of the counterrevolution. Is this seeming doubt about the
nature of the Catholic God enough to call Hébert an agnostic, let alone an atheist? Or did he, as
before, merely attack the view of God as being the vengeful damner of evil? As with his other
writings, Hébert was never clear about the relationship between God and his attacks on
Christianity. Perhaps based on the totality of his attacks on the clergy, Catholicism, Christianity,
and traditional religion it can be argued that he was an unbeliever, but such an argument would
be pure speculation. The evidence simply is not there.
4.4 Christ and the Eternal Father: Hébert’s Examples of the “Perfect Sans-Culotte”
With all the opacity and scorn expressed in Hébert’s writings, labeling Hébert an atheist
proves to be a difficult job because the evidence simply is not there—but can the same be said to
54
55
Ibid., #298, 7.
See Baron D’Holbach, Bon Sens, (Paris, 1772), 50-61,
172
be true of any argument that Hébert did indeed believe in a higher being? He never declared
himself to be an atheist, never declared that a god does not exist, and continually utilized the
language of religion, but did he ever profess to believe? To some extent, although whether he
means it rhetorically or literally is difficult to determine, Hébert does acknowledge some sort of
omnipotent and powerful being acting in favor of the divine nation of France. Writing in 1793
against the counter-revolutionary rebellion of the Vendée, Hébert claimed that God served the
interests of the Revolution and not Catholicism.
The God that wants France free fights for us, hitting with plague the camp of the
Prussians, as last year, in the plains of Champagne; thus this god is more powerful
than the one of the bandits of the Vendée, who despite their rosaries and
vestments, will fatten little under the earth that they ravage. 56
It may be that Hébert meant this God who fought for France’s freedom metaphorically or that he
used this language to please the ignorant masses and sans-culottes who still overwhelmingly
believed in God. 57 His quip amounts to “our God is better than their God” and can easily be
interpreted as mere mockery. It could be that Hébert did not believe, but assumed his readers did
and accepted this. Yet Hébert returned to the declaration that the true God fought for the sansculottes again and again. He wrote early in 1793 in criticism of the Brissotins as well as against a
proposal to reinstate Catholic processions to proceed in Paris as a good will compromise, which
Hébert viewed as a manipulative attempt to undermine the Revolution, He recalled how one such
parade had “forced the sans-culottes to decorate the front of their shops,” then declared:
56
Note that Hébert frequently changed between identifying a capitalized “Dieu,” or God and a lower-case “dieu,” or
god with no attempt to distinguish a difference between the two. Hébert, La Père Duchesne, #249, 7.
57
Even those sans-culottes who ransacked churches during the dechristianization period denounced the luxurious
relics of the Church as an “insult to divinity,” rather than the evidence of foolish belief in a God who did not exist.
Anti-superstition sentiments were not equivalent to atheism among the sans-culottes. See Vovelle, Revolution
Against the Church, 58-59.
173
What does that make of us, provided that we take a walk for our good God and
that the onlookers throw flowers upon our passage? What is said is soon done. All
the shops along the streets were closed down to decorate them. All the
shopkeepers along the Rue de St. Denis and the goldsmiths of the covered market
applauded the parade and shouted: ‘long live God, long live the priests, and long
live the Brissotins,’ while waiting that they should call out, ‘long live the king!’
But the sans-culottes thought that this festival should reflect the good God who
looked after their own and did not worry themselves with walking around like fat
cows. They felt with reason that this same good God does not want to disturb
them from their work, so they left their shops open and did not disturb themselves
at the covered market by giving way to this orderly procession” 58
Hébert clearly mocks the Catholic procession, but was he mocking God? Or was he
acknowledging here that a God exists, despite his lack of regard for the Catholic faith? Again the
idea that Hébert’s “good God” watched over the sans-culottes demonstrated an apparent theism
in his philosophy, and again he attempted to show that his opponents did not truly understand
God. Mirroring Rousseau’s criticism of Catholic ritual in the Social Contract, he criticized—
hypocritically, it would seem, in light of the pompous nature of his own festival later that year—
the excess and lack of necessity as the parade proceeded and interfered with the workers in their
shops along the street. 59 It was these workers, Hébert implied, that were the true sons of God. In
a sense, like most radicals of the French Revolution, Hébert promoted a civil religion in the vein
of Rousseau, who advocated for a religion “without temples, altars, or rites and limited to the
58
59
Ibid., #244, 2
J-J. Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes de J.-J. Rousseau. Tome 7, (Paris: J. Bry aîné, 1856), 66-69.
174
purely internal cult of the supreme God and to the eternal duties of morality.” 60 God needed to be
part of the nation’s civil religion, but ultimately the citizens themselves needed to be their own
inner sources of religious experience.
Hébert further mentions God’s relationship to the Revolution on several other occasions.
When condemning the king, for example, he professed the daring of the National Assembly for
stating that “the French people regard Louis to be a traitor to his country, his people, and his
God.” 61 Thus Hébert declared that the king betrayed more than just his earthly subjects, but his
heavenly creator as well. He later wrote:
I equally wanted to put on a festival to make a little gossip about the leader of the
villainous band that drove the republic to the brink of the precipice and what
would have been a lost dawn if there did not exist a God for the sans-culottes.
Yes, a powerful God watches over us; for all the beautiful spirits that shined in the
revolution and that next betrayed and sold the people, they themselves turn-to-turn
break their noses, and liberty, in the middle of the storms and shipwrecks, always
lingers and prevails over all its enemies. 62
It can easily be argued that he spoke figuratively, using the language of the time to express an
abstract version of God and religion, and that he meant that liberty, itself, was the new deity.
Ultimately, however, this is speculation at best. The language he uses states that a “powerful God
watches over us,” and it is difficult not to see theism in these words, and not a deistic deity who
does not interfere with the world. Again, Hébert echoes the work of Rousseau and other post60
Charles Gliozzo argues that Hébert was the one dechristianizer who Rousseau did not influence, but ultimately it
depended on the specific topic, though it is indeed true that Hébert referenced individual philosophers very
infrequently. In the case of understanding ritual as not being a necessary component of religion, Hébert’s beliefs
were similar to that of the influential philosophe. Other examples of Rousseau’s view of religion in the work of
Hébert will be noted. Gliozzo, “The Philosophes and Religion: Intellectual Origins of the Dechristianization
Movement in the French Revolution,” Church History, (Vol. 40, No. 3, 1971), 276.
61
Hébert, Père Duchesne, #243, 5.
62
Ibid., #254, 2.
175
monarchy revolutionaries in recognizing the participation of a God in leading the nation, and like
the Social Contract’s analysis of the kings of England and Russia, criticizing the Louis XVI for
betraying the relationship between God and his people. 63
Despite this apparent theism, Hébert frequently demonstrated a lack of reverence for this
“god” he appeared to believe helped the French people. Hébert utilized common language to
relate to the sans-culotte population to which he appealed, and frequently used obscene
vocabulary, even when discussing religion. References to “the fucking eternal father” are
relatively common in his writings, and as previously noted, traditional Christian views of
religion, God, and society were rejected. 64 So if Hébert did, indeed, believe in God, he did not
believe that veneration, humility, and awe were necessary components to a relationship with the
higher being.
Nonetheless, Hébert referred again to a supreme being in praise of the August 10 Festival
for the Constitution in 1793.
The priests that the eternal father does not like (although they are said to be men
of low affairs) pronounce contempt for the liberty of worship, and continue to be a
farce in their hateful demands for the presence of a king. Thus, therefore, the
eternal father, while loosening all the faucets of the celestial arch to water the
envoys of the French people, shows himself far from being an aristocrat and
proved on the contrary that he was the father of the sans-culotterie. 65
Here Hébert refers to an “eternal father” who wishes liberty on his faithful people, and although
it is possible, the directness of his language makes it seems unlikely he means this patriarchal
63
For further reading on Rousseau, the French Revolution, and the relationship between the government, people,
and religion, see Blum, Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue; Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, 235-251.
64
Ibid., #271, 2.
65
Ibid., #271. 2-3.
176
being as a metaphor. This passage suggests that it was the priests that Hébert was against and not
the existence of God, but what is especially interesting is that he associates the supreme father
with the sans-culottes he promoted. As has been noted above, many historians have emphasized
the religiosity of the French citizens, and Hébert’s connection between the “father” and the sansculottes exposes his knowledge that the people he needed on his side remained religious despite
their oft-violent anticlericalism. Coupled with his lack of personal veneration toward the
Supreme Being, it is easy to speculate that Hébert’s apparent faith was politically motivated in a
Voltairean cynicism. Hébert, however, extended this connection between the supreme deity and
the people in a very positive manner, focusing on another key figure of the Christian religion—
Jesus.
Jacques Hébert possessed a view of Jesus Christ not unlike that of the Jacobins,
frequently labeling Jesus as being the impeccable example of the ideal sans-culotte. 66 Thus, on
the one hand Hébert derided Christianity, revealed religion, and the religious rituals which he
deemed superstitious and unnecessary. On the other hand he praised the source of the very
religion he mocked, the man who his enemies believed to be the son of God himself. How can
this seeming paradox be explained? In some ways the Hébert version of Christ simply served as
an example of fraternity and sacrifice for a greater cause, as well as further evidence of the
corruption of the clergy, whom he depicted as being the “Pharisees” of the current age.
“Remember that Jesus, too,” he remonstrated, “perished at the hands of the priests.” 67
Subsequently, if Jesus could be so wise and still fall at the hands of evil men, then so could
anyone. That Jesus was believed to be resurrected is never mentioned. Accordingly, it is unclear
66
Ibid., #301, 7. The line between Jacobin and Hébertist ideology is a blurred one, particularly as pertained to their
views on Christ. See Patrice Higgonet, Goodness Beyond Virtue: Jacobins during the French Revolution,
(Cambridge University Press, 1998), 234.
67
Ibid., #244, 8.
177
whether Hébert viewed Jesus as a divine figure manifested in the flesh or merely an exemplary
and sage human being. This ambiguous view of Christ paralleled contemporary Enlightenment
figures such as Rousseau, Voltaire, and even Thomas Jefferson, who was motivated to write his
famous “Jefferson Bible” by his belief in the practical teachings of Jesus, while scorning
revealed religion and the supernatural aspects of the Gospel. 68 Hébert, too, looked to the Gospel
for guidance.
At times Hébert used Christ to speak for his views, placing the life of Jesus up as a model
of a true revolutionary voice, and of course implying that La Père Duchesne himself, too, was a
wise teacher and martyr. When condemning the counter-revolutionary army in the Vendée and
the Brissiton faction in the National Convention, for example, he drifted back and forth between
speaking as Christ and as Hébert, frequently blurring the line between the past and the present:
Ah, if the brave sans-culotte Jesus returned to the earth, he would be as angry as
la Père Duchesne to see men as villainous as those who use his name to commit
the biggest of crimes. ‘Read my Gospel,’ he would tell them, ‘you lying and
bloody priests, and you will see that I always preached liberty and equality and
that I did not stop defending the poor against the rich. I was in my time the
Jacobin of Judea. The churchgoers, the judges, the financiers, the nobles—they
would turn me over to the Capet of my century who called himself Herod. For my
whole life, devoted to virtue and charity, I was treated as an arsonist, agitator, and
disruptive rogue. At last the infamous court of Pontius Pilote—like the committee
of the twelve of today—searched for a German quarrel. One accused me of
conspiracy, bringing witnesses deliberately from Normandy to testify against me,
68
Thomas Jefferson, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth Extracted Textually from the Gospels, Together with
a Comparison of His Doctrines with Those of Others, (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2011). Originally put
together in 1803.
178
all paid by the Pharisees and tax collectors, who were the Brissotins of my
country. They attacked me with so many false indictments that I was attached to a
cross and put to death as a villain. 69
Thus Jesus Christ represented the perfect role-model for Hébert, being one who preached virtue
and goodness—though the targets of La Père Duchesne’s violent character assassinations would
likely disagree that the comparison was a fair one—yet suffering from assaults from the enemies
of righteousness. Hébert described Christ as being a victim of corrupt libel and false accusations,
murdered by those seeking merely power and money. Naturally, Hébert saw himself in the same
light, and arguably viewed himself as a savior for all of France, though he never used those exact
terms.
Hébert again mimics the work of Rousseau, using Christ as the example of the ideal
citizen—virtuous and natural—though like many of the revolutionaries during the Terror, he
stretched the meaning of Rousseau’s civil religion beyond its intended purpose. For Hébert.
Christ and his apostles symbolized brotherhood, sacrifice, betrayal, and recovery. They were the
best of men, an elite force for right and reason who should be emulated by the radical clubs of
France, as they were, in a sense, the founders of Jacobinism and the ideals of the Revolution.
Breaking from Rousseau, however, Hébert labeled the voice of moderation, the Brissotins, as
being the “Judas” of the Revolution.
I do not know of a better Jacobin than this brave Jesus. He founded the popular
societies, and he knew that they needed to be kept small, because big assemblies
degenerate into mobs, and sooner or later in slips Brissotins, Rolandins, and
Buzotins. Thus when Jesus created his original club it was composed of only
twelve members, all poor sans-culottes. Even with this number in slid a false
69
Ibid., #253, 4-5.
179
brother called Judas, which means ‘Pétion’ in the Hebrew language. 70 With these
eleven Jacobins, Jesus taught obedience to the laws and preached equality, liberty,
charity, and brotherhood. He also made an eternal war on the priests and
financiers, and annihilated the Jewish religion of the Jews, which was a blood
cult. He taught men to trample wealth at their feet, honor the elderly, and to
forgive all offenses. All the sans-culotterie soon arranged itself around him. 71
Here Hébert continued to compare the teachings and life of Christ to the ideals and happenings
of the Revolution, particularly the principles of “equality, liberty, charity, and brotherhood,”
going so far as to deem Jesus the originator of the popular clubs themselves. Hébert desired to
show that the Revolution was a worthy replacement for the old ways, and perhaps to demonstrate
to those sans-culottes who still were devout that the original source of their beliefs was himself
compatible with radical thought. It is an ironic twist, typical of La Père Duchesne, that Hébert’s
view of Jesus turns in the end to the language of “war” and “annihilation” that usually
characterizes his writings. Thus, Hébert’s usage of Christ drifts toward hypocrisy, and his overall
message maintains the one negative dogma of the cults that Rousseau and Christ both rejected—
intolerance. 72 Nonetheless, despite his violent rage and desire to destroy his enemies, Hébert
tended to discuss Jesus in terms of gentle endearment.
I already said it a hundred times and I will say it always that if one imitates the
sans-culotte Jesus and follows to the letter his Gospel, then all the men will live in
peace. Jesus never said, as the priests do, that it is necessary to kill and make
70
Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve was the Girondin president of the National Convention. When the Mountain and the
radicals turned against the moderate Girondins, Pétion went to Caen and attempted to raise resistance against the
Jacobins, but eventually was forced to flee. Upon certainty of being captures, Pétion and fellow Girondin, François
Nicolas Leonard Buzot, committed suicide. Their bodies were famously found half-eaten by wolves.
71
Hébert, La Père Duchesne, #277, 5.
72
Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes Tome 7, 66-69.
180
bleed those who do not please god as they do. On the contrary, when a mob
furiously led an adulterous woman to him, Jesus wrote on the sand these words:
he who is without sin, let him throw the first stone. When Peter cut the ear off a
certain Pharisee, Jesus ordered him to sheathe his sword while saying: whoever
strikes with the blade, with the blade he will be struck. For his whole life, this
brave republican waged war against the rich and the priests. In a word, there never
existed a better Jacobin. 73
Thus, Jesus did wage a “war,” but his was warfare only in the sense of an intellectual and
philosophical battle against the rich and powerful. Hébert generally spoke of the Christ as a man
of peace, toleration, and forgiveness—in many ways a man completely unlike Hébert himself.
