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La Saint-Henri en France (1821-1847). Quelques éléments sur la légitimité, le pouvoir et la sainteté entre l’enfance et l’exil

2009; Ecclesiastical History Society of France; Volume: 95; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1484/j.rhef.3.15

0048-7988

Éric Derennes,

Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis

From 1821 onwards, the traditionally religious feast-day of Saint Henry (Henry II, the eleventh-century German Emperor) was imported into the field of politics. The birth of the duke of Bordeaux, the miracle-child, conferred a new form of credibility, a new dynamism, on the restored monarchy. With this ‘new Henry’ (a reference to the popular and protecting ancestor, Henry IV), the regime could remake the bond between the monarchy and the French people, with the help of the church. The Revolution of 1830 ended this experience, leaving the feast-day of Saint Henry competing with that of Saint Philip (feast-day of the new king of the French) in the battleground of political legitimacy. Empty of religious belief, lacking in popular support, and above all an essentially political artifice, the feast of St Philip disappeared in February 1848. It only left a royalist sanctity that heralded the politico-religious ‘inseparability’ of Chambordism.