Cult of Reason
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The Cult of Reason (French: Culte de la Raison) was a creed based on secularism and atheism devised during the French Revolution by Jacques Hébert, Pierre Gaspard Chaumette and their supporters. In opposition, Maximilien Robespierre, a Deist, instituted the Cult of the Supreme Being.[1] The public shows and cultural propaganda of each need to be considered together for full understanding.
The culte de la Raison developed during the uncertain period 1792-94 (Years I and III of the Revolution), following the September Massacres, when Revolutionary France was beset with on all sides by the "Army of Princes" of the First Coalition. It was extinguished by Robespierre in the Reign of Terror. Several Parisian churches were transformed into Temples of Reason, notably the Church of Saint-Paul Saint-Louis in the Marais. The churches were closed in May 1793 and more securely, 24 November 1793, when the Catholic Mass was forbidden.
The Cult of Reason was celebrated in a carnival atmosphere of parades, ransacking of churches, ceremonious iconoclasm, in which religious and royal images were defaced, and ceremonies substituted the martyrs of the Revolution for the martyrs of the Church. The earliest public demonstrations took place en province, outside Paris, notably by hébertists in Lyon, but took a further radical turn with the Fête de la Liberté ("Festival of Liberty") at Notre Dame de Paris, 10 November (20 Brumaire) 1793, in ceremonies devised and organised by Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette (illustration, right). The Cult of Reason centered upon a young woman designated the Goddess of Reason.
Joseph Fouché, in the Nièvre and in Côte-d'Or organised comparable ceremonies. Similar events took place in Burgundy and in the present-day départements of Centre, the Paris basin, the Lyonnais, and northern Languedoc.
The Cult of Reason was intended to complement, in the religious sphere, the radical opposition of the enragés to Robespierre's political project. In particular, Chaumette and Hébert objected to Robespierre's emphasis on the Supreme Being as a back-handed return to theism, and instead advocated the worship of Reason, personified as a goddess. The Cult of Reason enjoyed a certain support among the sans-culottes before the persecution of the Hébertistes drove it underground. Both cults were the outcome of the "de-Christianization" of French society during the Revolution, and suffered during the Thermidorian Reaction and Napoleon Bonaparte's rapprochement with Roman Catholicism.
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- ^ War, Terror, and Resistance. Retrieved on Oct 31, 2006.
