Regenerating France, regenerating the world : the abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution, 1750-1831

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REGENERATING FRANCE, REGENERATING THE WORLD: THE ABB£ GRfiGOIRE AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 1750 - 1831

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Alyssa Rachel Goldstein Sepinwall May 1998

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UMI Number: 9901602

Copyright 1998 by Sepinwall, Alyssa Rachel Goldstein All rights reserved.

UMI Microform 9901602 Copyright 1998, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

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I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Keith Michael Baker, Principal Advisor

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Aron Rodrigu

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Louise Roberts

Approved for the University Committee on G raduate Studies

U&4&IU-

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ABSTRACT The abbe Henri Gregoire has been creating controversy around the world for over two hundred years. This dissertation focuses on Gregoire — and debates about him —as a way of shedding light on the origins of the French Revolution, its course and radicalization, and its global legacy. It analyzes his vision for "regenerating" (remaking or improving) Jews and speakers of regional dialects in France, and men and women of color throughout the rest of the world, from Haiti to India. It also examines the ways in which members of these groups reacted to Gregoire’s plans. The first section of the dissertation investigates the origins of Gregoire's notion of regeneration in order to trace some of the intellectual inspirations for the French Revolution and its universalism. Chapters One and Two look at the multiplicity of Gregoire's prerevolutionary intellectual affinities, including secular, Catholic, and Protestant ones. These chapters focus particularly on the nexus between Enlightenment and religion, and on Gregoire's efforts to remake peasants and the Church. Chapter Three analyzes the paradoxes of Gregoire's advocacy in the 1780's of a "physical, moral and political regeneration" for Jews. Even as Gregoire denounced persecution of the Jews, he was also quite critical of them, and backed away from the more sympathetic views of other eighteenth-century reformers. The next section deals with Gregoire's participation in the French Revolution. Though the Revolution and Christianity have come to be thought of as opposing forces, Chapters Four and Five remind us that the Revolution could initally be seen as implementing the Gospels. These chapters also explore the contradictions of revolutionary universalism; even as Gregoire and his colleagues called for a universal regeneration of the whole country, they targeted for special regeneration groups who were

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V

deemed to be more degenerate than others (especially slaves, Jews, and dialect-speakers). This section also traces the transformation of "regeneration" from a discourse of unity and utopia to one of division as Gregoire invoked scapegoats (especially nobles, conservative priests, and women) to explain the failures of the Revolution. Finally, it examines Gregoire's efforts to create a sort of "cultural revolution." The final section examines the legacy of republicanism in the wake of the Terror, and the links between the Revolution and colonialism. Chapter Six analyzes the efforts of Gregoire and various colleagues to ensure the continuing viability of republicanism by creating a new social science, rebuilding the tattered Church, and strengthening the ties between France and its colonies. It suggests that Gregoire and his friends, while all abolitionists, created new justifications for colonialism at a moment when it could have been abandoned. Chapters Seven and Eight complicate the depiction of Gregoire as a "liberator" of the oppressed. Chapter Seven focuses on his relationship with Haitian leaders during the first decades of the nineteenth century. Though Gregoire was acclaimed by Haitian elites as their only European friend, and though they adopted "regeneration" as their slogan of national development, the chapter suggests that his universalism was more complicated than it appeared. Chapter Eight analyzes two of Gregoire's most substantial but neglected works, showing that Gregoire's discussions of oppressed peoples served largely as forums for asserting the superiority of Catholicism over all other religions. His discussions of marginalized peoples gave them tools for empowering themselves, but also suggested that they needed to abandon their cultural particularities —and to become Catholic —in order to be regenerated.

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vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

When the abbe Gregoire published his implicitly antislavery w ork De la litterature des negres in 1808, critics from Thomas Jefferson to Napoleonic

journalists attacked the book’s "negrophilic" perspective.1 Alongside this criticism of the book came a more unusual one: that the length of Gregoire's acknowledgments (naming no less than 177 individuals) was excessive.2 Though I have not always identified with the abbe in writing this study, I cannot fail to do so on this point. For, like Gregoire's, my work w ould have been impossible without the aid of numerous colleagues and friends. In enumerating my debt to them, I hope my readers will be more forgiving than his, understanding that a shorter list would be a mark of ingratitude. I have been extremely fortunate at Stanford to work with a group of scholars who have made my studies both challenging and enjoyable. Keith Michael Baker has been a model teacher, supervisor, and mentor, intellectually demanding yet also kind and supportive. His deeply analytical m ind helped me solve countless conceptual quandaries, and his meticulous reading of drafts helped me immeasurably. Aron Rodrigue, my virtual second advisor, first suggested a dissertation on Gregoire to me, and did not give up on me while I considered it a terrible idea. Pushing me to pose "big questions," he guided me through the peaks and valleys of the writing 1

2

For a good survey of the reception of this work, see Jean-Franqois Briere, "Introduction," in On the Cultural Achievements of Negroes [translation of De la litterature des negres], ed. Thomas Cassirer and Jean-Franqois Briere (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), xli - xlvi. For Jefferson's views on the work, see Jefferson to Joel Barlow, October 8, 1809, in Paul Ford, ed., The Works o f Thomas Jefferson, 12 vols. (New York: G. M. Putnam’s Sons, 1904-5), 11: 99 -100. See for example "A.", "Varietes,” Journal de I 'Empire, 20 octobre 1808, 1-3; and [F. R. de Tussac], Cri des Colons contre un ouvrage de M . L 'tvequ e et Senateur Gregoire, ayant pour titre De la litteratu re des Negres, ou Refutation des inculpations calomnieuses faites aux colons par I'auteur, et par les autres philosophes negrophiles, tels que Raynal, Valmont de Bomare, etc (Paris: Delaunay, 1810), 1.

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process with humor and enthusiasm. Mary Louise Roberts opened up new worlds of study to me with her teaching, and offered invaluable suggestions about how to reconceptualize my arguments and make this project better. I also have benefited at various times from the advice and encouragement of Carolyn Lougee, Paula Findlen, Peter Stansky, Brad Gregory, James Sheehan, Paul Robinson, and Steven Zipperstein. Richard Roberts, Joel Beinin, and the members of the Empires and Cultures Workshop helped transform my understanding of identity issues and colonialism. I have been doubly lucky to get to know an extraordinary group of visiting scholars in my field who became my friends as well as unparalleled interlocutors on all matters French. Colin Jones helped launch this project in its most embryonic stages, while Dena Goodman helped sharpen m y analyses of gender and of "civilization" in Gregoire’s thought. Joe Zizek proved an ideal reader of drafts, and freely shared his own thoughts-in-progress on revolutionary culture. Several other scholars offered invaluable assistance. My undergraduate mentors, Alan C. Kors, William F. Harris n, and Alfred J. Rieber, gave me an excellent foundation for my research career. Frances Malino graciously read my first graduate-school essay, and helped me decide how to transform it into a larger project. Dale Van Kley and David A. Bell were priceless resources from the time I left for France until my final stages of editing. While Van Kley shared with me the fruits of his long study of eighteenth-century religious thought (any errors in understanding of which remain mine!), Bell helped me refine some of my most complicated arguments and prodded me to tackle the most tangled questions in revolutionary history, even if my answers were only preliminary. Francois Furet offered encouragement at a crucial moment during my research and

