Henri Grégoire

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Henri Grégoire

Henri Jean-Baptiste Grégoire , also called Abbé Grégoire (born December 4, 1750 in Vého , Lorraine , † May 20, 1831 in Paris ), was a French priest, bishop and politician at the time of the French Revolution . He became known not least because of the demand for the abolition of slavery .

Origin and political advancement

He was the son of a tailor and graduated from the Jesuit College in Nancy . In 1782 he became a priest, from 1783 until the Revolution he worked as a pastor in Emberménil .

At the beginning of the Revolution he was elected as a member of the Estates General by the clergy in the district ( Bailliage ) Nancy in 1789 . Also as a revolutionary politician who advocated the abolition of the privileges of the nobility and clergy, he was usually called Abbé Grégoire . In the Estates General he was soon a spokesman for the reform-oriented clergy in the tradition of Jansenist and Gallican ideas. As one of the first members of the clergy, he moved to the Third Estate , and the General Estates merged to form the National Assembly a little later . During the storm on the Bastille , he presided over the meeting of the assembly and spoke passionately against the nation's enemies.

Constitutional bishop

As a church politician, Grégoire supported the civil constitution of the clergy , which was passed by the National Assembly in 1790. The dioceses of the "constitutional church" aligned themselves with the borders of the newly created departments in the same year . Grégoire was elected to two departments and then decided on the Loir-et-Cher department . He accepted the traditional title of Bishop of Blois and was the first cleric to take the required oath on the civil constitution on December 27, 1790. Since these reforms against the will of the Pope's happened, it was in France at the schism between constitutional and romtreuer Church, the latter violent persecution was suspended. As a constitutional bishop , the Abbé Grégoire made a significant contribution to the organization of the church during the revolution. He also took on a leading role in the French national councils of 1797 and 1801.

Political demands

Abbé Grégoire was a member of the constituent national assembly . There he advocated the addition of a Declaration du droit des gens to the declaration of human and civil rights of August 26, 1789 , which was supposed to extend the principles of the French Revolution to all peoples. His proposal was based on the state of nature that existed between the nations and a general morality binding on them.

From 1792 to 1794 Grégoire was a member of the National Convention . Grégoire advocated the abolition of the monarchy and the condemnation of the king. He saw himself as a citizen of the world and was convinced that the abolition of the French kingdom was the first step towards the unification of all peoples. His position on the execution of Louis XVI. however, is controversial. He was absent at the time of the decisive vote; later he repeatedly protested that he had refused to execute the king. He strongly fought for an end to slavery in the colonies , which was abolished by the National Convention in 1794. Even in the run-up to the revolution he had advocated the emancipation of the Jews . In return, he demanded linguistic assimilation of the Jews (see the history of the Jews in France for more details ).

His radical stance to push back all regional and minority languages ​​deviating from the standard Parisian language is still controversial today . On June 4, 1794, he presented a report to the National Convention in which he called for the suppression of the "dialects" and the exclusive use of French. The accompanying measures ushered in long-term policies that led to the decline of regional languages, including Occitan .

Career after 1794

Even after the 9th Thermidor and the end of the radical phase of the revolution, Grégoire remained active as a politician. In 1795 he became a member of the Council of Five Hundred created by the new constitution . After the coup d'état of 18th Brumaire VIII (November 9, 1799) he became a member of the Corps Législatif and then in 1801 a member of the Senate . In the following years, Grégoire proved to be a political opponent of Napoleon Bonaparte and refused to accept the policy of reconciliation with the Holy See through the Concordat of 1801 . Grégoire then resigned his episcopate on October 8, 1801. Despite his criticism of the proclamation of the empire and the establishment of a Napoleonic nobility , he was appointed count and commander of the Legion of Honor .

Going into exile and later life

Later in the reign of Emperor Napoleon he went into exile in England and Germany. In 1814 he finally returned to France and did not give up his opposition to Napoleon even during the reign of the Hundred Days . During the time of the Restoration , Grégoire was again considered a revolutionary and a former schismatic bishop. He was expelled from the Institut de France and forced to withdraw into private life. As a political critic, however, he retained his influence. In 1818, the Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer wanted to appoint Henri Grégoire Bishop of Haiti, which, however, given his advanced age, he thankfully refused.

Towards the end of his life, Henri Grégoire was impoverished and forced to sell his library. His remains were transferred to the Panthéon in 1989 .

literature

  • Henri Grégoire: History of theophilanthropism from its origin to its extinction. Translated from the French, Hanover 1806 ( digitized in the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Digital Library)
  • Henri Grégoire: De la Traité et de l'esclavage des noirs et des blancs. Ergon, Paris 1815 ( digitized version )
  • Henri Grégoire: Mémoires . Paris 1837.
  • Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: The Abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism , University of California Press, Berkeley 2005. ISBN 978-0-520-24180-0 .
  • Rita Hermont-Belot: L'abbé Grégoire, la politique et la vérité , Seuil, Paris 2002. ISBN 2020374927 .
  • Ruth F. Necheles: The Abbé Grégoire, 1787–1831: The Odyssey of an Egalitarian , Greenwood, Westport, Conn. 1971. ISBN 0-8371-3312-2 .

Web links

Commons : Henri Grégoire  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In France - unlike the German term abbot - Abbé denotes a Catholic clergyman who does not occupy a higher rank in the hierarchy of the Church.
  2. ^ Günter Decker: The right to self-determination of nations , Göttingen 1955, p. 79.
  3. ^ Manfred Geyer: Enlightenment. The European project. Reinbek b. Hamburg 2012. p. 335
  4. ^ Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: The Abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism , University of California Press, Berkeley 2005. ISBN 978-0-520-24180-0 , pp. 125ff.
  5. ↑ Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: Grégoire et Haïti: un héritage compliqué . In: Outre-Mers. Revue d'histoire , vol. 2000, pp. 107–128, here p. 116.
personal data
SURNAME Grégoire, Henri
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grégoire, Henri Jean-Baptiste (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French priest, bishop and politician at the time of the French Revolution
DATE OF BIRTH 4th December 1750
PLACE OF BIRTH Vého , Lorraine
DATE OF DEATH May 20, 1831
Place of death Paris