But does Hébert deny the divinity of Christ?
Hébert neither denies nor confirms Christ’s divinity, and the question of Hébert’s theism
can never fully be answered—Christ could merely be a metaphor for the ideals of the
Revolution, or he could be a being who derived from the Supreme Being. Hébert, perhaps in an
attempt to remain akin to the sans-culottes he claimed to represent despite his own skepticism,
remained ambiguous on the subject. It is also arguably possible that Hébert only utilized the
Christ story to manipulate his readers into resisting violence that was not sanctioned by the
revolutionary leaders such as himself. Hébert’s affection for Jesus and his statements regarding
the role of the eternal father in protecting the people of France can be viewed as a confirmation
of his likely theism. Taken with the whole of his writings, however, Hébert’s unusual perspective
on the sans-culotte Jesus only adds more confusion and ambiguity to the true theistic views of La
Père Duchesne.
73
Ibid., 335, 6-7.
181
4.5 Hébert, Religion, and the Festival of Reason
Designed to “cultivate revolutionary ideals, stimulate patriotic fervor, and proclaim the
unity of the Revolution,” the Festival of Reason in Paris on November 10, 1793 (20 Brumaire,
An II). 74 The festival also aimed to “purify” the nation of its “absurd” ties to traditional Catholic
religion. Musicians from the Opéra and National Guard played patriotic music as a procession
honored the “Goddess of Reason,” depicted by Sophie Momoro, the wife of dechristianization
organizer Antoine-Françis Momoro in order to avoid the “idolatry” of a fixed statue. 75 The
parade ended at the cathedral of Notre Dame where the “goddess” was placed on an altar
dedicated to “philosophy” and exalted by throngs of people singing hymns devoted to nature,
liberty, and patriotism. 76 Jacques Hébert—a key coordinator— was there.
Hébert’s description was, unsurprisingly, one of excitement and delight, but also one full
of contradictory language.
Ah the good festival that we celebrated to the last decade! What a spectacle to see
all the children of liberty rushing into the former cathedral to purify the temple of
all the absurdity and to dedicate it to truth and reason! These arches, where one
never heard anything but the cawing of the crows of the Church, where one then
heard only the singing of psalms and litanies, now resounded with patriotic
songs. 77
Hébert’s words demonstrate his contempt for the Catholic religion and its rituals once performed
within the walls of Notre Dame, declaring the cathedral’s purification by “truth” and “reason.”
74
Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred, 9.
Emmet Kennedy, The Cultural History of the French Revolution, (Yale University Press, 1989), 343.
76
Ozouf, Festivals, 97-99.
77
Hébert, La Père Duchesne, #309, 6.
75
182
As often with such rhetoric of the revolution, what these terms signify is vague and assumed,
though this usage could be defined as “anything contrary to the Revolution.” What is more
difficult to understand, however, is that Hébert’s choice of terminology in explaining the
meaning of the ritualistic events of festival.
Placed there was not a dead statue, but rather a living picture of this divinity; a
masterpiece of nature, as my partner Chaumette said. A charming, beautiful
woman represented the goddess, seated on the top a mountain, a red cap on the
head. Holding a pike in her hand, she was surrounded by all the pretty damned of
the opera who wore excommunicated crowns while singing patriotic hymns better
than angels. The sans-culottes cried and cheered with delight, all swearing to
recognize only the divinity of the nation and to die for her. 78
For someone as allegedly atheistic as Hébert, he relied heavily on the lexicon of religion to detail
the significance of the Festival of Reason. Sophie Momoro’s depiction did not make “reason” a
peasant, queen, or even a philosopher. Reason was represented as a neo-classical “goddess.”
Reason was a “picture of divinity,” in addition to being a “masterpiece of nature.” The nation,
too, was divine and eternal—something to be worshiped and adored. Some sense of sarcasm can
be detected as well, particularly in regard to his use of the more negative aspects of traditional
Christian language. The musicians were the “pretty damned” and wore “excommunicated
crowns” while singing their hymns better than the angels themselves. But did Hébert believe in
angels? He most certainly did not. It can, however, be deduced that Hébert believed that religion,
freed from the constraints of traditional Christianity and a corrupt clerical hierarchy, could aid in
promoting a common culture and unity within the nation of France.
78
Ibid., #309, 6.
183
The usage of the language of divinity to describe the ideals of the Revolution, of course,
made him not unlike the vast majority of his fellow revolutionaries who despised the economic,
social, and political hold the Catholic Church had over the people of France for so many
centuries. It stands to reason that they would utilize the terminology they were accustomed to,
and what was especially familiar to their sans-culotte audience who had been taught virtually all
things through the scope of religion. Whether or not this “religious” derision applied to the
existence of “God” was a matter of individual beliefs, and in no way extended to everyone
involved, even within the dechristianization movement itself. What is clear is that even within
the context of their participation in the destruction of traditional Christianity and its monuments
and rituals; it is surprisingly difficult to identify atheists amongst even many of the most radical
of revolutionaries. Naigeon, Clootz, Maréchal, and Chaumette were exceptional in their
promotion of atheism as a key principle in creating a united, reasonable state, and it is true that a
few more may have been atheists, but did not promote this aspect of their beliefs. But Hébert did
not mention atheism once in his La Père Duchesne in five years of almost weekly publication
because God’s existence was not what was important to him, whether he believed or not. In the
end the principles that mattered most to the enragés, radicals, dechristianizers, and Hébertists
were the same as those of the moderates, Dantonists, and even Robespierre—their own power,
the stability and defense of the nation, and the revolutionary ideals of the Republic.
What Hébert’s writings on religion demonstrate is a man who likely did believe in God,
but who was uncertain about the exact nature of that God. He was likely not a deist, because he
believed God would interfere on behalf of the sans-culottes, who were on the side of
righteousness according to his interpretation of the writings of the Gospel. That said, he was
certainly in doubt about what or who exactly this God was—refusing to show reverence toward
184
something he could not quite define. Nonetheless, the directness and sincerity (rare in the
writings of La Père Duchesne) with which he acknowledges God and his wisdom while
promoting the teachings of Christ the sans-culotte, God’s representative whether Jesus was
himself divine or not, suggests there is something more to these statements than the sarcastic,
exaggerated comments against the powerful priests and clerics of traditional Catholicism. These
views on religion are modern perspectives—relying on personal connections with the divine,
individual spirituality, freedom of choice, and organized religion based on utility and new social
norms. Hébert, whether he believed in God or not, clearly felt that religion could be a good thing
if it was relieved of “superstitious” rituals from the past, and replaced with practical, beneficial
rituals that brought people together and promoted public harmony, compassion, and happiness.
In this he was like the great majority of his contemporaries. It is ironic that Hébert’s own violent
actions and political wrangling did not live up to his own stated ideals of religious toleration and
choice.
185
CHAPTER FIVE
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE REJECTION OF ATHEISM
On June 8, 1794, Maximilien Robespierre, the most famous of the French
Revolutionaries, stood before a large crowd in an amphitheater constructed in the gardens of the
Tuileries within view of the very spot that his enemies, Jacques Hébert and Pierre-Gaspard
Chaumette among them, had perished at the blade of the guillotine only a few months before.
There he gave a speech praising the existence of the divine and initiating the Festival of the
Supreme Being—the ritualized culmination of Robespierre’s views of political virtue and civic
religion. Following the speech, he stepped forward to a grotesque, cut-out figure with donkeylike ears and declared the deformed beast to symbolize atheism. Then he set the hideous
character on fire, thereby ceremonially destroying atheism before the Parisian crowd. Hymns to
the Supreme Being followed a parade to the Champs de la Mars, and for the moment the French
Revolution exhibited itself as being a religious and theistic affair, rather than the atheistic cabal
stereotype perceived by the likes of Edmund Burkes. 1 Robespierre and the Cult of the Supreme
Being would not survive the Revolution, but their impact on perceptions of eighteenth-century
atheism and religion were significant and remain hotly contested.
This chapter will examine three main questions. First, why did atheism fail to take off as
a significant part of the dechristianization movement and the Revolution as a whole? There were
1
Much of this description comes from the eye-witness testimony of Helen Williams, who had her recollections from
her time spent in France during the Revolution published in England. See Helen Williams, Letters containing a
sketch of the politics of France, from the thirty-first of May 1793, till the twenty-eighth of July 1794, and of the
scenes which have passed in the prisons of Paris, Vol. II, (London: G. G. and J. Robinson, Paternoster-Row, 1795),
90-92. Also see Stanley Loomis, Paris in the Terror, (Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1964),
372-374.
certainly atheists interested in making atheism a viable alternative to Christianity and if there was
a time ripe for such an event to happen, the total collapse of the traditional Catholic Church in
France and the subsequent attempts at secularization of government and society provided the
best situation in which atheists could assert their clout. As few of them as there may have been,
never in European history up to this point had atheists been so freely able to express their beliefs
and actively participate in the political sphere. Second, and directly related to the first question,
we need to ask what specifically led to the downfall of the dechristianization movement, and
successively the influential atheists Chaumette and Cloots, as well as the non-atheistic
dechristianizers such as Jacques Hébert? Ultimately the atheists found themselves in the crossfire
between Robespierre and the Indulgents, primarily for political reasons, but secondarily due to
the deism and religious conviction of Robespierre and other significant leaders of the Revolution.
This would ultimately lead to the propagation of the idea that the dechristianization movement
and Terror were atheistic in nature. Robespierre himself, as well as many of his colleagues,
perpetuated this viewpoint and subsequently influenced public perception, as well as that of
historians for the next two centuries. The answer to the question regarding why atheism and the
dechristianization movement failed, however, is not as simple as blaming Robespierre. Archival
evidence suggests that many of the people themselves desired an end to the atheistic tendencies
of the dechristianization movement and a return to a religious arrangement even more traditional
than what Robespierre prescribed—namely a religion and nation under an active, benevolent
God. Finally, if it was never truly feasible for atheism to establish itself as a viable and public
force within French society and government, then what role did atheism actually play in the
French Revolution? There was never a substantial drive within the Terror to implement an
atheistic government in France, though there were atheists among the leadership of the
187
dechristianization movement, but this does not change the fact that the enemies of the
Revolution, as well as the Montagnard opponents of the so-called Hébertists and Cult of Reason,
perceived the radical attack on religion as the act of atheists and knew that most people found
atheism repulsive. Thus, by acting as a motivating factor for Robespierre and his colleagues, as
well as acting as a rhetorical mechanism to discredit radicals outside the Montagnard umbrella,
atheism conformed with the language of conspiracy that was prevalent throughout the
Revolution and leading to the downfall of Chaumette, Hébert, and other major perpetrators of
dechristianization.
5.1 Robespierre: the Crusader Against Atheism
If only because of his influence and emblematic stature, Robespierre is the key figure in
the downfall of Jacques Hébert and the other radicals of the dechristianization movement, but it
is not all clear whether Robespierre truly believed that the Hébertists were atheists and that their
Cult of Reason was specifically an atheistic undertaking, or whether he merely used the label of
“atheist” as an insult to discredit his political opponents. Many of the Marxist historians of the
twentieth century ignore Robespierre’s religious focus, believing motivations of political power
alone influenced his attack on Hébert and other radicals more so than his opposition to the Cult
of Reason. 2 R. R. Palmer, however, takes Robespierre at his word, claiming that Robespierre saw
the dechristianization movement as “the workings of a Foreign Plot, a shameful travesty of
Revolutionary principles, instigated by persons who wished to disgrace the Republic before the
2
For example, Soboul’s influential work on the sans-culottes during the Terror does not even discuss religion. See
Soboul, The sans-culottes. Also see Lefebvre, The French Revolution, 71-90; Mathiez, The French Revolution, 405425.
188
world,” later adding atheism to the list of “aristocratic” crimes committed by the Hébertists. 3
Fred Hembree, whose dissertation on Robespierre’s own role in dechristianization nicely sums
up the events of the period, also accepts Robespierre’s words at face value on the topic of
religion and atheism, noting that there was an “atheistic strain” within the dechristianization
movement which was incompatible with Robespierre’s beliefs, though he emphasized the active
role Robespierre, too, played in the attack on traditional religion and Catholicism. 4 In the 1980s
and early 1990s, some scholars began to question the motivations behind the religious speeches
of characters such as Robespierre, suggesting that their verbiage and Enlightenment references
may have been merely rhetoric, rather than an expression of an actual and consistent ideology. 5
Mona Ozouf explains how the Festival of the Supreme Being is viewed by these scholars as
merely “posthumous revenge on Hébertism.” 6 More recently, influential French Revolution
historians like Nigel Aston have reemphasized Robespierre’s fear of “disassociating popular
morality from religious observance and efforts to spread unbelief among the population at
large.” 7 Current Robespierre biographer Ruth Scurr agrees, suggesting that Robespierre’s
response to dechristianization and the political chaos of 1793 was both, political—Robespierre
needed to get to his necessary task of governing—and religious in nature. She notes his
opposition to atheism, and describes the Festival of Reason as being a “tremendous irritation” to
Robespierre, who she claims found the approach of Hébert and other dechristianizers
“irresponsible because it squandered a valuable opportunity to institute a new system of theistic
3
Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled, 117-122.
Fred Eugene Hembree, Robespierre and Dechristianization in the Year II: Ideology and Religion During the
French Revolution, (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, 1986), 132-135.
5
See Blum, Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue: the Language of Politics in the French Revolution; Chartier, The
Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, 87-91.
6
Ozouf, Festivals, 22-23. Also see Aulard, Le culte de la Raison et le culte de l’Etre Suprême, 1793-1794; and J.
Jaurès, Histoire socialiste de la Révolution française, (Paris: A Lacroix, Verboeckhoven, 1865).
7
Nigel Aston, Religion and Revolution in France: 1780-1804, (London: MacMillan Press Ltd., 2000), 189.
4
189
morality that would benefit the poor.” 8 This debate over Robespierre’s true feelings on religion
may continue in perpetuity. As Tallett notes, it may never be known how he truly felt because all
that remains of his thoughts are speeches designed to influence others, rather than reveal the
inner beliefs of the most famous revolutionary of them all. Nonetheless, the historical debate
may well be unnecessary—the political and religious beliefs of Robespierre were not exclusive
or in contradiction to one another, and likely worked together to formulate the overall ideology
of Robespierre’s response to the activities of Hébert, Cloots, Chaumette, and those who
supported them. 9
In any case, religion remains the focus here, and the religious beliefs of Robespierre are
significant in understanding his views of atheism. So what exactly were the beliefs that made up
his religious ideology? Tallett summarizes these spiritual views best in his analysis of
Robespierre’s 1789 mémoire, which Robespierre printed for his last case as an attorney in 1789.
In Tallett’s words:
God was the creator of all. His intention was that man should be happy. Happiness
would only be found by living within society, and man’s God-given faculties were
purposely designed to fit him for life as a social animal. The proper ordering of
society was contingent upon adhesion to divinely ordained principles of justice
and morality. Only then would society reflect God’s purpose, allowing man to
exercise and perfect his God-given faculties and thereby attain happiness. It
8
Scurr’s biography tends to be overly sympathetic to Robespierre, explaining away his violence and
anticlericalism—the latter which she inexplicably proposes that he “long opposed”—with tales of his good
intentions, and essentially clearing him of any wrong-doing or direct involvement in the fall of Hébert and his
colleagues, effectively ignoring any personal motives he may have possessed. Nonetheless, her dealings with
Robespierre’s religious beliefs are well-argued and in line with other historians of the past decade. Scurr, Fatal
Purity, 292-302.