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helped me hammer out exactly what the scope of my study of Gregoire would be. My decision to attempt an analysis of Gregoire's entire career instead of focusing on his later years, as I had begun to think I should, is largely due to his urging. Others who offered important research suggestions include Patrice Guennifey, Nancy Green, Dominique Julia, and Pierre Boulle. I have been helped equally by other graduate students and friends, at Stanford and beyond. Jennifer Heuer has been an ideal companion and most valued critic throughout the research and writing process, from Strasbourg to cyberspace. Stephanie Brown and Gregory S. Brown eased my transition to Paris, while discussions with Dan Colman transformed Chapter Six. Chiara Cherubini, Timothy Brown, Lara Moore, Gillian Weiss, James Chokey, Christophe Lecuyer, J. B. Shank, Steve Schloesser, Eric Oberle, Jonah Sinowitz, Erica Peters, Stewart King and my fellow Dissertation Fellows at the Stanford Institute for Research on Women and Gender offered advice and support at various stages of this project, as did my friends, siblings, in-laws, and entire extended family. Though they do not know it, John Starks and the New York Knicks served as my vicarious partners in the struggle towards perfection, as elusive as that goal remained for us. During my research in France, Virginie Munduteguy became my faithful friend and partner in deciphering Gregoire's handwriting, sharing archival finds along with adventures Gregoire. Dominique Rogers repeatedly offered me hospitality, along with her expert opinion on matters of Catholicism, race, and Haitian history. Michelle Bubenicek smoothed my way through the Archives nationales, and her family welcomed me as one of their own during my research in Nancy, as did the Hochner family in Strasbourg. I was also lucky to meet Paul Cohen, Denise Davidson, Jenny Sartori, Kelly Mulroney, Seth Schulman, Kathy Calley Galitz, Jane Becker,

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Steven Jaron, Nadia Malinovich, Jean-Paul El Medioni, and Stephane Amsalem. Along with my voisins extraordinaires at the Fondation des £tatsUnis, they enabled me to have a life beyond Gregoire's in Paris. During the "conference phase" of my research, I received excellent counsel from people too numerous to list. My thanks go to Andrew Aisenberg, Marcel Dorigny, Lynn Hunt, Hans-Jiirgen Lusebrink, John Markoff, Kenneth Margerison, Karen Offen, Jeremy Popkin, Richard Popkin, Peter Sahlins, and all those who offered helpful suggestions at the Stanford Empires & Cultures Colloquium in 1996; the Clark Library Conference on the Abbe Gregoire, the Western Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the Society for French Historical Studies, and the Stanford European History Workshop, in 1997; and the International Workshop on Imperialism and Identity at Berkeley in 1998. Like the abbe Gregoire, I also recognize that, without librarians and archivists, historical research would be impossible. At Stanford, I benefited from the extraordinary helpfulness of the entire staff of Green Library, who made Green my home away from home. I owe special thanks to the Privileges Division for cheerfully helping me cope with the Accident of '96 and the Flood of '98; and to Roger Kohn, Sonia Moss, and Mary Jane Parrine for buying or borrowing nearly anything I could desire. Among the numerous librarians who assisted me elsewhere, there are a few whom I must single out. Exceptional assistance was provided by Philippe Landau and Jean-Marc Levy at the archives of the Consistoire central des Israelites de France; Jean-Yves Mariotte at the Archives municipales de Strasbourg; Mile. Francois at the Bibliotheque municipale de Nancy (the same library where Gregoire was so often helped as a young man); Monique Rabault of the Archives departementales de Loir-et-Cher, who opened her

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X

home to me as well as the archives; Diana Lachatanere and Andre Elizee of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Roy Goodman of the American Philosophical Society; and the staffs of Cornell University's Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections and Indiana University's Lilly Library, for enabling me to consult materials from their collections from a distance. My most profound thanks go to Mme. Helene Grizot of the Bibliotheque de la Societe de Port-Royal, whose efforts to help the researchers in her charge far exceeded anyone's expectations. Even during a major greve, she ensured that I was able to complete my research speedily and efficiently. Generous financial assistance for this project was received from the Stanford University History Department, the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences Graduate Research Opportunities Fund, the Mellon Foundation, the Harris Fund, the Weter Fund, the Newhouse Grants in Jewish Studies, and the Stanford Institute for Research on Women and Gender. There are several scholars to whom I owe a debt far beyond w hat is evident in my footnotes. I have often found myself following trails which Ruth Necheles and Rita Hermon-Belot blazed; Necheles’ bibliography in particular served as a road map for my time in France. At the Arsenal, I was thrilled to discover S. Posener’s nearly exhaustive, unpublished critical bibliography of Gregoire's printed works, which had been donated by Paul Grunebaum-Ballin and which saved me untold amounts of time. I am also grateful to the editors of Gregoire’s Oeuvres for making a portion of Gregoire's writings much more accessible. Finally, Guichard Parris served as a great inspiration as I labored to complete this study. Though other responsibilities in life and his career in the civil rights movement prevented him from completing the doctorate on Gregoire he began at Columbia in the 1930's, he thoughtfully left his notes to the public at the Schomburg Center

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upon his death and thus enabled me to discover a number of older sources which I might otherwise have overlooked. Less direct but no less important inspirations in this project were the students I taught at the Hodayot Youth Village and the neighbors amongst whom I lived in Ramat Eliahu (Rishon Lezion), Israel, in 1991-2. While teaching me a great deal about friendship, they made me aware of how urgent it is for democratic societies to find ways to deal w ith differences of race, religion, language and gender among their citizenries. Where Gregoire saw diversity as an obstacle to overcome, m y students and neighbors (whose origins ranged from Addis Ababa to Bombay, from Ukraine to Yemen) reminded me how much we lose when we treat difference as something to be erased. My greatest debt is to three individuals: Jerry and Harriet Lipman Sepinwall, and Steven Goldstein. From my earliest years, my parents instilled in me a love for learning and a conviction that life should be lived in pursuit of knowledge and social justice, instead of material gain. Their encouragement and unfailing curiosity about my work sustained me throughout my years of study, and I owe them more than I can say. My husband lived with this project more than anyone else, and ensured my sanity and happiness while I pursued it. His patience, love and comic talents - not to mention his willingness to play second fiddle to a longdeceased bishop —never ceased to amaze me, and ensured that, even as I wrote alone, I always knew I was not.

