Cult of the Supreme Being
The Cult of the Supreme Being ( French Culte de l'être suprême ) belonged like other revolutionary cults an ensemble civil religious festivals and beliefs during the French Revolution , which was to take the place of Christianity and Catholicism in particular in the social and political center. The de-Christianization was linked in a special way with the deistic cult of the highest being, which received official status at the instigation of Maximilien de Robespierre in the spring of 1794, but was given up again after his fall in the summer of the same year.
Belief content
The term Être suprême already appears in the preamble to the actual basic text of the French Revolution, the declaration of human and civil rights of August 26, 1789. The National Assembly made the declaration “en présence et sous les auspices de l'Être Suprême” (“ in the presence and under the protection of the very highest being ”). The term and its religious-philosophical content was rooted in the scientifically founded skepticism of the Enlightenment towards traditional creeds; the spectrum of this skepticism ranged from atheism to a rationalistic , deistic , no longer Christian piety, which also included the idea of a “supreme being” - the word “God” seemed inappropriate due to its attachment to the old forms of belief. The cult of the Supreme Being established in 1794 was combined with the rejection of atheism and the principle of religious freedom . He himself was based on deism, i.e. H. the conviction of the existence of a supreme, transcendent, personal being who created the world, and recognized the immortality of the soul. However, it had the character of a socio-political framework spirituality , which did not enter into formal competition with Catholicism, Protestantism or Judaism and rather embraced them or gave them a civil-religious expression and made them obsolete over time; the nature of the Supreme Being was neither defined nor was there any religious dogmatics . The aspects of this world remained in the foreground: The exercise of civic duties was understood as cult acts , it was intended that nature would always be celebrated together with the highest being. The concept of the highest being can still be found today in Freemasonry (see Almighty Builder of All Worlds ).
Introduction and lifting of the cult
The cult of the highest being was immediately preceded by the cult of reason , which was intended to counteract the continued existence of traditional piety in the popular veneration of revolutionary martyrs and was supported by the anti-clericals ( Hébertists ). However, the cult of reason met with broad resistance from the population from the start and Robespierre also spoke out in the Jacobin Club on November 21, 1793, expressly in favor of freedom of worship. Apart from his own beliefs, which could not be reconciled with the strongly atheistic cult of reason, he saw in the abolition of church services a political error that overlooked the emotional needs of the people and the number of enemies of the republic at home and abroad multiply. On December 6, 1793, the National Convention warned the freedom to practice religion, which it promised to uphold. However, nothing changed in the measures taken and the churches remained civil religious temples. The status quo did not end until the end of March 1794; after the persecution and execution of the Hébertists, the cult of reason was also suppressed.
At Robespierre's instigation, the cult of the Supreme Being was instituted by decree on May 7, 1794 and included as a celebration in the series of national festivals. The opening article of the decree clarified the deistic approach of the cult and the proximity to traditional piety: "Le peuple français reconnaît l'existence de l'Être suprême, et l'immortalité de l'âme." (“The French people recognize the existence of the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul.”) On June 8, 1794, Jacques-Louis David , the “State Director for Representation” inaugurated the meticulously planned “Festival of the Supreme Being” in Paris the new cult solemnly. Robespierre himself played the central role in this event. In the Tuileries he first spoke to the people and then lit a funeral pyre , whereupon a statue of atheism burned and from within revealed the statue of wisdom . The second, purely musical and religious part of the festival took place on the Field of Mars, where an artificial mountain with a freedom tree and a statue of the highest being was built on a pillar and the people swore an oath .
The cult and especially the ceremony met with considerable rejection and Robespierre were accused of exaggerating himself and turning away from his proverbial "incorruptibility". However, parts of the provincial population, especially in the south-east and west of France, also adopted the new cult. In addition, there were enthusiastic cult groups such as that of Suzette Labrousse or that of Catherine Théot , who Robespierre himself considered to be a Messiah of the Supreme Being.
After Robespierre's fall on 27/28 July 1794 ( 9th Thermidor ) the National Convention no longer continued the cult and decided on September 18 to separate church and state, including the abolition of all support services for any clergy. The religious policy of the French state remained unevenly repressive until Napoleon's compromise with the Catholic Church in the Concordat of 1801 . The cult of the Supreme Being, which disappeared almost immediately from mid-1794 without government support, had, in contrast to the competing cult of reason, no lasting effects and remained closely linked to the person of Robespierre and the criticism expressed at its introduction.
Boullée's architecture for the highest being
The cult's short existence prevented any permanent structural implementation of its world of ideas. Nevertheless there is an “imaginary architecture” that connects with the highest being. In 1781 , Étienne-Louis Boullée , later referred to as the “revolutionary architect”, designed a church building called Métropole , which was developed from basic geometric shapes and was explicitly intended for an Être suprême . Another draft, Monument destiné aux hommages dus à l'Être Suprême ("Monument intended for the worship owed to the highest being") was gigantic in size. In his Essai sur l'art , posthumed in 1799 , Boullée wrote:
“Un édifice destiné au culte de l'Être Suprême! Voilà certainement un sujet qui comporte des idées sublimes et auquel il est nécessaire que l'architecture imprime un caractèrei. »
“A building intended for the cult of the highest being! This is certainly a topic that brings with it sublime ideas and makes it necessary for the architecture to set an example. "
reception
Johann Strauss wrote the operetta Die Göttin der Vernunft based on this .
literature
- Mona Ozouf : La fête révolutionnaire. Gallimard, Paris 1976 ( Festivals and the French Revolution. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA et al. 1998, ISBN 0-674-29883-7 ).
- Albert Soboul : The Great French Revolution. Volume 2. Europäische Verlags-Anstalt, Frankfurt am Main 1973, p. 363 ff.
Web links
- Robespierre's speech to the National Convention and the cult decree of May 7, 1794 (French original) (19-03-2006)
- Protocol of the feast of June 8, 1794 (English translation) (19-03-2006)
- Doris Gretzel: French Revolution and Religion. From persecution to de-Christianization. The cult of the Supreme Being. (19-03-2006)
- Boullé's church architecture (19-03-2006)
- Frank Martin: Les peuples du monde rendant hommage a l'Etre supreme (PDF)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hans-Ulrich Thamer : The French Revolution (= Beck knowledge. ). 3. Edition. Beck, Munich 2009, p. 85.
- ↑ Gerd van den Heuvel : The concept of freedom of the French Revolution. Studies on revolutionary ideology. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1997, p. 211.