9
Tallett even suggests the possibility that Robespierre, himself, could have “entertained atheistic or agnostic ideas”
in his younger days after leaving the Church, but only to illustrate the lack of knowledge available about his true
religious beliefs outside of his speeches during the Revolution. Frank Tallett, “Robespierre and Religion,”
Robespierre, ed. by Colin Haydon and William Doyle, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),
190
followed from this, Robespierre argued, that any form of government or society
was good only insofar as it conformed to this divine aim. If it did not, then it was
not only ‘vicious and useless,’ but stood under divine condemnation. 10
These fundamental beliefs in God remained the same five years later, as reflected in the Cult of
the Supreme Being designed and implemented by Robespierre to counter the Cult of Reason that
he deemed so atheistic and counter-revolutionary. Atheism, to Robespierre, was incompatible
with morality and virtue, which he hoped to promote with his Cult of the Supreme Being.
Furthermore, atheism was contradictory to Revolutionary ideals because Robespierre perceived
that atheism was aristocratic.
As with many revolutionaries, Robespierre’s pre-revolutionary past reveals interesting
trends and clues to his philosophical development, but also raises many questions. He was born
into a professional family—both his father and grandfather had been lawyers—and like virtually
all Frenchmen before the Revolution received a Catholic education. 11 In fact, Robespierre relied
heavily on the Church to provide his educational financing at the Collège de Louis-le-Grand.
Nonetheless, Robespierre also received training in Enlightenment thought and enthusiastically
read the works of Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and many other influential philosophes.
Historians have written extensively on the influence of Rousseau’s Social Contract over the
ambitious Robespierre, who preferred the natural morality of Rousseau over Catholic revelation,
as well as Rousseau’s theism over the atheism of D’Holbach or Diderot. 12 Upon granting his
10
Tallett, “Robespierre and Religion,” 95.
Biographies of Robespierre are numerous to the point of being impossible to note in any complete manner.
Nonetheless, a few very well-respected sources for summing Robespierre’s life include J. M. Thompson, ed.,
Robespierre, Vol. I, “Introduction,” (Oxford, 1935); Gerard Walter, Robespierre Vols. I and II, (Paris: 1936-1939);
David Jordan, The Revolutionary Career of Maximilien Robespierre, (New York: 1982); John Hardman,
Robespierre, (New York: Longman, 1999); as well as Ruth Scurr’s recent biography, Fatal Purity.
12
See Albert Cobban, “The Fundamental Ideas of Robespierre,” The English Historical Review, Vol. 63, No. 246
(January, 1948), 29-51; Blum, Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue; Norman Hampson, Will and Circumstance:
Montesquieu, Rousseau, and the French Revolution (London, 1983); Jordan, The Revolutionary Career of
11
191
degree in 1781, the College bestowed upon Robespierre a substantial gratuity and he returned to
his home town of Arras to practice law. By all accounts Robespierre was like many other young
professionals—frivolous and immature—but the more serious Robespierre known during the
Revolution developed during this time as well. Robespierre spent much time at literary societies
and meetings at the Académie royal des belles-lettres, while writing discourses on crime and
essays on poets. 13 Robespierre’s pre-revolutionary background does little to explain how he
came to abhor atheism or emphasize a religiously moral civil religion as being a necessary
component for the success of the Revolution. His early discourses promoted the virtues of
happiness, justice, and reason; but were also pro-religious and lacked the anti-clerical nature of
his speeches and writings in the Revolution. When mixed with his Enlightenment ideology, this
evolution from an apathetic practice of Catholicism to an ambitious promotion of deism and
religious virtue via a civil religion is not altogether surprising—many men of the Enlightenment
hovered in a space between pure skepticism and absolute faith—but this does not necessitate
antagonism against unbelievers.
In the first two years of the French Revolution, Robespierre’s philosophy regarding
religion quickly developed in line with many of his fellow revolutionaries. His anticlericalism
came to the forefront of his writings and speeches, as he charged many of the clergy with being
seditious and elitist. He opposed the unchallenged power and wealth of the bishops and Church
and approved of the confiscation of their property. When Dom Gerle, a Carthusian religious and
popular member of the National Convention, proposed to make Catholicism the official religion
of the nation, Robespierre joined other moderates and radicals in successful opposition.
Robespierre initially did not condone wholesale destruction of Catholicism, however, because of
Maximilien Robespierre; John Lough, The Philosophes and Post-Revolutionary France, (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1982).
13
Hembree, Robespierre and Dechristianization; 51-59.
192
his belief in religious freedom and due to the many members of the lower clergy who supported
the Revolution. This support for Catholic freedom of worship began to collapse by the end of
1791, and Robespierre’s opinion of the lower clergy declined as well, with Robespierre
demanding the hunting of “rogue” priests in April of 1793. 14 In fact, 1793 found Robespierre
turning against many of the freedoms promised in the Declaration of the Rights of Man,
including freedom of religion—a cause he strongly supported earlier in the Revolution—because
of the perceived usage of religious choice as a mode for concealing counter-revolution.
If you tell them that they assemble under the pretext of practicing their religion but that in reality
they are conspirators, they will respond that they are following the constitution and the law and
that we are not allowed to interpret their intentions or disturb their religious ceremonies. It is
under this hypocritical mask that conspirators strike at liberty. 15 Thus Robespierre declared that
freedom of religion needed to be limited in order to prevent royalists and counter-revolutionaries
from using traditional beliefs to hide their ulterior motives against the Revolution. Robespierre
was certainly a major proponent of dechristianization, as were many members of the National
Convention, and yet clearly was no atheist—serving as a key reminder that dechristianization
and atheism were not one and the same. 16
Nonetheless, Robespierre did not fully support the most extreme aspects of the
dechristianization movement, particularly any association with atheistic precepts, and while in
practice he promoted anticlericalism and regeneration of religion, he still advocated for
moderation and liberty in religion through his speeches. On November 21, 1793, Robespierre
14
Correspondance de Maximilien et Augustin Robespierre, (Paris: F. Alcan, 1926-1941), 124-129; Georges Rude,
ed., Robespierre, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967), 35-39; Humbree, 67-78.
15
Maximilien Robespierre, Oeuvres de Robespierre, Vol. IX, “Discours,” (Ivry: Phenix éditions), 581-582.
16
Richard Cobb notes that even other members of the Committee of Public Safety, including Jeanbon Saint-André
and Collot d’Herbois, participated in the formation of the people’s revolutionary army and the dechristianization
measures while on mission to the provinces. See Richard Cobb, The People’s Armies: The armées révolutionnaires:
instrument of the Terror in the departments, April 1793 to Floéal Year II, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987),
168-172, 520-523.
193
gave a speech in response to accusations from Fabre d’ÉglaNtine that certain members of the
Paris Commune and National Convention, including prominent dechristianizers Berthold Proly,
François Desfieux, Jacob Pereyre, and Paul Pierre-Ulric Debuisson, conspired against the
government by aiding foreign spies in the popular societies. 17 Although the primary charge
against these men was foreign espionage, Robespierre emphasized fanaticism and irreligion in
his speech, warning that believers were not the only ones who could be slaves to fanaticism. 18
Fanaticism was a “vicious animal,” Robespierre cautioned, and one that could grab hold of
anyone, filling them with malice, zealousness, and the craving for power. Anyone who believed
that Catholicism had been outlawed was mistaken. The priests were no longer to be feared, so
destroying them was fruitless. Allowing freedom of religion to succumb to violence, he
explained, was the portent to disaster and merely emboldened the enemies of the Revolution,
further opening the door for institutionalized atheism.
Anyone who wants to prevent Mass is more fanatical than the priest who says the
Mass. There are even men who want to go further, under the pretext of destroying
superstition, and make a sort of religion out of atheism itself. Every philosopher
and every individual can adopt an opinion on religion as he pleases. Anyone
wishing to make this a crime is a fool, but the public man or the legislature would
be a hundred times more foolish to adopt such a system. The National Convention
17
Mathiez, The French Revolution, 404-426; David Andress, The Terror: the Merciless War for Freedom in
Revolutionary France, (New York : Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006), 251-276.
18
Fabre d’Églatine, who may have been an atheist himself, likely renounced other dechristianizers to distract from
his own involvement in the India Company Scandal. Interestingly, Jacques Hébert at this point supported
Robespierre’s position and himself motioned for the investigation of Jacobins suspected in the scandal, though this
would mark the beginning of antagonism between the two Revolutionary radicals. In fact, there seems to be little
evidence of partnership or close cooperation between the men singled out by the Convention here in November of
1793 and the individuals singled out later in the spring along with Hébert, further negating the usage of the term
“Hébertists” to describe them. See Hembree, 147, note 20; Charles McNamara, The Hébertists: Study of a French
Revolutionary “Faction” in the Reign of Terror, 1793-1794, (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1974), 244,
272-274.
194
abhors this idea. The Convention is not an author of metaphysical systems; it is a
policy-making body responsible for enforcing not only the rights, but the
character of the French people. It is not in vain that the Convention proclaimed the
Declaration of Human Rights in the presence of the Supreme Being. One may say
that I am a narrow-minded and prejudiced man— a fanatic. I have already said
that I do not speak as an individual or as a systematic philosopher, but as a
representative of the people. Atheism is an aristocratic idea, while the idea of a
great Being who watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant
crime is popular. 19
Robespierre further noted the hypocrisy attached to promoting atheism, noting how the
aristocrats themselves attempted to destroy the credibility of the Revolution by claiming that the
“Convention was a gathering of atheists, and the Jacobins are the truly wicked ones.” 20 As the
aristocrats did, Robespierre also equivocated atheism with immorality, thus making atheism the
ultimate term of derision—an expression of both aristocracy and the absence of virtue. Yet it was
not merely aristocracy and atheism that concerned Robespierre, but also foreign sway over the
counter-revolutionary rebellion—an influence that Robespierre eyed with almost paranoid
obsession. It is unclear whether he realized the inconsistency in his argument—how can you
argue that atheism is aristocratic and still protest that aristocrats accuse the Revolution of being
atheistic?
The key point in his speech was the association of atheism with aristocracy—a point
hinted at by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but applied in full by Robespierre. Despite the inherent
problem with associating atheism with aristocrats who he also claimed abhorred atheism, this
19
20
Jacobins, Tome V, ed. by F-A. Aulard, (Paris: Jouast, Noblet, et Quantin, 1889-1897), 528-529.
Ibid., 536.
195
was a somewhat original way of defining atheism. Prior to the French Revolution, atheism was
usually defined as simple immorality or libertinism by philosophers and theologians, or as the
natural way of seeing a world without God as told by the few atheists who wrote on the subject.
Rousseau went as far as to claim that the philosophes, the promoters of atheism as far as
concerned him, only worked for the rich and powerful. 21 Robespierre agreed with the traditional
theological definition of atheism, as did Rousseau, but further implied that atheism specifically
appealed to the nobility, because it especially benefited them to have no source of universal
morality to guide their selfish actions—although Robespierre conveniently ignored the fact that
much of the Revolution, and certainly the dechristianization movement, was a reaction to the link
between abuse of power by religious authorities and the nobility. To some extent Robespierre
was right that atheism was an aristocratic ideal—many notable atheists of the century, including
Sade, Condorcet, Cloots, and the Baron D’Holbach were members of the nobility. It was their
position in society, likely, that allowed them to harbor these beliefs in a somewhat public manner
and escape judgment. It was also their situation which allowed them the wealth and free time to
study philosophy and contemplate the source of existence with little consequence. It was
unimportant to Robespierre that examples of non-aristocratic atheists existed in France—
Meslier, Naigeon, and Diderot come to mind—but whether he was unaware of this information
or merely ignored the contradictory evidence is uncertain. Robespierre did not attempt to justify
or explain his view, but rather assumed its truth and stated it as a fact—atheism was aristocratic.
Subsequently, Robespierre argued, atheism was a likely tool of the counter-revolution and should
be treated with some suspicion. Robespierre was setting up a greater argument regarding atheism
and the Revolution and would return to this theme again.
21
Rousseau,
196
Thus, a week later amidst accusations from the ultra-revolutionaries regarding whether
Robespierre was a Catholic sympathizer, the “incorruptible one” responded with yet another
attack on atheism, aristocracy, and foreign espionage. He accused radicals such as Proly,
Desfieux, Pereyre, and Debuisson of being conspirators against the Revolution, and claimed that
they used their “anti-religious zeal” as a mask to hide their thirst for power and their betrayal of
France. 22
We pull away their mask of patriotism to reveal their hideous figure. We will
show the people what kind of morality these men possess who want to eradicate
any notion of religion in order to slander the Patriots to which they ascribe their
own extravagance and wickedness, who have said to the people: Thou shalt have
no religion, a religious people cannot be republican. 23
Robepierre then accused his detractors of being aristocratic, again making the link between
aristocracy and atheism, and claiming that through their aristocratically-influenced irreligion the
conspirators made a mockery of the Convention by providing evidence to foreign accusators that
the French government was a “gathering of atheists.” 24 Many ultra-radicals lacked the influence
within the Convention or Paris Commune to resist accusations of betrayal and conspiracy, and
found themselves ousted from the Jacobin Club as a consequence of their “atheism,” abandoned
by both members of the Mountain and other dechristianizing radicals. 25 Even Hébert did little to
protest their innocence, and in fact spent much of November, 1793 supporting Robespierre and
himself condemning some of the more extreme acts of dechristianization. 26 Subsequently,
22
Jacobins, Tome V., 535-536.
Ibid., 536.
24
Ibid., 536.
25
Moniteur, Tome XVIII, 509; Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison et le Culte de L’Étre Supreme, 1793-1794, (Paris:
Ancienne Librairie Germer Baillière, 1904); 216.
26
Jacobins, 508, 552-553; Jacques René Hébert, La Père Duchesne, #335, ed. by Alphonse Aulard, (Paris: Edhis,
1969), 1-8.
23
197
Robespierre assured Hébert that he harbored no ill-will toward the Paris Commune, only the
conspirators. Proly and the others were soon arrested. Whether there truly was a conspiracy by
these men against Robespierre and the government of revolutionary France was never proven. 27
5.2 The Death of a Specter: the Fall of the “Hébertists”
Nonetheless, dechristianization in practice remained in full force, and had it not revealed
too atheistic of tendencies, Robespierre may have been content to let it run its course.
But peace between Robespierre and the likes of Hébert and Chaumette was not to be. Within a
few days after Robespierre’s first speech on religion Chaumette and the Paris Commune closed
down all Paris churches, and a week later priests were still abdicating before the Convention,
with one stating that “Christianity is a heap of fables and its mysteries a pile of impertinences,
foolishness, and absurdities.” 28 In was in juxtaposition with these events that the Law of 14
Frimaire, essentially making the Committee of Public Safety the sole decision-maker in the
French government, passed. Chaumette’s actions can be seen as evidence of defiance and
November of 1794 as the beginning of a political war between Robespierre and the so-called
Hébertists, but aside from the timing there is little evidence that this is necessarily accurate. For
one thing, neither Chaumette nor Hébert spoke out against Robespierre’s calls for religious
toleration. If this was the beginning of factional warfare, the battle seems to have been initially
fought only from one side—that of the opponents of dechristianization. Yet Robespierre did not
single out Hébert or Chaumette at this time. The second problem with describing this as a twoway struggle for power at this point was the lack of an organized faction representing all facets
27
28
See McNamara, 255-257.
Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison, 216; Moniteur, December 1, 1793.