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xii CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS INTRODUCTION

vi xiv 1

Chapters 1. FROM TAILOR'S SON TO ENLIGHTENED ABB£ Preparing for a Life in the Church Intellectual Life in Enlightenment Nancy The Philanthropes of Strasbourg

12 18 30 35

2. THE BON CURfr OF EMBERMfiNIL Enlightened Religion: Improving the Peasants Fellow Travelers: The Oberlins, Lavater, and Social Change Richerism and Restructuring the Church

51 52 58 68

3. THE ESSAI ON THE JEWS: ROOTS OF REGENERATION ON THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION Regeneration: A Linguistic History Context of the Essai: Gregoire and His Predecessors A Physical, Moral and Political Regeneration of the Jews The Cure Goes National

82 83 87 94 105

4. REGENERATING THE NATION, REGENERATING ITS PARTS (1789 - 1792) A Religious Regeneration, a Christian Revolution A Universal Regeneration? Implementing the Revolution in Loir-et-Cher Regeneration through Christianity Regeneration through Patriotism The Gender Politics of Regeneration

109 115 120 131 137 141 146

5. REGENERATING THE NATION, ELIMINATING ITS ENEMIES (1792 - 1794) Smash the Monarchy and Spread the Revolution Frustration En Mission Gregoire, Terrorist Regenerating Hearts and Minds Towards Thermidor

156 158 166 174 182 197

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xiii 6. OVERCOMING THE TERROR: SOCIAL SCIENCE, CHURCH, AND COLONIES (1794 - 1801) Towards a Social Science: The Institut national The Cement of Society: The Gallican Church Regrounding Empire: The Am is des Noirs et des Colonies The Failure of the Republic: A Retreat to the Past?

204 211 223 241 256

7. REGENERATING THE NEW WORLD: THE COLONIAL LABORATORY IN HAITI (1814 -1827) A Laboratory for Republicanism Gregoire, Clarkson and the Northern Monarchy Gregoire and the Republic of the South Hai'tiens, Adieu! The Limits of Gregoire's Universalism

262 266 273 278 294 296

8. CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS AND THE UNIVERSAL HUMAN FAMILY (1800 - 1831) The Histoire des sectes religieuses The Danger of Irreligion, from Voltaire to Kant Rebuilding the Christian Family Jews and Moslems Limiting the Influence of Women in Religion Christianity and Difference: The De Vinfluence Corpus Christianity and Slavery in the Ancient World Saving the M alheureux in the M odem World

304 306 309 314 320 330 333 335 337

CONCLUSION

350

APPENDIX (to Chapter Eight) Bibliographic notation for BSPR-G, Rev. 177

358

BIBLIOGRAPHY

361

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xiv UST OF ABBREVIATIONS ADLC

Archives departementales de Loir-et-Cher (Blois).

AMS-O

Archives municipales de Strasbourg (Fonds Jean-Frederic Oberlin).

AN

Archives nationales.

AP

Archives parlementaires de 1787 a 1860, premiere serie (1787 d 1799). Ed. M. J. Mavidal and M. E. Laurent. 99 vols

to date. Paris: Librairie administrative de Paul Dupont, 1862 - pres. Ars.

Bibliotheque de 1'Arsenal.

BHVP

Bibliotheque historique de la ville de Paris.

BM Nancy

Bibliotheque municipale de Nancy.

BN BN NAF BN All.

Bibliotheque nationale. BN, nouvelles acquisitions fran^aises. BN, fonds allemands.

BSPR BSPR-G

Bibliotheque de la Societe de Port-Royal. BSPR, Collection Gregoire.1

Cosson

Henri Cosson. "Lettres de l'abbe Gregoire a l'abbe Jennat." Revolution frangaise, no. 1/3 (1935): 70 - 89, 247 - 277

[originals at BM Nancy, Ms. 1688]. G uillaum e

James Guillaume, ed. Proces-verbaux du Comite d ’instruction publique de la Convention nationale. 6 vols.

Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1891 - 1907.

While I was conducting my research at the BSPR in 1995-6, the organization of the portion of Gregoire manuscripts arranged by department name was changing. So that the documents will be more easily located by readers who wish to consult them, I am giving only the folder name and omitting the name of the carton in which these folders used to be. For documents which were in non-departmental subject cartons (e.g. "Presbytere de Paris"), I will use the name of the carton in which I found them during my research.

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XV

Histoire 1810

Henri Gregoire. Histoire des sectes religieuses qui, depuis le commencement du siecle dernier ju sq u ’d I'epoque actuelle, sont nees, se sont modifiees, se sont eteintes dans les quatre parties du monde. 1st edition. 2 vols. Paris:

Potey, 1810. Copy in Special Collections, Green Library, Stanford University, ex libris University of Vilna.2 Histoire 1828

Henri Gregoire. Histoire des sectes religieuses qui sont nees, se sont modifiees, se sont eteintes dans les differentes contrees du globe, depuis le commencement du siecle dernier jusqu'd I ’epoque actuelle. Nouvelle edition, corrigee et considerablement augmentee. 6 vols.

Paris: Baudouin, 1828 - 1845. M em oires

Memoires de l ’abbe Gregoire. Ed. J. M. Leniaud and

preface by J. N. Jeanneney. Paris: Editions de Sante, 1989. M emoires (1840)

Memoires de Gregoire, ancien eveque de Blois. Ed.

Hippolyte Carnot. 2 vols. Paris: J. Yonet, 1840. M o n ite u r

Gazette nationale, ou, le M oniteur universel (Paris).

Posener

"Essai d'une bibliographic critique des oeuvres de l'abbe Gregoire" (Paris, 1946). Typescript by S. Posener, with ms. annotations by Paul Grunebaum-Ballin. Bibliotheque de 1'Arsenal, Ms. 14045.

SANC

Societe des Amis des Noirs et des Colonies.

SPC

Societe de philosophie chretienne.

SPS

Societe des Philantropes de Strasbourg.

As I explain in Chapter Eight, because the book was censored immediately after publication, this is an extremely rare edition. Its page numbers are identical to the better-known edition which was distributed after the ban was removed in 1814.

