Cult of Reason

Culte de la Raison became dened by Jacques Hbert,

Antoine-Franois Momoro, Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette,
Joseph Fouch, and other radical revolutionaries. Jacques
Hbert gained a signicant degree of popularity after being arrested for attacks on Girondists. Upon his release
and with his newfound popularity, along with Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, Hbert founded the worship of Reason. Unlike Robespierres Cult of the Supreme Being,
Hberts cult rejected the existence of a deity. The cult
was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment and
anticlericalism.

The Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg turned into a Temple

of Reason.

The Cult of Reason (French: Culte de la Raison)a was

a belief system established in France and intended as a
replacement for Christianity during the French Revolu- Antoine-Franois Momoro (17561794)
tion.[1]

Origins

2 Philosophy
The Cult of Reason was explicitly anthropocentric. Its
goal was the perfection of mankind through the attainment of Truth and Liberty, and its guiding principle to
this goal was the exercise of the human faculty of Reason.
In the manner of conventional religion, it encouraged acts
of congregational worship and devotional displays to the
ideal of Reason.[2] A careful distinction was always drawn
between the rational respect of Reason and the venera-

Opposition to the Roman Catholic Church was integral

among the causes of the French Revolution, and this anticlericalism solidied into ocial government policy in
1792 after the First French Republic was declared. Most
of the dechristianisation of France was motivated by political and economic concerns, but philosophical alternatives to the Church developed gradually as well. Among
the growing heterodoxy, the structural concepts of the
1

3 REVOLUTIONARY IMPACT

tion of an idol: There is one thing that one must not

tire telling people, Momoro explained, Liberty, reason,
truth are only abstract beings. They are not gods, for
properly speaking, they are part of ourselves.[2]
The overarching theme of the Cult was summarized by
Anacharsis Clootz, who declared at the Festival of Reason that henceforward there would be one God only, Le
Peuple.[3] The Cult was intended as a civic religion inspired by the works of Rousseau, Quatremre de Quincy,
and Jacques-Louis David, it presented an explicit religion of man.[2]

ous campaign of dechristianisation. His methods were

brutal but ecient, and helped spread the developing
creed through many parts of France. In his jurisdictions, Fouch ordered all crosses and statues removed
from graveyards, and he gave the cult one of its elemental tenets when he decreed that all cemetery gates must
bear only one inscription Death is an eternal sleep.[6]
Fouch went so far as to declare a new civic religion of
his own, virtually interchangeable with what would become known as the Cult of Reason, at a ceremony he
dubbed the Feast of Brutus extquotedbl on 22 September 1793.[7]

Revolutionary impact

Adherence to the Cult of Reason became a dening attribute of the Hbertist faction. It was also pervasive
among the ranks of the sans-culottes. Numerous political
factions, anti-clerical groups and events only loosely connected to the cult have come to be amalgamated with its
name.[4] The earliest public demonstrations ranged from
wild masquerades redolent of earlier spring festivals to
outright persecutions, including ransackings of churches
and synagogues in which religious and royal images were
defaced.[5]
Fte de la Raison (Festival of Reason), Notre Dame, Paris.

3.2 Festival of Reason

Joseph Fouch (17591820)

The ocial nationwide Fte de la Raison, supervised

by Hbert and Momoro on 20 Brumaire, Year II (10
November 1793) came to epitomize the new republican way of religion. In ceremonies devised and organised by Chaumette, churches across France were transformed into modern Temples of Reason. The largest
ceremony of all was at the cathedral of Notre Dame in
Paris. The Christian altar was dismantled and an altar
to Liberty was installed and the inscription To Philosophy was carved in stone over the cathedrals doors.[2]
Festive girls in white Roman dress and tricolor sashes
milled around a costumed Goddess of Reason who impersonated Liberty.[8] To avoid statuary and idolatry,
the Goddess gures were portrayed by living women,[9]
and in Paris the role was played by Momoros own wife
Sophie, who is said to have dressed provocatively[10]
and, according to Thomas Carlyle, made one of the
best Goddesses of Reason; though her teeth were a little defective..[11]

Before his retirement, Georges Danton had warned

against dechristianizers and their rhetorical excesses,
but support for the Cult only increased in the zealous early
3.1 Joseph Fouch
years of the First Republic. By late 1793, it was conceivable that the Convention might accept the invitation to
As a military commander dispatched by the Jacobins to attend the Paris festival en masse, but the unshakeable openforce their new laws, Fouch led a particularly zeal- position of Maximilien Robespierre and others like him

3
prevented it from becoming an ocial aair.[12] Undeterred, Chaumette and Hbert proudly led a sizable delegation of deputies to Notre Dame.[13]

Reaction

implications in English; its proponents intended it to

be a universal congregation.