198
of the dechristianization movement—as noted in previous chapters, the term Hébertists was a
label invented after the fact—and therefore there simply was not a specific faction for
Robespierre to target. Supposed Hébertists like Proly and Desfieux, for example, indeed found
themselves singled out in November, but neither Chaumette nor Hébert defended them. 29 The
next issue is that Hébert and even Chaumette did little to resist Robespierre’s efforts to downplay
dechristianization, at least initially. Their influence in the Paris Commune had just recently
solidified, and there is little evidence that either of them sought to defy the Committee of Public
Safety at this point in time. It is possible Robespierre had them in mind when he denounced
dechristianization extremism, but they both denied they were atheists and attempted to find
middle ground with the Montagnards. Chaumette, in fact, soon retracted the closure of the
churches, and decreed that the Paris Commune would not entertain propositions regarding
religion or metaphysics. 30 Hébert repeated the words of Robespierre in his Père Duchense,
warning the sans-culottes against ridiculous excesses lest false patriots turn the movement
against the Revolution, and instructed his readers to practice toleration of religion, arguing that
persecution only strengthened superstition. 31 Both sides, even Robespierre, essentially supported
dechristianization; it was a matter of emphasis and political space that separated Robespierre
from the creators of the Cult of Reason—Robespierre felt that a traditional religious structure
was necessary to appeal to the masses and promote civil virtue. 32 Hébert and Chaumette felt that
importance needed to be placed on new interpretations of the sacred, such as focus on the
29
For the sake of simplification, as done in this dissertation, the term Hébertist is often used to denote those
condemned to the guillotine with Hébert and Chaumette, but many successful historical works of the past twentyfive years still treat the Hébertists as a solidified, functional faction. For examples, see Schama, Citizens, 756-829;
Gough, The Terror in the Revolution, 44-53; Scurr, Fatal Purity, 257-317.
30
Moniteur, XVIII, 546-7.
31
Hébert, Père Duchesne, No. 315, 6-8; No. 316, 5-7.
32
R. R. Palmer rightfully argues that the dechristianization movement should not have even been seen as ultrarevolutionary, because it “sprang from authentic Revolutionary sources, the Jacobin Club and the Paris Commune,
and it was a natural outgrowth of Jacobin ideas.” Palmer, Twelve Who Rules,117.
199
concepts of patriotism, philosophy, and liberty, which progressed beyond the traditional methods
of worship associated with the Old Regime. Their view was inclusive of atheists, but not
exclusive of theists. 33 The third problem with viewing the battle against dechristianization as a
battle between Robespierre and the atheistic Hébertists is the presence of the Indulgents, another
non-homogenous “faction” which opposed both the radical dechristianizers and the ambitious
Robespierre. Thus, the political upheaval of late 1793 and early 1794 is more accurately
described as being between two sides, with a third side taking advantage of the chaos created.
Hébert and his loose circle of ultra-radical allies took to the political battlefield against the likes
of Danton, Chabot, Desmoulins, Bazire and others concerned with the violence of
dechristianization and their own precarious political positions in light of involvement in
economic scandal. Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety waited on the side and only
stepped in when the dust settled, using the turmoil to discredit all opposed to Robespierre’s
position. Finally, Robespierre did not initially attack the dechristianizers as a mass group, but
rather singled out smaller factions and individuals who he felt challenged his authority, political
plans, or ideology. In December, Hébert and Chaumette appear to have sought solidarity with the
Committee of Public Safety, and the downfall of the “Hébertists” in March of 1794 was not
necessarily a forgone conclusion.
The possibility of accord between Robespierre and the remaining leadership of the
dechristianization movement was short-lived and began with another speech delivered to the
Convention on December 5. 34 Blaming radical dechristianizers for destroying the reputation of
France and essentially bolstering the strength of the Catholic Church by generating sympathy for
33
As noted in previous chapters, Hébert even went so far as to promote Jesus Christ as an acceptable symbol of the
sans-culottes.
34
This was a logical course of action being that the “Hébertists” were not an organized, static organization as often
described by some historians. See McNamara, Hébertists, 450-454.
200
its religion, Robespierre decried that foreign powers benefited from perceptions arising out of the
extremities of the dechristianization movement.
They accuse us of irreligion and proclaim that we have declared war on divinity
itself. Your masters tell you that the French nation forbids all religions, and that it
substitutes the cult of a few men for that of the divine, but it is all a lie. The
French people and their representatives respect the liberty of every religion, and
prohibit none. They honor the virtue of the martyrs of humanity, without
exaggeration and without idolatry. They abhor intolerance and persecution, by
whatever pretext concealed. 35
Here Robespierre signaled that his fears about atheism and its impact on French reputation were
not isolated or temporary, and his next target led him closer to conflict with the rest of the
dechristianizers. Robespierre’s first individual objective was Anarcharsis Cloots, whose
influence arguably increased as he served as president of the Jacobin Club in autumn of 1793,
making him a potential threat to Robespierre’s own growing power. 36 Robespierre found Cloots
an easy mark, as Cloots was both, a foreign-born aristocrat and one of the few overt atheists
involved in the dechristianization movement. Proposing a purge early in December and then
addressing the Jacobin Club on Christmas, 1793, Robespierre denounced Cloots as a foreign
counterrevolutionary and accused him of coercing Bishop Gobel into surrendering his post and
religion. Ironically, in addition to emphasizing his aristocratic upbringing and foreign roots,
Robespierre also associated Cloots with renegade priests—thus Cloots was simultaneously
accused of atheism and conspiring with supporters of Catholicism. 37 The Jacobins quickly
35
Maximilien Robespierre, Rapport de Maximilien Robespierre à la Convention, fait au nom du comité de salut
public, le quintidi 15 frimaire, l’an second de la République française, une et indivisible, (Lyon, 1793), 4-5.
36
Georges Avenel, Anacharsis Cloots: L’Orateur du genre humain, (Paris: Éditions Champ Libre. 1976), 341-416
37
Robespierre, Oeuvres de Robespierre: Discours, v. X, 248-249.
201
banned Cloots from their club, and he found himself arrested and imprisoned two days later. It is
important to note, however, that at this point Robespierre did not single out the other remaining
proponents of radical dechristianization. Nonetheless, the Jacobin Club examined Hébert on
December 11, who denied being an atheist and subsequently remained a member. 38 Chaumette,
likely an actual atheist, also toned down his rhetoric and promoted freedom of religion as
opposed to outright atheism, provided religion was not used to harm society and inhibit the
spread of reason. He even went so far as to distance himself from the Commune’s decision to
exclude priests from all administrative functions in Paris. 39 After this treatment, however, Hébert
and Chaumette came to realize that their position of influence would be on shaky ground if they
did not react, though they would choose different paths.
Robespierre was not the only Jacobin radical to denounce atheism in the final two months
of 1793. In November, before the dechristianization movement was universally derided by the
Montagnards, the Jacobin grammarian Jean-Charles Laveaux spoke out, during a discussion of
Swiss opinions of the Revolution in the Jacobin Club in Paris, against the atheistic nature of the
movement to destroy Christianity. “As for the argument about atheism,” he exclaimed, “I have
only just started. It has been suggested in a newspaper that atheism is appropriating the
Republics and I thought this opinion dangerous. So I refuted it, as it contradicts my own
opinions, and I am proud to have done so.” 40 Chaumette and Hébert, alleged to have atheist
agendas, responded to Laveaux, but not regarding his concerns over atheism, rather replying with
their own concerns over his association with Swiss dignitaries. Hébert did, however, claim that
God was “a being unknown,” and that Laveaux’s philosophy was “similar to the Capuchins in
38
Jacobins, Tome V, 552-553.
Moniteur, v. 18, 580; Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette, Papiers de Chaumette, ed. by F. Braesch, (Paris: Société de
l'histoire de la Révolution Française, 1908), 216-218.
40
Jacobins, Tome V, 501.
39
202
theology.” 41 Georges Danton, who would soon find himself in direct opposition to Robespierre,
also protested to the Convention on November 23 that “the people want to offer incense to God,
the master of nature, so we must not annihilate the reign of superstition only to replace it with a
reign of atheism.” 42 His desire for more moderation in the Terror soon placed him in opposition
to Carrier, Fouché, and the rest of the radical dechristianizers on mission. None of the
dechristianizers, however, specifically appealed to the National Convention or Paris Commune
in favor of the complete elimination of religion or God from the culture or rhetoric of France,
making these calls for the eradication of atheism superfluous.
The most vocal opponent of atheism and the dechristianizers of the Paris Commune was
the journalist Camille Desmoulins, an associate of Danton and a childhood friend of Robespierre.
His influential paper Le Vieux Cordelier—the title referring to the old Cordelier Club, alleged to
be ruined by the presence of the dechristianizers—critiqued the ultra-radicals almost from its
inception. In the second issue, printed on December 10, Desmoulins mirrored Robespierre when
he warned the Convention that Europe viewed them as “an atheist nation without constitution or
principle,” and like Robespierre singled out Cloots as the embodiment of that sentiment,
accusing the Prussian of subverting the war effort and forcing Bishop Gobel to renounce his
priesthood, and also noted that he was a cousin to the indicted Proly. 43 Desmoulins explained
that God’s favor was necessary for survival of the new state, and that religion should not be
rejected simply because the papists had used it formerly to enslave the nation. Unlike
Robespierre, however, Desmoulins also singled out Chaumette as a perpetrator of chaos and
intolerance. Other radicals who would eventually be labeled Hébertist likewise became targets
41
Ibid., 500.
Georges Danton, “Sur l’Organisation de l’Instruction Publique,” Oeuvres de Danton, recueillies et annotées par A.
Vermorel, (Paris: F. Cournol, 1866), 233.
43
Camille Desmoulins, Le Vieux Cordelier, ed. by M. Matton, (Paris: Ébrard, 1834), 21.
42
203
for Desmoulins’ wrath. Desmoulins soon called Ronsin, the general of the armée
révolutionnaire, the “Alexander of Executioners,” subsequently implying that Ronsin desired to
utilize the Terror to violently conquer France. 44 By Christmas, Desmoulins denounced virtually
every radical in the Paris Commune and National Convention by name who participated in the
dechristianization activities of the past two months—including General Ronsin, Vincent,
Momoro, and especially the Père Duchesne himself, Jacques Hébert—labeling them ultrarévolutionnaires, calling them conspirators and the “cabal of Pitt,” and associating them with
foreign espionage, aristocracy, theft, and treason. 45 He defended religion as being a necessity of
public morals, and condemned Chaumette for closing down the churches, “and not in the spirit of
philosophy, because even Plato tolerated both the preacher and the prostitute,” but rather to break
down the will and morale of the people. 46 He further reassured his readers that he personally
“had always believed in the immortality of the soul,” thereby insinuating that his enemies lacked
the hope and principle of believing in the connection between this world and the next. 47
Desmoulins joined with Danton and other more moderate members of the National Convention
against Hébert and the dechristianizers, who they feared were becoming too violent, powerful,
and atheistic.
The political struggle that followed between the ostensible Indulgents and Hèbertists has
been described by historians many times and in great detail, and its causation far exceeded mere
issues of religious belief—with significant factors including bitterness about the ongoing war in
the Vendee, concerns over economic scandal and corruption, paranoia and fear over the violence
of the Terror, the potential for a despot to use the revolutionary army to seize power, and the
44
Ibid., 69.
Ibid., 91-96.
46
Ibid., 167-169.
47
Ibid., 103-4.
45
204
political ambition of individuals vying for power among weak, dissociated factions. 48 For that
matter, even as politicians such as Danton and Desmoulins preached against atheism and the
Hébertists, the National Convention continued to pass dechristianizing measures, including
eliminating non-juring nuns from their positions in education and nursing, banning clergy from
teaching the French language in schools, and promoting festivals dedicated to secular ideology. 49
The fact that such ardent dechristianizers such as Fabre d’Églantine, Leonard Bourdon, and
Pierrre Philippeaux joined Desmoulins and turned on other anti-Christian radicals such as
Hébert, Vincent, Momoro, and Chaumette illustrates how complex a situation had presented
itself. After Cloots’ downfall in mid-December, Bourdon and Fabre accused Vincent of using his
position in the War Ministry to undermine the war effort, conspire with William Pitt against
France, and influence the representatives-on-mission for his own purposes. Similar accusations
against General Charles Ronsin followed, and the government issued arrest warrants for both
alleged conspirators. 50 Perhaps realizing the connection between Bourdon’s attacks on Vincent
and Desmoulins’ denouncement of all the dechristianizers, himself included, Hébert condemned
the arrests in Père Duchesne and praised Vincent’s contributions to the Revolution, claimed that
Desmoulins’ calls for the end of dechristianization were signs of his involvement with
counterrevolution, and demanded the expulsion of Bourdon, Desmoulins, Fabre, and Philippeaux
from the Jacobin Club. 51 Committee of Public Safety member, Collot d’Herbois, defended
Ronsin and Vincent before the National Convention as well. 52 For the next two months
48
Scholarly works on the political battle between Robespierre, the Indulgents, and the dechristianizers are
interminably numerous, but for an array of influential perspectives on the topic see the following: Mathiez, The
French Revolution, 44—465; Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison; Cobb, The People’s Army; Schama, Citizens, 805-821;
Andress, The Terror, 210-277.
49
M.-J. Guillaume, ed., Procès-verbaux du comité d’instruction publique de la convention nationale, Vol. III (Paris:
1890-1908), lxxv-lxxvii, 547, 597.
50
Moniteur, XVIII, 695; XIX, 4; Jacobins, Tome V, 563-64; A.N., F7 4775/48.
51
Père Duchesne, No. 325, 5-7 and No. 328, 5-8; Moniteur, XIX, 26-28; Jacobins, Tome V, 570-573.
52
Moniteur, XIX, 13-14.
205
accusations of treason, foreign conspiracies, and unbridled ambition filled the debates of the
National Convention and the Cordelier and Jacobin Clubs. Desmoulins accused Hébert of being
a royalist, thief, and for defrauding the government 43,000 livres by overcharging the War
Ministry for the Père Duchesne. 53 A January 5 debate held at the Jacobin Club to discuss these
accusations almost broke out in violence, and only the calm heads of Robespierre and Danton
were able to restore order, though Robespierre’s desire to preserve his friend Desmoulins threw
more fuel on the fire. 54
The chaos of the January 5 Jacobin meeting foreshadowed the turmoil of the next two
months, which would culminate in the executions of Hébert, Chaumette, and many of their
colleagues. Vincent and Ronsin remained in prison when the meeting occurred, but the
Cordelier Club, led by Momoro, worked tirelessly to secure their release, publishing an
anonymous pamphlet against Danton’s supporter Philippeaux, and pressuring the Jacobin Club
and Convention. By February 2, the government freed Vincent and Ronsin, though not for long,
as their desire for revenge escalated the feud. 55 Tension mounted quickly, and the next month of
political wrangling resulted in calls by both sides for purges of the Conventions and heads for the
guillotine. When the terrorist Jean-Baptiste Carrier returned from Nantes, where he had
conducted some of the worst excesses of dechristianization, he joined Vincent, Momoro, and
Ronsin in demanding revenge on Desmoulins and the other Indulgents and Montagnards who
opposed their efforts, and called for an insurrection. 56 It seems surprising that Hébert, for whom
this conspiracy was later named, was reluctant to go as far as revolt and faced ridicule from
53
Desmoulins, Le Vieux Cordelier, 91-114.
Moniteur, XIX, 151; Jacobins, Tome V, 593-594.
55
Anonymous, Philippeaux, député de la Convention Nationale, jugé par lui-même, dans son Numéro 43 intitulé, Le
défenseur de la liberté, ou l’ami du genre humain, (Paris: 1794); Moniteur, XIX, 377-379; A. N., W77, folder 1, no.
31.
56
Moniteur, XIX, 629; A. N. W78, folder 1, no. 66; folder 3, no. 165. For more on Carrier’s actions as représentant
in Nantes, see Mathiez, The French Revolution, 402-3.