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xvi

O you, the idol of France, Zealous defender of its rights . . . —Ignace Kolly, 1790 The name of the abbe Gregoire will be the indignation of all centuries. God has already effaced him from the book of life. In the great day of celestial vengeance, his name will be joined to the list of the greatest villains. —Abbe Jean Maury, c. 1818 The abbe Gregoire, emancipator, and . . . Drumont, the fierce anti-Semite, are nearly identical---—Pierre Bimbaum, 1989 [Gregoire's] message —a passionate appeal for the unity of mankind —is still as profoundly relevant today as it was two hundred years ago, and it will remain so for as long as racism exists in the world. —T. Cassirer/J.-F. Briere, 1996

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1 INTRODUCTION The abbe Henri-Baptiste Gregoire has been stirring up controversy around the world for over two hundred years. Gregoire presents a series of apparent paradoxes: he was priest and revolutionary, scholarly historian and impetuous demagogue, champion of Jewish citizenship and would-be missionary, fighter for the abolition of slavery and proponent of "philanthropic colonization." During his six decades of public life, other causes in which he was involved included, but were hardly limited to, smashing the monarchy; spreading French and eradicating other dialects spoken in France; preserving historic buildings and creating public libraries; removing prejudices against Native Americans and Hindus; rooting out heterodox views from the Catholic Church; and convincing non-Westem peoples to become Christians. Since his remains were placed in the Pantheon in 1989, the revolutionary abbe has ignited particularly intense debates, especially in France. Recent scholarship has ranged from celebrating him as the prophet of a liberal Catholicism relevant for the 1990's to calling him no different from the crudest anti-Semite.1 Why has there been so much debate about and resurgent interest in a once-forgotten Frenchman? As Dale Van Kley has noted, "No biography potentially embodies the French Revolution more fully than that of the abbe Henri Gregoire."2 Gregoire seems to personify so many of the contradictions of the Revolution and of the legacy it left to m odem France. Many of the 1

2

For an example of the first tendency, see Georges Hourdin, L'abbe Gregoire: tvequ e et democrate (Paris: Descle de Brouver, 1989), 19 ("He didn't just teach his parishioners the truths of the Gospel; he gave them an example"). For the latter formulation, see Pierre Bimbaum, "Sur l etatisation revolutionnaire. L’abbe Gregoire et le destin de l’identite juive," Le Debat, no. 53 (1989): 162 (cited in the epigraph to this dissertation). Unless otherwise noted, all translations in this dissertation are my own. Van Kley, review of L'abbe Gregoire, by Bernard Plongeron, Catholic Historical Review 78 (1992): 669.

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2 issues with which he was involved during his life continue to inspire debate around the world. Yet despite his extraordinary career, no full-scale scholarly work on Gregoire exists. An unusually large number of articles on particular facets of his work has appeared in recent years,3 as have a crop of popular biographies,4 reprints of his works,5 translations6 and even an exhibition catalog.7 These See for example Tim Parke, "The Abb£ Gregoire and the Mother-Tongue Debate, 1789 1794," M odem and Contemporary France 38 (1989): 26 - 33; M. Patricia Dougherty, "Constitutional Bishops and the Catholic Press during the Early July Monarchy: Gregoire and Talleyrand," Proceedings o f the A nnual M eeting o f the Western Society for French History 17 (1990): 305-14; and Rita Hermon-Belot, "L’abbe Gregoire et la conversion des Juifs," in Les Juifs et la Revolution franqaise : histoire et mentalites: actes du colloque tenu au College de France et a I (.cole normale superieure, les 16, 17 et 18 mai 1989, ed. Evelyne Oliel-Grausz and Mireille Hadas-Lebel (Louvain: E. Peeters,

1992), 21-7. An excellent series of conference papers on various aspects of Gregoire's work, from his autobiography to his interest in autodidacts, was presented at the Clark Library Conference on the Abbe Gregoire, Los Angeles, CA, February 1997 (henceforth "Clark Library Conference”). I refer to other recent articles on Gregoire in the course of this dissertation. The list of popular or biographical articles published on Gregoire in the wake of the Bicentennial is too extensive to give here. See for example Maurice Ezran, L'Abbe Gregoire, defenseur des Juifs et des Noirs: Revolution et tolerance (Paris: Harmattan, 1992); Antoine Sutter, Les annees de jeunesse de l'abbe Gregoire: son itineraire jusqu'au debut de la Revolution (Sarreguemines: Editions Pierron, 1992); Pierre Fauchon, L'Abbe Gregoire: le pretre-citoyen (Paris: Nouvelle republique, 1989); Hourdin; and Michel Lagree and Francis Orhant, Gregoire et Cathelineau, ou, La dechirure (Paris: Editions Ouvrieres, 1988). The renowned religious historian Bernard Plongeron also published a collection of short essays on Gregoire as L'abbe Gregoire, ou, I'arche de la fra tem ite (Paris: Letouzey et Ane, 1989). The reprinted works include Oeuvres de I'Abbe Gregoire (Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus-Thomson Organization, 1977; henceforth "Oeuvres"); two versions of his Essai sur la regeneration physique, morale et politique des Juifs (ed. Rita Hermon-Belot [Paris: Flammarion, 1988], and ed. Robert Badinter [Paris: Stock, 1988]); L ’abbe Gregoire, eveque des Lumieres, ed. Frank Paul Bowman (Paris: Editions France-Empire, 1988) [a collection of reprinted Gregoire pamphlets]; Memoires de l'abbe Gregoire, ed. J. M. Leniaud and preface by J. N. Jeanneney (Paris: Editions de Sante, 1989; this edition will henceforth be referred to as "Memoires"); Les Ruines de Port-Royal des Champs, ed. Hermon-Belot (Paris: Reunion des musees nationaux, 1995); Rapport sur la necessite et les moyens d'aneantir les patois et d'universaliser Vusage de la langue franqaise; et Essai historique et patriotique sur les arbres de la liberte, par I'Abbe Henri Gregoire; preface de Jean-Paul Creissac; presentation de Philippe Gardy (Nunes: C. Lacour, Arts et traditions rurales, 1995); and De la noblesse de la peau, ou du prejuge des blancs contre la couleur des Africains et celle de leurs descendants noirs et sang-meles, preface by

Jacques Prunair (Grenoble: Editions Jerome Millon, 19%). There have also been many recent efforts to publish certain Gregoire letters for the first time, such as Jacques M. Gres-Gayer, "Four Letters from Henri Gregoire to John Carroll, 1809 - 1814," Catholic Historical Review 79, no. 4 (1993): 681 - 703.

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3 works have yet to examine Gregoire's work and career as a whole in any sustained way, however; even the best existing study, that done in 1971 by Ruth Necheles, focuses on only one aspect of his career, his interest in blacks and Jews.8 This existing scholarship offers a series of non-intersecting Gregoires —the egalitarian friend of Jews and blacks, the ruthlessly homogenizing Jacobin, the cautious Christian republican. No study has yet placed the range of Gregoire's interests and activities —from Africans to Anabaptists, from building libraries to draining swamps —in relation to each other. To the extent possible given Gregoire's enormous output (over four hundred published essays, discourses and books, not to mention a voluminous correspondence) and the length of this study, this dissertation will thus aim to examine how the various parts of Gregoire's life's work were linked. Though the study centers on Gregoire, it will not, however, be a traditional biography. Even as biography seems to be the most popular genre

