Robespierre and the Festival of the Supreme Being: The Search for a Republican Morality
2017; Oxford University Press; Volume: 31; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/fh/crx037
ISSN1477-4542
Autores Tópico(s)Political Theory and Influence
ResumoThe Festival of the Supreme Being on 8 June 1794—or 20 Prairial Year 2—has habitually been regarded as something of a sick, even hypocritical joke: a sterile, officially imposed celebration of the deity and the immortality of the soul taking place just as the ‘Terror’ was reaching its height. Historians have emphasized the dark irony that the guillotine was given the day off from its bloody work as the government subjected French citizens to carefully choreographed representations of republican and deistic values. Mona Ozouf, in her now classic work on revolutionary festivals, pointed out that in Paris the festival took place on the Champ de la Réunion (otherwise known as the Champ de Mars) on the western fringes of the capital, while the guillotine would shortly be moved eastwards, finishing up on the Place du Trône Renversé (or the Place de la Nation), as if the authorities were trying to avoid any topographical friction between the utopian aspirations of the Jacobin regime and its horrifying realities. Ozouf also wondered what drove the festival’s organizers, and Robespierre in particular: was it, she asked, a sincere attempt to reconcile the secular ideals of the Republic with Catholicism or, in doing so, merely a cynical ploy to bolster popular support for the regime? At the same time, attention has generally focussed on the great festival in the capital, where the formidable talents of Jacques-Louis David were deployed and where modern accounts often highlight the hostile grumbling of revolutionary politicians as they watched Maximilian Robespierre lead the celebrations. This episode is often used as a narrative device providing an early and retrospective warning of Thermidor: there is, most famously, the bitter remark, ‘it’s not enough for him to be the High Priest, he wants to play God!’
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