54
206
Carrier and Momoro for his lack of enthusiasm. With his popularity among the sans-culottes
waning, however, he joined Carrier and gave a speech on March 4 at the Cordeliers Club to
promote a revolt against the current government. 57 Chaumette and Collot d’Herbois, formerly
allies of Hébert, joined the opposition—yet another example of the malleable lines between the
different “factions.” In the Jacobin Club, Collot d’Herbois spoke for the government when he
accused the members of the Cordelier Club of hiding their own personal vendettas behind false
claims of helping the starving sans-culottes attain food, and condemned Hébert and Carrier for
preaching rebellion, which Hébert and Carrier insisted they had not done. 58 Chaumette,
meanwhile, calmed down the delegates of the Marat section, where Momoro held power,
preventing them from passing a resolution to support insurrection. 59 Hébert’s last issue of Père
Duchesne decried the dangerous growth of the moderates and entreated the sans-culottes to rally
to the Convention and demand that the traitors be condemned. 60 Three days later, despite
attempts by Hébert to backtrack from his statements, the National Committee had him, Ronsin,
Vincent, Momoro, and over a dozen others associated with them arrested, some erroneously. 61
Chaumette, despite his last-minute attempt to change sides, found himself detained a month later.
Although accusations of atheism served as a weapon against alleged collaborators, Hébert and
the other dechristianizers were not tried by the National Convention for their religious beliefs,
but rather for political sedition, foreign collusion, and conspiracy to starve Paris and overthrow
the government and Revolution. 62 On March 24, the guillotine took the heads of Hébert, Vincent,
57
Moniteur, XIX, 629
Moniteur, XIX, 646-647, Jacobins, Tome V, 671-673.
59
A. N., W78, Folder 3, no. 165.
60
Père Duchesne, No. 355, 1-5.
61
A. N., 76, folder 2, no. 118-123.
62
Cloots was the only one singled out for his atheism during the trials themselves. See A. N. 78, plaq. 2. For the
official account of the trial of Hébert, Ronsin, Momoro, and Vincent, see Procès intruit et jugé au Tribunal
Révolutionnaire contre Hébert et consorts, (Paris: 1794); A. N. 76 à 78. Charles McNamara provides the best
detailed secondary summary of the trial. See McNamara, 394-449.
58
207
Momoro, Ronsin, Cloots, and over a dozen others. Chaumette, Hébert’s widow, and the
unfortunate pawn, Bishop Gobel, went to the blade on April 13. 63
Despite all the accusations of atheism banded about by Robespierre and his comrades, the
actual trial of the Hébertists did not include charges of blasphemy or denial of God as legal
arguments against them. In fact, atheism rarely came up at all. One of the very few references to
atheism came in the trial of Gobel and Chaumette, when one Tribunal member noted their
acquaintance with Anacharsis Cloots, who he declared to be “a provocateur of the cosmopolitan
with Gobel and Chaumette of the religious counter-revolution who have the objective of
founding a government on atheism.” 64 The vast majority of the discussions and accusations
revolved around the alleged issues of espionage, misuse of funds, conspiracy, counter-revolution,
and foreign alliance. Despite the lack of debate over theism and atheism during the trials, Aulard
argues that Chaumette (and Gobel as well) may have survived the attack on the Hébertists if not
for his religious beliefs, proposing that “it was for not thinking of God the same way as
Robespierre that these unfortunate men were dragged to the scaffold.” 65 If there was ever any
possibility whatsoever for atheism to become an accepted part of revolutionary France—even if
merely as a tolerated individual alternative to religion—that chance went to the guillotine with
Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette.
Although politics dominated the discourse of the period, atheism and the anxiety over
atheism played their role in the prescriptive rhetoric and partisan chess match that occurred
between Robespierre’s autumn speeches against atheism and the execution of the “Hébertists.” It
was the attack on atheism and Cloots, Proly, and Desfieux by Robespierre and Desmoulins that
63
Danton, Desmoulins, Phillipeaux, and Fabre d’Égalatine all fell from grace with the Committee of Public Safety
as well, being executed on April 5, 1794. Jean-Baptiste Carrier managed to escape execution until the end of the
year when he was finally tried for his violence on mission, going to the guillotine on December 16, 1794.
64
A. N. W78, Plaque 2.
65
Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison, 244.
208
initiated the confrontation, though there is no evidence that Robespierre possessed any desire at
that point to bring down Hébert or any of the other Parisian radicals. While Cloots was not a part
of any formal or organized association with Hébert and Chaumette, their acquaintance with one
another and ideological ties as dechristianizers, atheists, and alleged atheists made them easy to
link together, as Desmoulins attempted to do in Le Vieux Cordelier. 66 Subsequently, the attack
on atheism by Danton and Robespierre in November signaled a general swing in philosophical
emphasis that separated Hébert and other radicals from the new orthodoxy of the moment,
assuring that Robespierre would not come to their aid. Regardless of whether they were atheists
or not, Hébert, Momoro, Chaumette and others involved with the Cult of Reason had to know
that the disparaging of irreligion by Robespierre and others was a direct criticism of their version
of dechristianization and a political attempt by their detractors to place a negative and potentially
damaging label on them. What cannot be determined is the effectiveness involved in marking
supporters of the Cult of Reason as atheists. When the battle between Hébert, Ronsin, Vincent
and their colleagues against Desmoulins, Bourdon, and their allies erupted, the main emphasis of
their speeches and articles against one another mostly focused on political and economic
conspiracy. Whereas Desmoulins consistently called his enemies atheists and blasphemers, the
radical dechristianizers he targeted did not respond with similar attacks on religion. Even so,
Desmoulins certainly felt that underscoring their opposition to more orthodox forms of religion
was damaging enough to their reputation and ability to secure support that he continued, and it
may be that Hébert and the others avoided the issue in order to play down its influence.
Nonetheless, despite the denials of atheism by Chaumette and Hébert, when Montagnard
associate Claude Payan replaced Chaumette as leader of the Paris Commune at the end of March,
66
McNamara, author of The Hébertists, notes that Hébert, in fact, distanced himself from Cloots, particularly on the
issue of the role of France in spreading the revolution through warfare, with Hébert arguing that the only purpose of
war was to preserve France’s republic. See McNamara, 283; Hébert, Père Duchesne, No. 347. p. 4.
209
1794, he foreshadowed Robespierre’s speech establishing the Cult of the Supreme Being by
condemning atheism and declaring that it was “the Supreme Being to whom we give our
respects.” 67 Later, in an address to the National Convention on May 13, 1794, Payan added that
in addition to the people believing in a benevolent God, it was necessary for them to have that
belief as a tool against evil.
If the idea of the existence of God is precious to a good man, it is abhorrent to the
wicked, and thus it is useful to society. A perverse man, frightened by this
doctrine, thinks constantly of being surrounded by a powerful and terrible witness
which he cannot escape. He stays awake, while other men lay in slumber,
believing to hear the lowest of sounds striking his ears. 68
Payan felt that the belief in an all-knowing and compassionate God was the will of the people,
and that this concept influenced society by providing a deterrent to those who would commit evil
acts. Ultimately, atheism’s significance in the downfall of the Hébertists was in how it affected
public opinion and in how it represented to powerful opponents, Robespierre included, the worst
potential for chaos and anarchy, serving as a mechanism for the Montagnards to control
community behavior. 69 There was a certain amount of cynicism and hypocrisy in Payan’s
approach to civil religion. Examining his words on man’s need for religion, it is difficult to tell
whether Montagnard civil religion truly rested on theism, or merely served as a utilitarian
method for maintaining power over the citizens.
67
Payan gave his speech on April 13, but it was not printed in the Moniteur until after Robespierre dedicated the
new cult. Moniteur, Vol. 20, 394-396.
68
Quoted in Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison et le Culte de L’Être Supreme, 285-286.
69
For a good discussion of Payan’s passage and its relationship to ulterior Montagnard motives for wanting an allknowing God in the cultural equation—i.e. a mechanism through which to oversee the morality of the people—see
Dan Edelstein, The Terror of the Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution,
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), 232-237.
210
Regardless, atheism continued to be linked to the foreign plot Robespierre and his allies
used as the basis for the destruction of their enemies. So important was atheism to Robespierre’s
conspiratorial assessment of counterrevolution that for months after the deaths of Hébert,
Chaumette, and the other so-called Hébertists, Robespierre continued to denounce them as
atheists in order to justify his attacks against them and promote his Cult of the Supreme Being. It
is likely this series of accusations that contributed to the continued labeling of the Hébertists as a
whole as having promoted atheism well into the present. Using the Society of Nevers as an
example—which had been predisposed to dechristianization by the presence of Fouché and
Chaumette nearly a year before—Robespierre noted in June of 1794 how the influence of
atheism infiltrated even the well-meaning. 70
Nevers was made to abide by this system when Chaumette shamelessly
proclaimed that the decree ordering the celebration of the Supreme Being be
trampled. Upon receiving the news of the occurrence of this event despite his
orders, the festival being saved by freedom and the protection of integrity, he said
that the Convention was deceived by the Committee of Public Safety, by
moderates. He refused to change behavior and feelings and still professed the
same principles and continued to preach atheism. 71
Even when discussing other topics, such as the verbal attack on the Revolution by the Duke of
York, Robespierre blamed Chaumette and Hébert for providing the ammunition with which the
enemies of France could defame the Convention. “Thus, when Hébert and Chaumette preached
atheism,” he complained, “it was said by the clans abroad that the people of France were a nation
70
Joseph Fouché, interestingly, escaped trial and execution due to being on mission at the time of the crisis. By the
time he returned to Paris, Robespierre and the Montagnards had fallen to the Thermidorean Reaction. He survived
the French Revolution and served as a bureaucrat under Napoleon, later writing a memoire in which he condemned
his actions during the dechristianization movement. See Fouché, Memoires, 7.
71
Jacobins, Tome VI, 176.
211
of atheists, trampling over the Supreme Being.” 72 Again, as he had done months before,
Robespierre argued that the existence of atheism in France hurt the reputation of the nation.
After the Hébertists had fallen, others beside Robespierre piled on to criticize the
purported atheism of the Parisian radicals. Claude-François de Payan, who replaced Chaumette
as leader of a more moderate Paris Commune, condemned atheism and attributed the Festival of
Reason exclusively to Hébert, Momoro, and Chaumette, giving a speech on the subject to the
Convention on May 14, 1794. 73 In the Jacobin Club and Committee of Public Safety, an attitude
of “we told you so” permeated the discussion of religion and atheism. At the May 15, 1794
meeting of the Society of Jacobins regarding the purging of their membership, Marc-André
Jullien spoke for the Society when he declared, “There are men who dared to erect a dogma of
immorality and who wanted to construct a system of atheism. It is against these abominable men
that the Jacobins turned after the Club had furthered their efforts. It was these men who confused
the Jacobins with their maxims.” 74 Committee of Public Safety member Couthon added that
“atheism was the hub on which the conspirators counted most for their counter-revolution.” 75
Atheism, he added, lacked any semblance of virtue, and repeating a mantra spoken by
theologians for centuries, Couthon accused the atheists of “living without morality,” and
therefore being a threat to order and a decent society. “Those who once lived within their
families in peace and in virtue,” he argued, “now abandon their wives, despise the caresses of
their children, commit abominable immoralities.” 76 It was up to the good citizens of the Society
of Jacobins to speak out against atheism in order to prevent it from spreading and destroying
72
Ibid., 185.
Mona Ozouf notes that this ultimately is Alphonse Aulard’s stance on who was responsible for the Cult of Reason.
Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, 22-23.
74
Jacobins, Tome 6, 132.
75
Ibid., 134.
76
Ibid., 134.
73
212
society as they knew it. It appears to never have occurred to the Jacobins that their charges of
“immorality” and “abomination” mirrored that of the ancien régime enemies of the
Enlightenment and French Revolution, the reign of which they had long worked side-by-side
with the “atheists” to eliminate. 77
The following day Couthon, Jullien, and Robespierre released a letter to the National
Convention to explain the violent actions taken against Hébert and other radicals who opposed
them, clinging to the language of conspiracy and foreign plots, further echoing the labels applied
to atheists by the counterrevolutionaries. Although the Jacobins associated republican virtue with
the divine and compared the “atheistic” conspirators to Brutus, betrayer of Caesar, they also
insisted that the French people themselves demanded the recognition of a benevolent God.
You still must provide a great example, and it was necessary to have destroyed
these conspirators in order to destroy the fruitful germs of all conspiracies and
possible conspiracies. You did it. The sinister claims of atheism prolonged the
dull, anxiety of our souls and the blasphemy of Brutus was repeated by impure
mouths. They wanted to destroy the Divinity, to destroy virtue. But virtue is not a
phantom, and the Supreme Being is not a vain deceit. Bringing to life a
misleading chimera of death and an endless abyss, they obscured the primitive
ideas that nature places in the hearts of man, turned off all good and generous
feelings, and made freedom and the nation seem more like abused shadows, until
the Convention solemnly proclaimed that the French people knew the Supreme
Being and the immortality of the soul. Yes, the French people have risen to
sanction your decree, the sun lights up the unanimous tribute to the existence of
God. Enslaved nations are prey to despotism and error, but the French nation has
77
McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment, 100-101.
213
torn fanaticism and slavery, and has closed the market of pitfalls. Clearing away
the lies of absurd superstition and the sophisticated errors of atheism, the people
recognized divinity, truth, and virtue. 78
Of course, Couthon himself was part of a conspiracy against the former regime, which in turn
had used the same language of “atheism versus the divine” to argue against the Revolution from
its conception. In this sense, the Jacobin rulers continued to resemble the royalists and expelled
clergymen who themselves had warned of plots and conspiracies by immoral atheists only a few
years before. 79 Couthon reiterated a week later the necessity of destroying their enemies, again
emphasizing the foreign plot, as well as the virtue of attacking atheism.
We should not be surprised to see tyranny fight against freedom, but one must go
back to the source of these assassins to discover the cause. The foreign faction has
its clusters of activity in Paris, because Paris is the center of our strength and
means. This faction is made up of immoral atheists, the corrupt, and murderers.
One its conspiracies were uncovered, the alien trembled and for a diversion put
the killers into action. Villainy is opposed to virtue, but the mere presence of
virtue can kill the crime. 80
As late as July 14 Couthon was still ranting against Hébert, and even threw in Hébert’s enemy,
Danton, as a fellow example of “scoundrels who annoyed the people with atheism and famine.” 81
Clearly Couthon did not believe the ideologies of Hébert and Danton to be one and the same, and
yet the label of atheism was powerful and repugnant enough to be used against all enemies.
78
Ibid., 135-136.
The language of “conspiracy” is an oft-repeated trope used in a similar manner as “atheism” by revolutionaries
and counterrevolutionaries alike, representing a discourse easily adapted to any situation in which vague accusations
could be used to undermine oppositional political groups. See Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, 57-58;
Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class, 38-43; McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment, 73-83.
80
Jacobins, Tome 6, 152.
81
Ibid., 219.
79
214
Within two weeks, however, the National Convention and the Society of Jacobins turned on
Robespierre, Couthon, and their allies. Fearing another purge of their ranks, the Convention
arrested the Montagnard leaders, quickly tried them, and sent them to death on the guillotine on
July 28, 1794, just four months after Hébert and three months after Chaumette had met the same
fate.