See the two English translations of Gregoire’s De la litterature des negres: On the Cultural Achievements of Negroes, trans. Thomas Cassirer and Jean-Franqois Briere (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), xv - xlviii; and An Enquiry Concerning the Intellectual and Moral Faculties and Literature of Negroes, ed. Graham Russell Hodges, trans. David Bailie Warden (Armonk, NY/London: M. E. Sharpe, 1997) [a reprint of an 1810 translation]. Guichard Parris, whom I mentioned in my acknowledgments, also worked on a translation of De la litterature, though he never found a publisher. See Guichard Parris Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, MG 31; and my "French Abolitionism with an American Accent," review of Cassirer/Briere translation of De la litterature des negres. H-France, H-Net Reviews, January 1998 [URL: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi? path=3438887056586]. See also the Hebrew translation of Gregoire’s Essai sur la regeneration physique, morale, et politique des Juifs, ed. and with preface by Yerachmiel (Richard) Cohen (Masa al ha-tehiya ha-fisit, ha-mosrit, v'ha-m 'dinit shel ha-yehudim [Jerusalem: Mercaz Dinur, 1989]). L'abbe Gregoire, revolutionnaire de la tolerance. Exposition Nancy 1989/Exposition Blois 1989/L'abbe Gregoire, 1750-1831. Exposition, 20 mai - 31 aout 1989, Musee lorrain a Nancy, 7 octobre - 1 9 novembre 1989, Chateau de Blois. Texte biographique de Richard Figuier ([Nancy/Blois]: Conseil general de Meurthe-et-Moselle et Conseil

general de Loir-et-Cher, 1989). Ruth Necheles, The Abbe Gregoire 1787 - 1831. The O dyssey of an Egalitarian (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1971).

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4 of historical writing for the public, the scholarly community has turned away from traditional biographical studies (stories about the public and personal lives of great men or, infrequently, women, from cradle to grave).9 The most influential and sustained historiographical critique against biography came from the Annales school, which showed the value of studying the collective instead of the individual, the social instead of the political, and "history from the bottom up" instead of "history from above." A second set of challenges came from postmodernist scholars who discredited the idea of a unified human "self." Biography came to be viewed as old-fashioned, with limited utility to the serious scholar.10 Recently, a new movement has been afoot to reconstruct biography in the face of these critiques. Many scholars, from a variety of methodological perspectives, have begun to reclaim the study of individuals, recognizing it as an extremely effective way to open up the study of complex issues. In a 1996 issue of French Historical Studies devoted to biography, Mary Louise Roberts drew on the postmodern notion of self-fashioning to study an individual subject (Marguerite Durand) and thus to revise preconceptions about the history of feminism and of gender construction. Similarly, in her recent book, Joan Scott decided that focusing on individual feminists was the best way to illuminate the paradoxical conditions in which women s attempts at political action took place. Even while eschewing the very idea of a 9

10

In using the term "traditional biography” to refer to biography as it has most commonly been understood, I do not mean to imply that the genre of biography has always remained the same. On changing social values in eighteenth-century collective biography writing, see David A. Bell, "Les grands hommes de la patrie: Collective Biography and National Identity in Eighteenth-Century France," paper presented at the Western Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Berkeley, 1997 (a revised version will appear in Bell's forthcoming book The National and the Sacred in Early Modem France, Harvard University Press). For an excellent summary of the field, see A. Lloyd Moote, "Introduction: New Bottles and New Wine: The Current State of Early Modernist Biographical Writing," French H istorical Studies 19 (1996): 913.

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5 "biography/’ she deemed it crucial to focus on specific women as "sites" at which "crucial political and cultural contexts are enacted and can be examined in some detail."11 A similar movement has been undertaken in American women's and social history, aimed at creating a new form of "social biography." While committed to history from below, the scholars involved in this movement have focused on the lives of individuals —especially those marginalized because of their gender, class, or ideology ~ as a way of uncovering suppressed or otherwise forgotten dimensions of the past.12 These historians recognize the caveat issued by David Brion Davis thirty years ago: ”[B]iography always runs the risk of exaggerating the historical importance of individuals . . . . " At the same time, they take inspiration from his dictum that "Biography may provide, nevertheless, a concreteness and sense of historical development that most studies of culture lack. And by showing how cultural tensions and contradictions may be internalized, struggled with, and resolved within actual individuals, it offers the most promising key to the synthesis of culture and history."13 Paralleling Davis’s description of how biography can illuminate the nexus between abstract change and lived experience, Jacques Revel has Mary Louise Roberts, "Acting Up: The Feminist Theatrics of Marguerite Durand," French Historical Studies 19 (1996): 1103 - 38; Joan Wallach Scott, O n ly Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights o f Man (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 1996), esp. 15-6. Several of the scholars involved in the m odem France section of the FHS forum, under the leadership of Jo Burr Margadant, are currently compiling a volume aiming at cutting-edge approaches to biographies of nineteenth-century women. For examples of the new biography in American social history, see Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1982); The Challenge o f Feminist Biography:

W ritin g the Lives o f M odem American Women,

ed. Sara Alpem, Joyce Antler, Elisabeth Israels Perry, and Ingrid Winther Scobie (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 6; and Estelle Freedman, M aternal Justice: M iriam Van Waters and the Female Reform Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). David Brion Davis, "Some Recent Directions in American Cultural History," American H istorical R eview 73 (1968): 705.

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6

recently explained how microhistories can shed new light on complex questions. Many scholars, he noted, have stopped viewing the individual as "antithetical to the social"; rather they hope to achieve a "new angle of vision" in focusing on an individual, a group of individuals, or a specific area. Moving from the macro/aggregate level to the m icro/individual level, he has suggested, offers "not an attenuated or partial or mutilated version of macrosocial realities but a different version."14 While keeping earlier critiques of biography in mind, this dissertation accepts the view of those writing the "new biograph(ies)" or "microhistories" that studies focused on individuals —even elite ones —can be revelatory of the cultures which produced them in ways other kinds of study cannot. The magnitude of what can be learned from a study focused on an individual is multiplied when the individual is someone as multifaceted as Gregoire, who engaged in and thought about an enormous range of the issues of his time. In this study, I examine Gregoire as a way of attempting to gain a different perspective on revolutionary and postrevolutionary France than that available otherwise. Even as I focus on Gregoire, this will be as much a study of an idea as of a person; I shall be equally concerned with charting the history of the idea of "regeneration." Regeneration, in the early eighteenth century a relatively rare word, limited to theological and medical meanings, became extremely popular in calls for political reform towards the end of the eighteenth century. On the eve of the Revolution, Gregoire would help transform the notion of regeneration into the idea of remaking hum anity and society anew, of using the power of the state to create new kinds of hum an subjects. During 14

Jacques Revel, "Microanalysis and the Construction of the Social,” in Histories: French Constructions of the Past, ed. Revel and Lynn Hunt (New York: New Press, 1995), 496, 501.