7 References
[1] Fremont-Barnes, p. 119.
[2] Kennedy, p. 343.
[3] Carlyle, p. 375.
[4] Kennedy, p. 343: The Festival of Reason... has come to
symbolize the Parisian de-Christianization movement.
[5] Goldstein, p.XX.

Inscription on church at Ivry-la-Bataille.

Many contemporary accounts reported the Festival of

Reason as a lurid, licentious aair of scandalous
depravities,[14] although some scholars have disputed
their veracity.[15] These accounts, real or embellished,
galvanized anti-revolutionary forces and even caused
many dedicated Jacobins like Robespierre to publicly
separate themselves from the radical faction.[16] Robespierre particularly scorned the Cult and denounced the
festivals as ridiculous farces.[13]
In the spring of 1794, the Cult of Reason was faced with
ocial repudiation when Robespierre, nearing complete
dictatorial power during the Reign of Terror, announced
his own establishment of a new, deistic religion for the
Republic, the Cult of the Supreme Being.[17] Robespierre
denounced the Hbertistes on various philosophical and
political grounds, specically rejecting their perceived
atheism. When Hbert, Momoro, Ronsin, Vincent and
others were sent to the guillotine on 4 Germinal, Year
II (24 March 1794), the cult lost its most inuential
leadership; when Chaumette and other Hbertistes followed them four days later, the Cult of Reason eectively ceased to exist. Both cults were ocially banned
by Napoleon Bonaparte with his Law on Cults of 18 Germinal, Year X.[18]

See also
Cult of the Supreme Being
Dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution
Religion of Humanity

Notes
^ a: The word cult in French means a form of
worship, without any of its negative or exclusivist

[6] Doyle, p. 259: Fouch declared in a manifesto... graveyards should exhibit no religious symbols, and at the gate
of each would be an inscription proclaiming 'Death is an
eternal sleep'.
[7] Doyle, p. 259: extquotedbl[Fouch ] inaugurated a civic
religion of his own devising with a 'Feast of Brutus on 22
September at which he denounced 'religious sophistry'.
[8] Palmer, p. 119.
[9] Kennedy, p. 343: A 'beautiful woman' was chosen to
represent Reason and Liberty, rather than a statue, so that
she would not become an idol.
[10] Scurr, p. 267.
[11] Carlyle, p. 379.
[12] Schama, pp. 778779.
[13] Schama, pp. 778.
[14] Kennedy, p. 344: The Festival of Reason in Notre Dame
left no impression of rationality on the memories of contemporary observers.... [I]t was evident that the Festival
of Reason was a scandal.
[15] Ozouf, pp.100.
[16] Kennedy, p. 344: extquotedbl...tales of its raucousness
may have contributed to Robespierres opposition to deChristianization in December 1793.
[17] extquotedblWar, Terror, and Resistance extquotedbl.
Center for History and New Media, George Mason University. Retrieved 28 July 2012.
[18] Doyle, p. 389.

7.1 Bibliography
Carlyle, Thomas (1838) [1837]. The French Revolution: A History II. Boston, MA: Little & Brown.
OCLC 559080788.
Doyle, William (1989). The Oxford History of the
French Revolution. Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19822781-7.

7
Fremont-Barnes, Gregory (2007). Encyclopedia of
the Age of Political Revolutions and New Ideologies, 17601815. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-31333445-5.
Goldstein, Morris (2007). Thus Religion Grows
The Story of Judaism. Pierides Press. ISBN 1-40677349-2.
Kennedy, Emmet (1989). A Cultural History of the
French Revolution. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300-04426-7.
Ozouf, Mona (1988). Festivals and the French Revolution. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-67429884-5.
Palmer, R.R. (1969) [1941]. Twelve Who Ruled.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN
0691051194.
Schama, Simon (1989). Citizens: A Chronicle of
the French Revolution. New York: Vintage. ISBN
0679726101.
Scurr, Ruth (1989). Fatal Purity: Robespierre
and the French Revolution.
Vintage.
ISBN
9780099458982.

REFERENCES

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