Determining the specific motivations of Robespierre and others like him is important for
understanding atheism’s role in the Revolution. It is difficult to say whether there was any
legitimate fear of atheistic tendencies in the dechristianization movement, or whether
Robespierre and others’ emphasis of atheism was merely a political tactic to stabilize their own
power by eliminating popular rivals. 82 Richard Cobb implies that the possibility that forced
dechristianization could have led to a “military atheism” taking over, as the revolutionary
government feared, was perhaps more than just an insinuation by the Committee of Public
Safety. He admits, however, that there is no way to ever know in light of the rapid fall of the
dechristianizers and the subsequent disbanding of the people’s army, and the evidence available
suggests that atheists were merely the “vanguard of a spontaneous movement.” 83 As has been
shown here, there certainly were atheists among the dechristianizers who believed that all
religion was irrational superstition, but there seems to be little proof that any organized attempt
to promote institutionalized disbelief in God existed outside of the actions and writings of a few
82
It is not even entirely clear what specific role Robespierre played in the downfall of Hébert and Chaumette, as he
was ill and withdrew from public for much of February, 1794. Biographer Ruth Scurr interprets Robespierre’s
absence to mean he was not involved. Simon Schama implies that his illness was merely a temporary setback and
that Robespierre’s will hovered over all the steps the government took against the factions. Scurr, Fatal Purity, 257317; Schama, Citizens, 817.
83
Cobb is unclear what he means by “military atheism,” but infers that atheists were among the leaders of the
armées révolutionnaires, and that their involvement in the dechristianization violence made them a potentially
dangerous force had they been able to organize themselves and sustain the movement, though the likelihood that this
would have occurred was slim. Richard Cobb, The People’s Army, 477-79.
215
individuals, such as Cloots or Sylvain Maréchal. 84 It may even be that the likes of Chaumette and
Fabre desired this, but simply altered their priorities, surrendering in the wake of dangerous
criticism from the Committee of Public Safety. There is no available means to confirm their
inner intentions. Evidence that Robespierre and the opponents of dechristianization feared the
rise of atheism and utilized that fear in order to rally public opinion against Hébert and his
colleagues, however, is readily found in their post-trial reactions. It may well be that atheism in
and of itself was not a significant contributor to the events and ideology of the French
Revolution, but rather it was the perception of atheism by its opponents that had the biggest
impact. The dechristianization movement would likely have occurred whether or not atheists
existed in the government or French society as a whole, but the fact that Robespierre and others
continued to publicly condemn atheism and focus French cultural religion on the existence of
God shows that this issue mattered to them—either for the purpose of controlling the people or
due to serious religious conviction—and likely to the people to which the Montagnards
appealed.
5.3 The Citizens and the Rejection of Atheism
Defining exactly how the “people” viewed atheism and its role in the Revolution is more
difficult to determine than the perspective of government officials, but some understanding of
public opinion can be found in the responses to the Cults of Reason and Supreme Being received
by the Committee of Public Instruction between 1793 and 1795. The responsibility for educating
the French populace on the ever-changing legal and cultural decrees being passed by the
84
Sylvain Maréchal’s atheism and his role in the French Revolution will be discussed in-depth in the conclusion of
this dissertation.
216
National Convention fell on the Committee of Public Instruction, which began to receive letters,
poems, hymns, and songs written by citizens looking to express their support and apprehensions
to the revolutionary government concerning the dechristianization movement and the Cults of
Reason and Supreme Being. The archival holdings for the Committee contains hundreds of
documents from various supporters and opponents, the vast majority of which contended that
they wanted a religion that promoted “reason” and the end of “fanaticism,” but they wanted this
to be a religion with a deity. This includes virtually all the letters and hymns sent in support of
the Cult of Reason, before the public promotion of Robespierre’s Cult of the Supreme Being. 85 It
is possible that that opponents of dechristianization manipulated the archival materials after the
movement faded in enthusiasm and its leaders met their deaths on the guillotine, so it can never
be known for certain whether or not any significant numbers of atheists wrote to express their
beliefs as well, but it should also be noted that letters for and against both the Cults of Reason
and Supreme Being can be found there, indicating that archivists likely maintained all viewpoints
received. What is certain is that there was a strong response from French men and women
supporting the drive toward reasonable, civil religion, but desiring a loving and active Supreme
Being to oversee their lives and rituals. One letter from a curé, Jean-Baptiste Bordeaux, written
in February, 1794, expressed the sentiment of many of these citizens when he acclaimed,
“Reason! Supreme Intelligence! Divinity!” 86
85
The letters and hymns referred to here can be found at the Archives Nationale in Paris in the cartons for
DXXXVIII. These contain letters, hymns, poems, and the like sent to the Committee of Public Instruction regarding
the new Cults of 1793 and 1794. The following are merely a sample of typical examples of letters and pamphlets
relating to the concepts of reason and the Supreme Being. Many other examples can also be found in this archival
location. Interestingly, many secondary works contending with the end of dechristianization and the Terror do not
refer to these numerous works. See Bronislaw Braczko, Ending the Terror: the French Revolution after Robespierre,
(Cambridge University Press, 1994); Andress, The Terror, 312-344; Gough, Terror in the French Revolution, 55-70;
Loomis, Paris in the Terror, 325-350;
86
A.N. DXXXVIII, Folder I/6. Bordeaux likely expressed this shared sentiment sarcastically, later arguing that
“reason was never the truth” and that a return to the “the religion of Christ” was the only way to calm the people.
This, however, illustrates the issue at hand—the language of revolutionary religion and traditional religion melded
217
There are letters available that the Committee of Public Instruction received which
supported the Cult of Reason, but none of them express any clear atheistic viewpoints.
Politically, the letters cover a wide range of ideas from radical followers of the Cult of Reason,
to supporters of a more theistic Cult of Reason, to individuals in favor of Robespierre’s Cult of
the Supreme Being, to conservative factions opposed to both of the new cults. There are
categorical spaces in between all of these as well, though they are more difficult to decipher due
to the sharing of common terms and language, as well as subtleties and ambiguity in individual
expressions of belief. This evidence suggests a spectrum of varying beliefs, with the vast
majority of the writers, including the most radical of them, expressing at least deistic views of
the universe, if not more traditionally theistic ones. The exceptions, however, do not demonstrate
atheism, but rather are unclear about their views on the existence of a supreme being. 87 The
closest a letter extant in the Archives comes to expressing irreligion came during height of the
debate against the Cult of Reason in March of 1794. The letter, written by administrators of St.
Ouen, warned the National Convention against reverting to “superstition and fanaticism,” as well
as “theological follies,” but did not expand on the meanings of these concepts. The rest of the
letter focuses instead on the happiness and freedom of the people, suggesting that “theological
follies” may have merely meant the oppression conducted by the Catholic Church. 88 Another
letter from the district of Marseilles dated February 23 of 1794 (5 Ventôse, An II) praised the
government’s promotion of “natural religion” and “holy reason,” as well as its attack on
“fanaticism,” and encouraged decrees to “inspire men to love the law and the Republic,”
together and shared vocabulary of “truth” and “divine.” The one thing, generally speaking, that believers of both
sides shared besides terminology was the idea of a Supreme Being. For secondary literature regarding the theistic
expression of the French citizenry before, during, and after the height of the dechristianization movement, see
Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred, 50-75; Aston, Religion and Revolution, 275-276.
87
See A. N. DXXXVIII, Folders I-V.
88
A.N. DXXXVIII, Folder V.
218
declaring that “this is the religion of France.” 89 A March 26 letter expressed concern over the
“spreading of fanaticism by priests,” while “rendering homage to reason and truth.” 90
Additionally, letters still poured in asking for permission to consecrate temples of reason as late
as May of 1794, after the deaths of Hébert and Chaumette. 91 Yet all of these letters lacked the
atheistic language Cloots of Fouché, and none of them denied God’s existence or even
questioned significant aspects of Christian theological belief.
Perhaps even more surprising is that many of the hymns and songs written to reason
contain support for religion and freedom of belief. Some contained specific references to the God
of France, who suspiciously resembled the Christian God, and specifically targeted atheism as
being antithetical to logic and ordered society. One poem written to be recited at the Temple of
Reason by “Citizen Pii” attributed the “virtues of the law” to the Supreme Being and warned
republicans of falling into the grip of atheism.
In vain the atheist escapes behind a thick cabal,
Continuing on despite the immorality of his conscience.
He plans to easily frighten everyone who desires divinity,
In order to better conceal the rights of humanity.
There may be a Republican lost by vain sophism,
Unintentionally looking into the abyss of atheism,
But reason makes cry out for equilibrium:
You are not free to forget who made you be born free. 92
89
A.N. DXXXVIII, Folder I/6.
Ibid.
91
Ibid.
92
Citizen Pii, “Canticle Against Athiesm,” Le Décadaire. Feuille Périodique Consacrée à l’Instruction des Habitans
de la Compagne dans le Département du Haut-Rhin, DVXXXIII, Folder V, p 58-59.
90
219
Citizen Pii appeared to believe that “reason” is essential to liberty, but did not associate atheism
with reason, and in fact found disbelief in God to be contradictory to the idea of freedom.
Unfortunately, Pii’s song does not specify how this is so, though it is implied that it is a matter of
his belief that atheists are immoral and therefore prone to deception and fear-mongering against
the people. Another hymn written to be presented at the Temple of Reason, “Song to the
Republic,” expressed what was likely a common sentiment among citizens—that all religions
apart from Catholicism could be acceptable provided that they supported the new republic.
We will be able to be indifferently
Christian, pagan, deist,
Or French atheist, or Muslim
Or Quaker, or Jansenist.
All religions will be permitted!
Except for the Catholic Church.
These are the fruits of equality.
Vive le République! 93
In this anonymous poem, even the French atheist was welcome in society. The only exception to
the rule was the Catholic, who symbolized for many the oppression of the Old Regime. In any
case, it is clear from these writings and others similar to them that even among the
dechristianizers, theists abounded and sought spiritual equality and reasonable religion over
atheistic secularism.
Whereas writers emphasizing “reason” in religion still believed in God, those who
supported the Cult of the Supreme Being additionally promoted the idea of “reason.” One
pamphlet published the day of Robespierre’s Festival of the Supreme Being on June 9, 1794,
93
“Chanson Republicaine,” A. N. DXXXVIII, Folder V.
220
declared that “this festival gathers us together on a day of glory for the Supreme Being and
triumph for reason.” The author, François-Joseph-Guillaume Bruslon of Tours, utilized the
arguments both of religion and philosophie, confirming the end of “stupid fanaticism and
superstition,” while also condemning materialism and atheism as part of a liturgy of tyranny and
crimes against the Divine, along with Machiavellianism, royalism, federalism, aristocracy, and
egoism. 94 Another pamphlet, written by a citizen from Bordeaux, sent to the Committee of
Public Instruction provided homage to the Supreme Being, but also praised nature and reason as
essential to public liberty, provided they were not equated with atheism. 95 Yet another addressed
to the citizens of Blois reassured the citizens that “this is not the God of the kings, but the God of
nature,” and that “a social contract and good laws which relate to the existence of the great Being
and the immortality of the soul are the only religion that can confess to philosophy and
reason.” 96 By this the author meant that only a cult dedicated to God and immortality could truly
be a reasonable religion. But how was reason to be defined in the nation and what was the link
between reason and God? The letter-writers and pamphleteers writing to the Committee of
Public Instruction generally remained vague on this subject.
One of the best examples of these attempts to reconcile reason with religion is found in a
dialogue from a pamphlet written in March of 1794 in order to instruct on changes in the policies
of the government for country residents in the department of Haut-Rhin. Undoubtedly an attempt
to diffuse the tension created by dechristianization, the dialogue is between a “Jacobin curé” and
a “schoolmaster,” and discusses whether or not the government was attempting to destroy
religion. The curé explains to the schoolmaster that the real goal of the government was not to
94
François-Joseph-Guillaume Bruslon, Discours, A.N. DXXXVIII, Folder I/6, pgs. 1-6.
Hainuyer, Le Réveil du Bon Père Hommage de l’Être Suprême et la nature, A.N. DXXXVIII, Foldier I/7.
96
Johanneau, Adresse de la Société Populaire Révolutionnaire et Régénérée de Blois, A.N. DXXXVIII, Folder I/7,
pgs. 1-8.
95
221
deny God or end all religion, but rather to fuse these essential components of the Republic with
reason and philosophy in order to put an end to fanaticism and ignorance. At first, the curé
sounds like the dechristianizers, criticizing the Catholic Church for its “miracles fabricated by
the priests” and “grotesque processions and public masquerades, which dishonor the century of
reason.” 97 Furthermore, he claims that the aristocrats and priests compounded the problem.
“Because superstition and fanaticism caused horrible pain,” the curé argues, “they proclaimed
that it was necessary to religion!” 98 It was this confusing of religion with superstition along with
abuse of God’s name for political purposes by the ancien régime that the ultra-revolutionaries
reacted against, but their own fanaticism and zealousness caused them to go too far. The curé
suggests that the government attempted to find a middle ground between the superstition of the
aristocracy and Catholic clergy, and the fanatic extremism of the dechristianizers. The curé’s
idea for how this is possible proves to be quite a modern view of religion. The curé argues that
religion is a “system,” something shaped by humanity, and therefore can be implemented in a
number of different ways. All religions are essentially equivalent, but depending on who creates
a system of religion and for what purposes, it can be for the benefit of mankind or to profit
despots. The one constant certainty in religion is God himself, but as the curé explains, his
existence must be a matter of personal, inner faith rather than reason.
In all its details the spectacle of nature shows the informed observer who
contemplates and the philosopher who discovers the laws, the existence of one
Supreme Being who we depend upon. Its existence, however, is better felt by the
inner feeling of our consciousness, rather than proved by reasoning. This Supreme
97
Le Décadaire. Feuille Périodique Consacrée à l’Instruction des Habitans de la Compagne dans le Département
du Haut-Rhin, DVXXXIII, Folder V, p 36-37.
98
Ibid., p. 38.
222
Being or God should reward virtue and punish crime, because its essence is to be
just and good. 99
For the curé, reminiscent of Rousseau’s characterization of virtue and feelings, God is a
necessary and virtuous entity, but one that can only be felt, not perceived through physical ability
or even reason itself. 100
It is this holy maxim engraved in our hearts by nature and commanded to our
reason by the Supreme Being, with which the National Convention and all the
friends of humanity would like to replace all the incoherent religions, engendered
by superstition and deceit. 101
Thus, the curé proposes, in order to balance the necessity of a good God who is practically
incomprehensible through logic with the needs of the people, the National Convention must
develop a religion to decipher God’s will and provide a space in which the people can connect to
the Supreme Being’s presence.
Robespierre’s religion provided the people with something that linked the desire for
reasonable, useful religion which appealed to the republican citizen to the celestial foundation of
the traditional religion espoused by the religiously devout—the existence of a divine power
capable of watching over the nation and giving them guidance and protection from the
destruction that surrounded them. The Cult of Reason lacked this fundamental entity, which so
many found necessary to connect the people to the spirit of law, patriotism, nature, and
everything else that was important. “God” provided the focal point, on which worshippers could
look for the divine in their lives. 102 It is no wonder that letters and newspapers from all over
99
Ibid., p. 39-41.
See Rousseau, “Emile,” Oeuvres complètes de J.-J. Rousseau. Tome 5, (Paris: J. Bry aîné, 1856), 213.
101
Ibid., p. 53.
102
This is not to argue that there was no change in religious views or a rise in atheism or secularism during this
100
223
France praised the Festival of the Supreme Being, declaring that “the French people recognize
the existence of God and the immortality of the soul.” 103 For many of the people, long suffering
the impact of oppression, war, and famine, without the guidance of a Supreme Being and the
possibility of eternal life, there was no hope for their future. Their current anguish may have
exceeded their desire for democracy, leading to the people’s focus on freedom of conscience and
religion as the highlights of liberty. This is not to argue that atheism was incapable of providing
optimism or comfort for some, but the simple fact is that the vast majority of the French people
in the 1790s believed that their salvation derived from a theistic, spiritual world.