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the Revolution, the idea of regeneration became a central slogan, used to call not only for the restructuring of France as a whole, but also for changes to be undergone by groups (such as country people, Jews, people of color, and women) who were deemed to be especially "degenerate." The idea of regeneration, I shall suggest, would also be a factor in the radicalizing of the Revolution. After the Revolution, "regeneration" would have a long career in the history of colonialism and of the treatment of difference in Europe. It became a dominant framework for European attitudes towards minorities within their midst and for relations with the non-European world. It also was taken up by many newly liberated non-Westem elites —and by French Jews —as a program for how to proceed from the condition of "emancipation." In focusing on this important concept, crucial to so many processes in late eighteenth-century and much of nineteenth-century Europe, I hope to shed light not only on Gregoire's own worldview but also on the bases of modem universalism . As I analyze Gregoire in this study, I shall do so by thinking of him in three ways —as window, as agent, and as symbol. I ask: What do we learn from viewing his life? What did he do and how did it affect others? And what do discussions about him by others reveal about life in eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century France? First, Gregoire's life provides an extraordinary window onto French political, social and religious life for nearly a century in France; he survived four monarchs, one emperor, and at least five different revolutionary governments. He moved in so many spheres of society and was involved in so many activities that he teaches us about aspects of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century life in Europe that have been forgotten. He also gives us a unique vantage point from which to view

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8 momentous historical changes on a human scale; watching him grapple with major issues in French political life from the 1770's through the 1820's can give us, as Davis's formulation suggests, a better appreciation for how contemporaries understood them. Yet unlike many of the subjects of social biography, Gregoire was not a relative unknown during his time, nor someone who could only act within historical constraints which others created. On the contrary, he was an important political agent and a driving force behind much of the French Revolution's policy. To name just a few of the ways in which he helped shape French society, the abbe was a leader of the movement which persuaded the clergy to join the Third Estate during the Estates General and thus facilitated the creation of the revolutionary "National Assembly." During the National Assembly, he was one of the most popular deputies, and served as the Assembly's president numerous times. A leader in the fight to give rights to people of color, he also became the chief apologist for the Revolution's early religious policy. It was he who made the motion upon which France abolished the monarchy and became a republic; he was also among the chief architects of Revolutionary cultural policy during the Terror. After Thermidor, he was a leader of the Thermidorian Republic, and of the efforts to reestablish the Church in France and to create a pan-European republican Christianity to counter the church of Rome. Just as Gregoire stood at the center of Jean-Louis David's famous painting, The Tennis Court Oath, then, he was also a key player in many aspects of French life. The study will thus look at Gregoire not only as a lens for seeing change, but also as an agent who helped create it. Focusing carefully on the motivations underlying those of Gregoire's ideas which became government policy will allow us to understand the genealogy of these

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9 policies; exploring the complexities and contradictions of his ideas will help us understand some of the unresolved issues at the heart of our own political cultures. A third reason to focus on Gregoire is his extraordinary currency as a symbol of the Revolution. During the Revolution, the abbe represented the epitome of a revolutionary priest or Jacobin to many French people —either positively or negatively. After the Revolution, he remained alive and republican in France, while many of his former colleagues were dead, in exile or had changed their politics. During the various postrevolutionary regimes of the early nineteenth century, Gregoire came to serve as a reminder to many in France of the republic that they had lost. In each change of government, republicans rallied around Gregoire as a way of expressing opposition to empire or to monarchy. Just as he was elected to legislative bodies in shows of opposition to Napoleon and the Bourbons in 1801 and 1819, he was also the figure around whom opposition to the Bourbon takeover in 1814 revolved. Moreover, when the Church refused to give him last rites on his deathbed in 1830, a crowd of approximately 25,000 turned out for his funeral. Since his death, Gregoire has been championed by the French Jewish community, by Haitians and Harlem Renaissance leaders, by liberal Catholics and anticolonial militants. Where Ho Chi Minh acclaimed Gregoire in 1946 as a father of the idea of national self-determination, Aime Cesaire praised him as "the first scientific refuter of racism" and "the first anticolonial militant."15 Gregoire also served as a favorite target for opponents of the Revolution in France, from the Revolution through the July Monarchy. 15

Ezran, 74; Aime Cesaire, "Discours d ’inauguration de la place de l’abbe Gregoire. Fortde-France - 28 decembre 1950," in Cesaire, Oeuvres completes ([Fort-de-France]: Editions Desormeaux, 1976), 3:422-3.

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10 Dissenting priests, former Saint-Domingue slave-holders and monarchists each attacked Gregoire for having been an infidel, a "negrophile," or a regicide. The latter charge, which Gregoire contested vigorously, reappeared often as partisans of empire or monarchy tried to discredit the revolutionary past as a future alternative. When republicans invoked a moderate-seeming Gregoire as proof of the viability of republicanism, conservatives blasted Gregoire as a zealot and a murderer.16 More recently, during the Bicentennial, the abbe has been charged with representing all that was wrong with the Revolution.17 In short, Gregoire was no ordinary individual. Studying him can give us a fresh vantage point for understanding eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury French political life and for answering major historiographical questions. In French history, these questions range from the origins of the Revolution through its course, immediate consequences, and long-term global legacy. This dissertation also raises questions which have ramifications beyond revolutionary and postrevolutionary France; many new and old nations -- European, American and postcolonial -- have had to grapple with similar issues of universalism, nationalism, citizenship, revolutionary dynamics, the relation of Europe to the non-European world, and the place of For an overview of some of these charges, see Benjamin Laroche, Lettres de M. Gregoire, ancien eveque de Blois, adressees I'une a tous les joumalistes, Vautre a M. de Richelieu, precedees et suivies des considerations sur I'ouvrage de M. Guizot intitule: "Du G ouvemement de la France depuis la Restauration, etc” (Paris: Chez tous les marchands de nouveautes, 1820); and Charles Yves Cousin d'Avallon, Gregoireana: ou, Resume general de la conduite, des actions et des ecrits de M. le comte Henri G regoire. . . precede d'une notice sur sa vie politique, litteraire et religieuse, contenant quelques anecdotes propres a faire connaitre ce prelat (Paris: Plancher, 1821). Examples of attacks include Reponse aux calomnies contre M. Gregoire, ancien membre de la Convention nationale, ou extraits de ses discours et de ses ecrits (n.p.: [1814]); Jean Siffrein Maury, Lettre de M. I'abbe M aury, au regicide Comte Gregoire (Montpellier: J.G. Toumel, [1818?]); and Aux electeurs de I'Isere. Notice historique, tiree des M oniteurs du temps (n.p.: [1819?]). See also Chapter Seven. See for example Michel de Sachy de Foudrinoy, L'abbe Gregoire: une autre vision (Blois: Editions Lignages, 1989).

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11 race, gender, religion, and national languages in their societies. How do societies based on equality deal with "difference?" To what extent did universalism help create various "liberating -isms" (like feminism and antiracism), or set them back? To w hat extent did the French Revolution accelerate the process of European colonization, or produce the ideologies which led to its destruction? What role has religion played in creating the modem universalist state? How do revolutionaries deal with the failures of their most utopian hopes? How did the peoples whom Europeans wanted to "regenerate" react to them, and what role did local processes play in these encounters? This dissertation will attem pt to demonstrate how complicated these questions are. I will suggest that there are tensions in revolutionary universalism whose consequences still lie at the core of many m odem political systems, including our own.

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12 Chapter One FROM TAILOR S SON TO ENLIGHTENED ABBfi This dissertation will chart the development of the abbe Gregoire's idea of regeneration, especially during the French Revolution and the early nineteenth century. But to understand the roots of this idea —and what their complexities mean for us today —we need to look back before the Revolution. This chapter will seek to examine how a young man of humble origins from the Lorraine countryside become a notorious revolutionary. Why would he come to denounce the persecution of the malheureux (unfortunates) of society, and side more frequently w ith secular radicals than w ith more traditional members of the clergy? Existing studies of Gregoire's career have generally not examined the prerevolutionary period. Discussions of Gregoire’s involvement in Jewish issues have traditionally begun with the Metz Academy contest of 1787, those of his interest in blacks in 1789, and those of his interest in dialect-speakers in 1790. To find the origins of Gregoire's interest in "regenerating" peripheral groups in society, however, it is necessary to look farther back in the eighteenth century. Not only do we need to trace the origins and mutations of the word regeneration, but we m ust also look at how Gregoire came to be in a position to transform the meaning of the word. I will examine the word regeneration as part of the next chapter. But meanwhile, how can one chart

Gregoire's intellectual development? Where should one look for "intellectual origins?" A deceptively easy way to begin would be to look in the Bibliotheque de la Societe de Port-Royal (henceforth "BSPR") at the catalogue in Gregoire's library (Rev. 254, "Catalogue de ma bibliotheque"). Claude Jolly, the head librarian at the Sorbonne, wrote an article in 1989 based entirely upon this

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13 source/ analyzing Gregoire's intellectual influences and interests.

Jolly

concluded that the Enlightenment had had almost no impact on Gregoire because it showed him owning few books by its most famous exponents. Also using this catalogue, Rene Taveneaux made a similar claim.1 But while this catalogue is invaluable for discovering many of the books Gregoire owned, it cannot demonstrate Gregoire's intellectual influences definitively. First, Gregoire had at least four other catalogues (two catalogues of pamphlets at the BSPR; one at the Bibliotheque de 1'Arsenal, listing the books he willed to the Bibliotheque du Roi; and another at the Arsenal of miscellaneous pamphlets).2 Second, these catalogues only list the books Gregoire owned; they do not refer to books Gregoire borrowed from others or became familiar with in the other ways bookreading was possible in the eighteenth century.3 Indeed, in his own writings, Gregoire often cited books that do not appear in these catalogues. Gregoire was certainly influenced by ideas current in his time, that were discussed by others he knew, but which came from sources he did not actually read. Gregoire’s owning only one book by Voltaire (La bible expliquee par des aumoniers) does Claude Jolly, "La bibliotheque de l'abbe Gregoire," Livre et Revolution. Melanges de la bibliotheque de la Sorbonne 9 (1989): 209 - 220. For Jolly, the Enlightenment figured in Gregoire’s life only as a counter-example, a set of ideas against which to fight. Rene Taveneaux, ’’L’abbe Gregoire et la democratic clericale,” in fansenisme et reforme catholique (Nancy: Presses universitaires de Nancy, 1992), 155. See the catalogues of the pamphlet volumes in Gregoire's library, Bibliotheque de la Societe de Port-Royal, Collection Gregoire (henceforth "BSPR-G"), Rev. 166 and 167; "Catalogues de livres de l'abbe Henri Gregoire," Bibliotheque de 1'Arsenal (henceforth "Ars."), Ms. 6573; and "Catalogue des livres legues a la Bibliotheque du Roi par M. Gregoire” (1831), Ars. Fol. Z-1013. Gregoire had access to many books that he did not himself own. As we will see below, he was an enthusiastic user of the Bibliotheque munidpale de Nancy (henceforth "BM Nancy"). On other ways an eighteenth-century reader had access to books he or she did not own, see Roger Chartier's discussion of cabinets de lecture in Cultural Origins o f the French Revolution, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), 70.

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14 not mean that he had no exposure to the ideas of the philosophes, as my discussion below will indicate. A greater problem for discovering "origins" in the catalogues is that they do not indicate when the books listed were acquired. Did Gregoire have the 1755 edition of Rousseau’s Discours sur I'origine et les fondemens de I'inegalite parmi les hommes in hand when he arrived at the Estates-

General? Did he acquire it in the turbulent debates over sovereignty in 1789 1791? Or did he obtain it much later, in the nineteenth century, perhaps as a gift? Gregoire's ideas were hardly fixed forever in 1788. As we will see, the Gregoire of 1792 was markedly different from the Gregoire of 1825. Moreover, even with definitive proof from the catalogues that Gregoire owned a book, the historian does not know whether Gregoire read it or even wanted it. A charismatic and well-known personality by late 1789, Gregoire frequently received pamphlets or books as gifts from aspiring authors.4 Discerning what Gregoire thought of the books he owned is hardly helped by an examination of his personal collection at the Arsenal and the BSPR; judging from these books, Gregoire seems to have treated his books with great care and left virtually no marginalia.5

See notes to Gregoire from multiple authors throughout Gregoire's collection in the BSPR. Bernard Plongeron has stated that "the margins of Gregoire's books are overloaded with very personal annotations" (Plongeron, L 'abbe Gregoire, 15), but this is not evident from the books in Gregoire’s collections at the Arsenal or BSPR. Several of Gregoire's books ended up at the Bibliotheque nationale (henceforth "BN"), but it is difficult to trace them there; some "ex libris Gregoire” books I have found there contain some marginalia, but not of a very personal kind. See for example Gregoire’s notes in Antoine-Alexandre Barbier, Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes composes, traduits ou publies en franqais et en latin, avec les noms des auteurs, traducteurs et editeurs; accompagne de notes historiques et critiques. Seconde edition, revue, corrigee et considerablement augmentee, 4 vols. (Paris: Barrois l’aine, 1822-4),

BN Reserve Z Beuchot 966-B.