Thus, it is no surprise that many French citizens wrote to the government to criticize the
Cult of Reason and demonstrate their support for the Cult of the Supreme Being, and that one of
the primary targets of their disapproval was the alleged atheism of the cult of Hébert and
Chaumette. 104 One Parisian named Deshayer wrote a letter expressing his dismay at the Cult of
Reason, which he argued increased “the strength of atheism” at the expense of “our immortal
reward, the happiness of eternity.” 105 Yet another concerned citizen stated that God was
necessary in order to preserve the principles of the Revolution.
This guardian God signaled his attachment and love for us through great wonders
and miracles. If God is not permitted in the Temple of Reason, created during our
period, but rather that these changes are often exaggerated by historians attempting to demonstrate the significance
of atheism, secularism, and other alleged “modern” concepts. For example, see Jonathan Israel, Democratic
Enlightenment. The evidence suggests that there is, indeed, an increase in unconventional spirituality and skepticism
of traditional Christianity, but that the vast majority of people maintained many orthodox religious beliefs, though
the amount of acceptance of the Cult of the Supreme Being still demonstrates evolving attitudes. These attitudes are
simply too complex and subtle to label as “secular” or “modern” in any generalized manner. Again, see Aston,
Religion and Revolution in France, Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution, Desan, Reclaiming the
Sacred, and Taylor, A Secular Age.
103
A. N. DXXXVIII, Folder III.
104
Although a few supporters of a theistic God did not recognize Robespierre as a contributor to the Cult of the
Supreme Being. One priest who sent a short, printed page lumped Robespierre specifically in with Chaumette and
Hébert, his mortal enemies, as “liberticides,” who “proclaimed atheism while knocking down religion.” A. N.
DXXXVIII, Folder I/9.
105
A.N. DXXXVIII, Folder I/7.
224
revolution under the auspices of this benevolent Being, then the taking of the
Bastille will signal the beginning of cruel horrors and slavery as during the times
of the French despots. August 10, May 30, and the days of triumph of liberty will
never be if God is not protecting France. 106
Of course, the given source of these “horrors” was none other than “our enemies—the atheists
and materialists, who seek to prove that there is no God through immorality, thereby attesting
that they have no souls.” 107 Hainuyer’s pamphlet for the national club of Bordeaux, sent to the
Committee of Public Instruction in 1794, praised Robespierre’s cult and the promotion of reason
and nature, but offered a warning against atheism.
There is only one crime brought to this madness—desperate to see only
punishment in the existence of a God and the immortal soul, man denied that
which he dreaded, saying, ‘There is no God, and after death is nothingness.’ But
he soon disowned this language, punished by the remorse that gnawed on his
heart. Yes, the birth of atheism surrounded us on all sides, daring to raise its bold
head, but the French people cast their eyes towards the Eternal, and at this
moment atheism was no more. 108
Many other letters and discourses followed throughout 1794, all proclaiming the importance of
the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, and many of them condemning atheism as
being a primary cause of the “chains of tyranny” of the previous year. 109
106
A.N. DXXXVIII, Folder I/7.
Ibid.
108
Hainuyer, Le Réveil du Bon Père Hommage de l’Être Suprême et la nature, A.N. DXXXVIII, Foldier I/7, p. 4.
109
One letter written by Cornous in 1795 on the topic of religious choice used almost these exact same words. He
presents “the chains of tyranny and of atheism” as “conjurations” developed against the virtues of religion. A.N.
DXXXVIII, Folder I/8.
107
225
Yet, as with the definition of reason and its relationship to the existence of God, writers
remained ambiguous when it came time to explain how atheists perpetrated “horrors” and
“madness.” For example, one pamphleteer claimed that atheists “snatched remorse for crimes
and hope for virtue from the bottom of the heart, effectively reversing all moral and political
order.” 110 How did they reverse moral and political order? The author did not say, but when all
these works are taken together, their fundamental argument is a matter of traditional theology—
God is the creator of all order in the universe. If a universal motor such as God did not exist, then
all of existence would be chaos. Furthermore, for centuries, religion preached that God was the
source of morality. Therefore, atheism, being the denial of God’s existence, was the proponent of
chaos and the breakdown of morals. Besides the violence and chaos that arose from the events of
the Terror, this fundamental argument for the existence of God was the crux of the people’s
theory against the dechristianization movement. Dechristianization may not have been inherently
atheistic, but the perception that it was an enterprise of atheists and that atheism was a chaotic
threat to public order erupted not only with the politicians, but among the citizens themselves,
both for and against the Cult of Reason. This is important. For all the ambiguity and variety
among the beliefs of the citizens of France during the Terror, they shared a common cause
against superstition, fanaticism, tyranny, and ignorance, but although these things meant
different things to different individuals, many of whom were incapable of expressing the
specifics of these ideals, the one thing they seemed to overwhelmingly agree on is that these
concepts were antithetical to the fact they believed in an active, loving God.
Thus, in the sense that many revolutionaries believed that God was the creator and cause
of the universe, their beliefs mirrored those of the theologians of the past two centuries. These
theologians argued God’s existence on the basis of the necessity for a source of morality, the
110
Cassius Quillet, Rapport fait à la société révolutionnaire de Rochefort, DXXXVIII, Folder III, p. 5.
226
likelihood of a first cause of all things, the inherent existence of God in the minds of man, the
separation of mind and matter, and the certainty of a designer for all things that possess a
design. 111 These basic premises appear in many of the writings of the Revolution as well. The
Revolutionary Society of Rochefort, for example, argued against atheists in the same pamphlet
that rebuked the priests for their “abuse and mysterious jargon” that atheism was antithetical to
reason as well. The Society proclaimed that atheists are those who:
…do not want to admit that they can think and reason, for fear that they will
affirm that intelligence is distinct from matter; who insist never to read from the
open and comprehensible book of nature, or acknowledge that there exists a first
cause of the universe. Strange abuse of philosophy or bad times! I forgive these
men, for they die every day and their pleasures are tied up, everything is animated
for one who believes in the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul.
Everything is sad and death for those who believe in chance and the atoms of
Epicurus. 112
Arguments such as these from “first cause” suggest that the movement of atoms could not have
occurred without an infinite and intelligent being to set them off in the first place, and were
common among theists for centuries. The idea that atheism was concurrent with despair,
debauchery, and immorality also was a common feature of early-modern theological approaches
to atheism. Citizen Pii of Haut-Rhin took a different approach, focusing on the “argument from
beauty,” which essentially argued that man could have no concept of love and beauty in nature
without an intelligent being to render them meaningful.
Unbelievers who would like to visibly see and hear the Supreme Being
111
See Febvre, The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century; Popkin, History of Skepticism; Kors, Atheism in
France; Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism.
112
Cassius Quillet, Rapport fait à la société révolutionnaire de Rochefort, DXXXVIII, Folder III, p. 6.
227
Need only go to the fields, with head-to-head toward the flowers.
It is at the edge of a wave of purity that one hears God in his heart and sees him in
nature. 113
Today the validity of the logic behind these arguments for the existence of God is contested, but
aside from those who may have read the works of D’Holbach, the majority of the people of the
French Revolution still relied heavily on the intellectual concepts of religion and atheism handed
down by large numbers of clerical writers, priests, bishops, preachers, and theologians dating
back for two centuries.
5.4 Conclusion
So what does the fact that so many people rejected atheism mean for the concept of
atheism during the French Revolution, as well as for the atheists themselves? To be clear, this
rejection does not reflect badly on atheism as a valid view, but rather reveals its growing pains as
unbelief developed into a viable cultural option for individuals who were skeptical of God’s
existence. That atheists existed and began their evolution into an actual political force—a force
that would not truly begin to reach its potential until the following century—confirmed the fears
of the devout over the possibility of the spread of atheism, which contributed to the deluge of
anti-atheistic writings appearing in the latter half of the eighteenth century. 114 Atheism never was
a true threat to orthodox thinking in the way that anti-clericalism, republicanism, and political
radicalism may have been, but the very existence of overt atheists in any number made a huge
impact on the intellectual thought of opponents to atheism. To some extent atheists can view this
113
Citizen Pii, “Cantique Against Atheism,” Le Décadaire. Feuille Périodique Consacrée à l’Instruction des
Habitans de la Compagne dans le Département du Haut-Rhin, DVXXXIII, Folder V, p 59.
114
See Darrin McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment,
228
as a victory, because their limited numbers still had a significant effect on what other people
focused their thoughts on, and likely aided in the beginnings of the increased acceptance they
would see in the following hundred years—acceptance that atheists continue to fight for today.
Nonetheless, revolutionary religious believers in God could take solace in the fact that they
“won” the battle of the people’s minds by preventing atheists from becoming further recognized
in the political realm through the success of their own theistic writings.
Perhaps more importantly than who “won” or “lost” the battle between theism and
atheism, if such a conflict truly existed outside of political rhetoric and conspiracy theory, is the
fact that the people’s conceptualization of atheism was growing far more advanced compared to
what some historians suggest had been the case prior. 115 No longer was “atheist” simply a word
“bandied about” to suggest unorthodox thinking or merely to discredit an opponent as a foolish
libertine, though these usages still survived as well. 116 No longer could theologians claim that
true atheists did not exist. Atheists were a reality and had proclaimed themselves in the public
sphere. People had seen and heard them, though the majority of these citizens appear to have
rejected atheism outright. Many of the writings of these citizens suggest a public that defined
“atheism” as the non-belief in the Supreme Being, and the “atheist” as one who does not believe
in God—as distinguished from simply anything unorthodox or oppositional to the current
political wind. Even so, the antiquated language of the past persisted, with many petitioners
continuing to label the atheists as unvirtuous Epicureans and perpetrators of chaos and slavery,
even while others sang songs welcoming them. It seems that perceptions of atheism were as
diverse as ever.
115
See Febvre, The Problem of Unbelief; Popkin, History of Skepticism.
The “bandied about” phrase comes from Roy Porter, The Creation of the Modern World: the Untold Story of the
British Enlightenment, (New York: W & W Norton, 2000), 128.
116
229
It becomes clear after scrutinizing the speeches, actions, and writings of the postHébertist Jacobins, as well as the petitions and songs of the citizens who contacted their
government in 1793 and 1794 to express their theological and political opinions, that
discernments over atheism were rife with complexity. The debate over the role of religion in
politics, as is it today, was not as simple as debating and philosophizing over the existence of
God. Robespierre and his like equated atheism with the aristocracy, and not without historical
evidence, as most known atheists prior to the Revolution were of the nobility. The Mountain
further, perhaps because of this supposed link between the Second Estate and atheism, connected
unbelief to foreign conspiracy, royalist loyalty, and treason—ironic in light of their own rejection
of the Church and traditional religion’s original role in the politics of the ancien régime. Only
three years before many of the Jacobins, including Robespierre, had listened while the leaders of
the First Estate rendered the same judgment against them. The Revolution was the work of
atheists, it had been argued, and atheists, as everyone knew, were immoral libertines bent on the
destruction of society. Atheists were real and their participation in the French Revolution is a
monumental and unheralded part of the history of atheism that deserves to be recognized.
Nonetheless, within the history of the French Revolution, atheism’s primary role in influencing
its politics, events, and ideology was its usage as a vague label of denunciation, exploited by the
Right and the Left, loyalist and radical. The continuation of ancien régime rejection of atheism in
order to ensure social cohesion in a nation still populated by a majority of believers devoted to
God, if not religion, ultimately made atheists victims of the French Revolution.
230
EPILOGUE
Histories of atheism do a disservice to historians and readers by ignoring the French
Revolution, considering that this event marks the first time in Western history that atheists
publicly participated in the political process, even if only for a short time. 1 When Edmund Burke
in Reflections on the Revolution in France described the French Revolution as an affair
motivated by a “literary cabal” and a “spirit of atheistic fanaticism,” a debate erupted over
Burke’s charges, as well as over the legitimacy of religion in state matters. One of the most
famous responses to Reflections was Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1791). Taking his title from
the Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man, Paine defended the goals and intentions of
the revolutionaries and attacked Burke’s beliefs in hereditary rule and wisdom, the rights of the
aristocracy, and the inherent violence in the untamed nature of man. 2 Regarding religion, Paine,
who was no atheist despite accusations to the contrary, argued that divine rights applied to the
people, not the monarchy, and that religion was a natural right that belonged to man, rather than
man being slave owned by religion. Thus, Paine posited that religion and the state needed to be
separated in order to prevent the Church from becoming corrupted by power, intolerant of
dissent, and prosecutorial of its members. Yet Paine supported the Revolution’s takeover of the
Catholic Church, noting that the citizens themselves created the revolutionary government, and
1
Again, see David Berman, A History of Atheism in Britain: From Hobbes to Russell, (London: Croom Helm,
1988); Michael J. Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987); James
Thrower, Western Atheism, a Short History, (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000).
2
Edward H. Davidson and William J. Scheick, Paine, Scripture, and Authority: The Age of Reason as Religious and
Political Idea, (London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1994).
commending France’s new constitution for protecting the natural right of the citizens to control
their own spiritual destiny through “universal right of conscience.” 3
When the British government found Rights of Man and its follow up, Rights of Man, Part
II to be seditious in 1792, Paine fled to France, took part in the Revolution he had defended, and
expanded on his defense despite the violence he encountered. Nonetheless, the moderate
Revolution he supported soon radicalized far beyond even Paine’s unorthodox beliefs. A
foreigner and a friend of the Girondins, Paine opposed the execution of Louis Capet, and found
himself in direct conflict with the ideals of Robespierre and the Montangards. Like the foreignborn atheist, Anacharsis Cloots, Paine was arrested in December, 1793 and spent the next six
months in prison, narrowly escaping the guillotine due essentially to an administrative error.
When Robespierre and his allies fell in July of 1794, the Thermidorean government released
Paine, and he spent the rest of the Revolution in Paris. During this period, Paine wrote the Age of
Reason, which continued to defend France’s detachment from Christianity, while criticizing the
Terror by espousing the need for natural religion and even theism. Careful not to mention the
French Revolution itself—better safe than sorry in light of the violence that had only recently
slowed—Paine criticized both the atheism of the dechristianization movement and the zealous
nature of Robespierre’s cult. As he observed in the Age of Reason,
The adulterous connection of church and state, wherever it had taken place,
whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so effectually prohibited, by pains and
penalties, every discussion upon established creeds, and upon first principles of
religion, that until the system of government should be changed, those subjects
could not be brought fairly and openly before the world; but that whenever this
3
Thomas Paine, Rights of man: being an answer to Mr. Burke's attack on the French revolution, (London: 1791), 45,
51, 74-77.
232
should be done, a revolution in the system of religion would follow. Human
inventions and priest-craft would be detected; and man would return to the pure,
unmixed, and unadulterated belief of one God, and no more. 4
Replicating his arguments in Rights of Man, Paine postulated that the power of the church and
state should never be combined. Corruption, unfair legal penalties, and intolerance would always
follow. This was why the French Revolution occurred, he implied, and the perceived need to
separate religion from the government was the likely cause of the atheistic dechristianization that
resulted. Paine saw the Terror as an anomaly, and posited that man would naturally return to a
state of monotheistic purity.
Nonetheless, Paine follows his formal declaration of theism in Age of Reason with a long,
detailed critique of organized religion, Christianity, and the Bible; and it is this which has made
Thomas Paine today a staple in contemporary defenses of atheism. Ignoring (though not
denying) his theism, virtually all of the stalwarts of modern atheism—Dawkins, Hitchens,
Dennet, to name a few—make reference to Thomas Paine and his Age of Reason, commending
him for his rational approach to religion and crediting him for his precursory role in the history
of atheism. 5 This homage to Paine is not completely unfounded for two primary reasons. First,
mirroring Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), Paine deconstructs the
Bible and the revelatory tenets of the Christian faith, bringing to light inconsistencies, and
criticizing references to the supernatural and miraculous. Revelation is “hearsay that we are not
obliged to believe,” he argues, and the Bible—particularly the Old Testament—a “book of lies,
4
Thomas Paine, The age of reason, being an investigation of true and fabulous theology, (Paris or London, 1794), 15.
5
See Dawkins, God Delusion, 59; Daniel Dennet, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, (New
York: Penguin Group, 2006), 259; Christopher Hitchens, God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, (New
York: Twelve, 2007), 31, 104-110, 177-179, 261-269. Hitchens, especially, was a huge admirer of Thomas Paine,
even writing a biography of Paine. See Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man": A Biography, (New
York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007).
233
wickedness, and blasphemy.” 6 Second, as a result of Paine’s vilifying of the Christian religion,
he endured the characterization by many as being an atheist himself, and the persecution that
came with it, making Paine a sort of pseudo-martyr for atheism, despite the fact that he
emphatically insisted that God existed. 7
Despite his adoption by New Atheists, Paine not only remained a believer in God, but
was as unreceptive toward atheism as Robespierre. The very work that atheists love to quote for
its criticism of religion begins with a profession of faith. “I believe in one God and no more,”
Paine proclaims, “and I hope for happiness beyond this life.” 8 Not only was Paine a deist who
believed in a Supreme Being, but he apparently believed in, or at least hoped for, an afterlife.
Paine claimed that Christian faith, however, went so far beyond natural religion that it almost
equated itself with the very atheism it sought to eradicate.
As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of atheism; a sort
of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is
a compound made up chiefly of man-ism with but little deism, and is as near to
atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an
opaque body, which it calls a redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self
between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious or an
irreligious eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of reason into shade. 9
Though the main purpose of the passage is to criticize Christian emphasis on faith for being an
impediment to reason by putting God’s existence at the mercy of man’s imagination, Paine’s
equating of Christian faith to atheism is striking. Both Christianity and atheism are presented as
6
7
8
9
Paine, Age of Reason, 6, 25; Age of Reason, Part the Second, (London: 1795), 16.
Paine, Age of Reason, 2.
Ibid., 54-55.
234
equals, and considering Paine’s hostility to revealed religion, it can only be assumed that he felt
equal disgust toward atheism. One does not have to assume Paine’s enmity, however, as he
makes the comparison again.
Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more
derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason,
and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for
belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the
heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. As an engine of power, it
serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests;
but so far as respects the good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or
hereafter. 10
Again, the primary intention of the passage is to critique Christianity, but here even more clearly
than before, Paine attacks atheism as well. Not only does Paine link atheism with fanaticism,
reflecting the criticisms of both Robespierre and the counterrevolution, but declares that
Christianity’s weakness lies in its derogation of God and its driving people away from the
reasonable deity and into the arms of malevolent atheism. So strong was Paine’s opposition to
atheism that a publisher of pious tracts, Thomas Williams, printed a pamphlet in Paine’s name
utilizing fragments from his various writings. That pamphlet was aptly named, Atheism
Refuted. 11 Of all the figures from the French Revolution that the New Atheist movement could
adopt as a standard bearer for their cause, Thomas Paine is a poor choice.
10
Paine, Age of Reason, Part of the second, 102.
“Thomas Paine,” Atheism Refuted, in a discourse to prove the existence of God, (London, 1798); Moncure Daniel
Conway, ed., “Introduction,” The Writings of Thomas Paine, Volume IV. 1794-1796, (ebook,
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3743/3743-h/3743-h.htm#link2HCH0011, accessed January 12, 2014). Moncure
Daniel Conway was also the author of the first quintessential biographies of Thomas Paine. See Moncure Daniel
Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine: With a History of His Literary, Political and Religious Career in America,
France, and England, Volumes 1 and 2, (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908).
11
235
Sylvain Maréchal shared with Thomas Paine many similar views on reason, religion,
nature, and politics, save for one—Maréchal was a declared atheist. Born in Paris to a wine
merchant in 1750, Maréchal participated in the world of the lumières and salons, and became a
poet and pamphleteer by the beginning of the French Revolution. 12 His early writings, however,
were far from atheistic, mostly consisting of poetic idylls such as Les Bergeries(1770) and
moralistic attacks on the rich and powerful like Le Temple de l'Hymen (1771). Historian
Maurice Dommanget estimates that Maréchal began his transformation from the son of “good
Catholics” to an overt atheist sometime in the 1770s, likely influenced by reading the Baron
D’Holbach and Benedict Spinoza, though he also regarded highly the writings of Rousseau. 13
What is clear is that by 1780, Sylvain Maréchal was a declared l’homme sans Dieu, a man
without God, publishing his first atheistic poem the following year, Fragments d’un poème
moral sur Dieu . In this piece, Maréchal espouses materialism, praises Spinoza for his virtue, and
declares that “either God does not exist, or he is a forbidden fruit to our intelligence.” 14 In other
words, if God did exist, the intelligence of mankind would be able to prove it through reason,
and that did not seem to be the case.
By the dawn of the French Revolution, Sylvain Maréchal was well-established among the
radicals of Paris, and became a significant contributor to the culture of the Revolution despite his
avowed atheism. Foreshadowing Cloots’ attempt to establish a statue in honor of the atheist Jean
Meslier, Maréchal wrote a treatise in honor of the late priest, criticizing the major tenets of
Catholicism one-by-one. In his Catéchisme du curé Meslier, Maréchal declared of God that he
12
Information on Maréchal’s life prior to the French Revolution is scant, but the following biographers do their best
to recreate his evolution from son of a bourgeoisie merchant to an atheistic “man of letters.” See C. A. Fusil, Sylvain
Maréchal, ou, L’Homme sans Dieu, (Paris, Librairie Plon, 1936); Maurice Dommanget, Sylvain Maréchal,
l’égalitaire, l’Homme sans Dieu, (Paris, R. Lefeuvre , 1950); Françoise Aubert, Sylvain Maréchal: passion et faillite
d'un égalitaire, (Paris : Goliardica, 1975).
13
Dommanget, Sylvain Maréchal, 34-39, 51.
14
Sylvain Maréchal, Fragments d’un poème moral sur Dieu , (Paris: Athéopolis, 1781), 16.
236
“cannot love what he does not believe,” and effectively combined the ideals of the Revolution
with those of his atheist predecessor. 15 He also published an anticlerical newspaper, Le Tonneau
de Diogène, at the beginning of 1790, making him a natural choice by the end of the year to edit
the Revolutions de Paris, one of the Revolution’s most influential radical journals. Through his
work on Revolutions de Paris, Maréchal became involved with other influential revolutionary
skeptics such as Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette, Louis-Marie Prudhomme, and the Girondin, Fabre
d'Églantine. It may be this relationship resulted in d’Églantine and Gilbert Romme borrowing
ideas from Maréchal’s 1788 Almanach des Honnêtes Gens in order to create the Revolutionary
calendar. Additionally, Maréchal played an instrumental role in the development of the Festival
of Reason, writing hymns, poems, and a one-act opera to commemorate the event. 16 It seems that
Maréchal was the most influential atheist acting on behalf of atheism in the entire French
Revolution. Nonetheless, when the Hébertists fell, condemned as atheists by Robespierre,
Couthon, and Desmoulins, Sylvain Maréchal remained untouched. As a general rule, the shrewd
atheist avoided the appearance of political ambition, choosing to act primarily behind the scenes,
passing on running for office, and avoiding direct criticism of the Jacobins. In a sense,
Maréchal’s ability to avoid the guillotine during the fallout from the Festival of Reason despite
being the most overt atheist in the public sphere highlights the political motives of Robespierre.
Although he clearly espoused atheism in his publications and songs, Maréchal made no moves
toward gaining power or subverting the current regime, and subsequently posed no threat to the
Montagnards. His atheism did not really matter, provided it was kept separate from the state.
15
Sylvain Maréchal, Catéchisme du curé Meslier, (Paris: 1790), 1-55.
Sylvain Maréchal, La fête de la raison : opéra en un acte, (Paris: C. F. Patris, 1793); Dieu et les prêtres,
fragments d'un poëme philosophique, (Paris: C. F. Patris, 1793); Recueil d'hymnes républicains et de chansons
guerrières et patriotiques, (Paris : Chez Basset, 1794).
16
237
That Robespierre and his colleagues cared more about eliminating political threats than
atheism as long as it was not overtly present in the government is further illustrated by
Maréchal’s activities after the Terror. Briefly tied to the anarchist, Gracchus Babeuf, and the
Conspiracy of Equals, Maréchal narrowly escaped prosecution once again even though he
authored the conspiracy’s philosophy, Le Manifeste des Égaux (1796), a precursor to nineteenth
century communism. 17 Perhaps having learned his lesson about active involvement in the politics
of the French Revolution, Maréchal spent the rest of his days writing philosophical tracts against
religion and in support of atheism. Many of them lacked any originality and none seemed to
make an impact. Pensées libres sur les prêtres (1798) was a typical anticlerical tract, Le Lucrèce
français (1798) was a rewrite of his earlier poem, Fragments d’un poème moral sur Dieu, and
Culte et lois d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu (1798) was an underdeveloped poem that
proposed to draw out Pierre Bayle’s notion of virtuous atheists, but instead vaguely described a
paternal world in which society improved by eliminating the “sacrilege” and “error” of believing
in God. 18 Nonetheless, it is important to observe that Maréchal continued to publish antireligious and atheistic works into the early nineteenth century under his own name and with no
known legal or societal fallout—a truly remarkable accomplishment during a time when virtually
no one else in actively published pro-atheist works. Taking away from this seeming triumph,
however, is the fact that no one seemed to care, suggesting that his impact on French culture
after the French Revolution was ineffective and considered a outlandish anomaly that was not
even worthy of persecution.
17
It is unclear how Sylvain Maréchal avoided being tried for his involvement with Babeuf, though his influence as a
major contributor to Revolutionary ideals prior to the Directory may have provided him with the contacts and sway
needed to escape justice. See Dommanget, Sylvain Maréchal; Dan Edelstein, The terror of natural right :
republicanism, the cult of nature, and the French Revolution, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 7679.
18
Sylvain Maréchal, Pensées libres sur les prêtres (Paris: 1798); Le Lucrèce français (Paris: 1798); Culte et Lois
d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu (Milan: Galli Thierry, 1967), 33-36.
238
Of Maréchal’s later works, one stands out as being the most unique and interesting— the
Dictionnaire des athées anciens et modernes. First published in 1800 and supplemented by the
influential astronomer Joseph Lalande, Maréchal envisioned that the Dictionnaire would be to
atheists what the Éncyclopédie was to philosophy. It consisted of an extensive list of
philosophers, scientists, politicians, and authors throughout history whom Maréchal either
perceived to be atheists, or who he felt influenced the development of atheism, including those
who had a negative impact. Many of the entries contained a brief synopsis or quote to illustrate
why they were named to the list. The work begins with a brief history of atheism that is
remarkably modern, defining atheism as an absence of belief in the divine and the atheist as “a
man of nature,” with religion presented as a post-natural phenomenon brought on by the greed
and lust of political institutions. 19 On the list are many of the usual names of philosophers
frequently categorized by contemporaries and scholars alike as being atheists—Hobbes, Bayle,
Spinoza, La Mettrie, Naigeon, d’Holbach, Condorcet, Diderot, d’Alembert, Hélvetius, and Jean
Meslier, being just a few. Many Greek and Roman philosophers such as Epicurus, too, frequently
appear. Maréchal also does not forget to include himself, effectively listing the Dictionnaire as
the accomplishment for which he would be best remembered. 20 Others are more surprising.
Maréchal, for example, identifies Isaac Newton as a “Spinozist,” and describes Martin Luther as
“perfecting atheism,” likely as a gibe. 21 In fact, Maréchal was surprisingly frank about who he
felt was and was not an atheist during the French Revolution, listing as atheists Necker,
Mirabeau, Heraut de Séchelles, Brissot, Danton, David, Dupont, Cloots, Volney, d’Églantine,
and Jacques Hébert, whom he likely knew personally. 22 A few of these men are well-known to
19
Sylvain Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées anciens et modernes, (Paris: 1800, reprinted in Bruxelles, 1832), i-iii.
Ibid., 28.
21
Ibid., 162-3, 193.
22
Interestingly, the Hébert entry almost seems to mock him. “ The Festival of Reason was designed by Hébert and
20
239
have been atheists, as discussed above, but many remain uncertain or clearly were not. It is
unclear how Maréchal made his choices—little is written about any of the revolutionary
“atheists” listed in the Dictionnaire, but there is one surprising omission. Pierre-Gaspard
Chaumette, a likely atheist, does not appear in Maréchal’s list, despite working closely with
Maréchal on the Revolutions de Paris and Maréchal acknowledging Chaumette in his atheistic
work, Contre Dieu. The exclusion of Chaumette from the list of revolutionary atheists in
Dictionnaire des athées anciens et modernes seems inexplicable. It could be that Maréchal
suspected that Chaumette was not truly an atheist—Chaumette did deemphasize the atheism of
the Cult of Reason at the height of accusations against him. Hébert, however, did the same, and
Maréchal still labeled him an atheist despite Hébert’s public denial. Chaumette may have shifted
his political focus from atheism in light of the hostility of the Jacobins, but never denied
unbelief. It seems more likely that Maréchal simply did not want to chance inadvertently
smearing his friend’s memory. Despite Maréchal’s relative success at being a public atheist,
nothing had really changed, and listing Chaumette in his Dictionnaire in 1800 could have been
seen by others as tarnishing Chaumette’s contributions to the Revolution. At the immediate end
of the French Revolution, the improved social and political status of the atheist that existed
during the dechristianization period had vanished. Maréchal was all that remained.
Maréchal’s Dictionnaire des athées anciens et modernes creates more questions about
atheism than it answers, especially in regard to who was and who was not an atheist during the
eighteenth century, and especially during the French Revolution. Nonetheless, it marks the end
of a watershed period in the history of atheism. Sylvain Maréchal was the last of the great French
Revolution atheists—the first atheists to actively and openly participate in public affairs in
other leaders of the notorious Common of Paris. A Deist poet, Hébert converted to atheism and cried, ‘I do not want
a God that would banish Hébert.’” Ibid., 114.
240
European history. Their impact on the French Revolution was limited, but their position in the
development of atheism is astounding, especially in light of how little attention they have
received from historians, or even their philosophical descendants. Maréchal represented the true,
modern atheist—a man who denied belief in God, and actively accepted that state of being as a
part of his identity, who openly shared his atheism with anyone willing to read his works. This
unapologetic, public acceptance of a self-identity based on the absence of belief is what separates
the modern atheist from the pre-modern atheist, the skeptic, the agnostic, and the naturalistic
deist. That Maréchal was the first openly atheistic person to participate under his own name in
the public realm and survive the experience makes him the perfect representative for modern
atheism from the eighteenth century—more so than the deist Thomas Paine, or even the famed
Enlightenment atheists Denis Diderot and the Baron D’Holbach.
241
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Shane H. Hockin received his Bachelor of Science Degree in History and English in 1997
from Central Michigan University, and followed with a joint Masters of Art degree in 2000 from
both Central Michigan University and Strathclyde University in Glasgow, Scotland. His studies
and research focused on the relationship between religion, politics and science with a major in
Early-Modern England History, while minoring in Renaissance Italy and Modern Great Britain.
He then embarked on a six-year career in administration and grant management for the victim
services sections at the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association and the Florida Office of the
Attorney General. In 2006, he returned to complete a doctoral degree in History at Florida State
University. His research interests emphasize religion, atheism, politics, and culture in EarlyModern and Modern France, Britain, and the Atlantic World.
259