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15 Thus, while the historian can use Rev. 254 and the other catalogues as a starting point for analyzing the origins of Gregoire's complex synthesis of ideas, they only give general hints. Was Gregoire an "eveque des lumieres," as Frank Bowman's book title indicates? Was Jansenism the guiding force in his life, as Paul Grunebaum-Ballin, Rita Hermon-Belot and others have suggested?6 The answers lie elsewhere. With the catalogues for reference, the historian must concentrate on Gregoire's own early writings and letters, along with what we know of his early years from other historians and from his own memoirs. In order to retrace the roots of his ideas, it will also be essential to identify some of his early intellectual associations. My aim in this chapter is to show that the roots of Gregoire's thought — like those of Revolutionary ideology itself —were profoundly heterogeneous. His Catholic training may have been important to his later activities, but it was not a sole determining factor. Similarly, he may have been influenced by Jansenism, but it was not the exclusive or even crucial influence in his life before the Revolution. Yet neither was Gregoire simply a product of the Enlightenment, as an important study by Michel de Certeau, Jacques Revel and Dominique Julia suggests.7 His intellectual affinities linked him to churchmen and unbelievers, Jansenists and Jesuits, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, Frenchmen and foreigners.

See Bowman, ed., L ’abbe Gregoire, eveque des Lumieres (Paris: Editions France-Empire, 1988); Hermon-Belot, "Preface," in Essai sur la regeneration physique, morale et politique des Juifs: ouvrage couronne par la Societe Royale des Sciences et des A rts de M etz, le 23 aout 1788 [par Henri Gregoire] (Paris: Flammarion, 1988); Hermon-Belot, "Introduction," in Les Ruines de Port-Royal des Champs en 1809 [re-edition of Gregoire's

1809 workl (Paris: Reunion des musees nationaux, 1995), especially 14. On GrunebaumBallin and others, see discussion of Jansenism in Chapter Two. Michel de Certeau, Dominique Julia, and Jacques Revel, Une politique de la langue. La Revolution frangaise et les patois: I'enquete de Gregoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1975).

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16

In this chapter, I will thus look at Gregoire not simply as a priest, but also as a young man of the 1770's, an ambitious provincial intellectual who desired, like many young men of the time, to make an impact on society. After a brief account of his early years, I will highlight his forays into the life of the academies and provincial societies which were so important to late eighteenth-century intellectual life. In combination with the next chapter, this chapter touches upon a classic historiographical question: What w as the inspiration for the French Revolution and for the universalism it has exported to num erous cultures around the world? In the last two hundred years, successive waves of scholarship have debated this question passionately. Much of recent historiography has turned against the naively romantic "C'est la faute a Voltaire, c 'est la faute a Rousseau" school, which conjured up visions of

idealistic young men reading Enlightenment works and then running into the streets to act upon their principles. Nevertheless, the historiography as a whole still imagines the Revolution as having been motivated by secular, "enlightened" ideals. Recently, scholars like Dale Van Kley and David A. Bell have provided an essential corrective to this view of the Revolution by showing that its ideological origins were more Christian than the revolutionaries wished to admit.8 Yet historiographical discussions still seem to be based on binary

8

See especially Van Kley, The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits front France, 1757 - 1765 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975); The Damiens Affair and the Unraveling o f the Ancien Regime, 1750 - 1770 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); and The Religious Origins o f the French Revolution: From Calvin to the Civil Constitution, 1560 - 1791 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); along with Bell's Laivyers and Citizens (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994) and "Lingua Populi, Lingua Dei: Language, Religion and the Origins of French Revolutionary Nationalism," American Historical Review (1995): 1403 - 1437.

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17 oppositions, with ancien regime and revolutionary historians debating whether the origins of the revolution were enlightened or Christian. Whereas in German history, it is not so difficult to conceive of "enlightened religion," France's Revolution seems to have effaced the memory of enlightened-Christian syntheses predating it. For our modem minds, a man or woman of the eighteenth century could not have been both a philosophe and a Christian.9 In this chapter I aim to show that the origins of revolutionary ideology are not an "either/or" proposition. In detailing the educational background and intellectual associations of Gregoire, one of the key authors of revolutionary policy, I suggest that Gregoire's intellectual development reminds us of aspects of eighteenth-century life which have been forgotten; the heterogeneity of the influences upon him tells us something about the patchwork of ideas which circulated in eighteenth-century France and which contributed to the development of the Revolution. I suggest that, while boundaries would harden after the Revolution and would remove the possibility of a French individual's viewing himself or herself as a philosophe and a Christian, the ancien regime harbored more intellectual metissage. We should not forget R. R. Palmer's finding in 1939 that, though there were real differences between Catholics and unbelievers in the eighteenth century, they shared more common ground than we have 9

For exceptions to this tendency to make absolute divisions between Enlightenment and religion, see especially Plongeron, "Recherches sur l'Aufklarung catholique en Europe occidentale (1770 - 1830),” Revue d'histoire modeme et contemporaine 16 (1969): 555 605; R. R. Palmer, Catholics and Unbelievers in Eighteenth-Century France (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, Inc., 1961) [originally published in Princeton, 1939]; and the introduction to Van Kley, Religious Origins. Van Kley has noted that many philosophes underwent baptism, that many Catholics joined Masonic lodges without seeing a contradiction between Freemasonry and Catholicism, and that clerics "were conspicuous in the ranks o f the philosophes themselves" (3-5).

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18 been willing to accept. Though Palmer was talking about the pre-1750 period, boundaries during the second half of the century were not as absolute as they have often been made to seem. Where some high Enlightenment writers, like Rousseau, continued to believe in Christianity, many sincere Catholics incorporated elements of the Enlightenment into their worldview.10 Neither should we forget Roger Chartier's suggestion that the Revolution created, so to speak, "the Enlightenment" —that it grouped together and imposed a single meaning on a diverse set of eighteenth-century texts.11 In later parts of this dissertation, we will see Gregoire's attempts to reconcile the enlightened and religious aspects of his worldview, as they increasingly presented themselves as incompatible. In this chapter, we begin in an earlier period, when "enlightened religion" was not as much of an oxymoron as we might imagine. Preparing for a Life in the Church The Lorraine in which Gregoire was bom on December 4,1750 was part of a tangled nexus of political jurisdictions: jurisdictions which Gregoire himself would help sweep away during the Revolution. As Gregoire noted in his Memoires: The commune of Veho, the place of my birth, was part of the province of the Trois-£veches, which formed a political mosaic with Lorraine. The dependencies of these two provinces were intermingled to such a point that many cities and villages were split by different jurisdictions.

See Palmer. "In affirming that it was the Enlightenment that produced the Revolution, the classical interpretation perhaps inverses logical order: should we not consider instead that it was the Revolution that invented the Enlightenment by attempting to roots its legitimacy in a corpus of texts and founding authors reconciled and united, beyond their extreme differences, by their preparation of a rupture with the old world?" (Chartier, 5).

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19 In the words of Antoine Sutter, who has written the most comprehensive work on Gregoire’s childhood: "Gregoire was thus bom French in the fiveches, a part of Lorraine territory already joined to France, department of Metz, bailliage of Vic, chatellenie of Lagarde - in Veho - at the religieux vicariat-resident, annex of the parish of Leintrey, archipretre of Marsal, all at

the edge of the old diocese of Metz .. ."12 This geographic and legal tangle was perhaps a root of Gregoire's revolutionary passion for rationalizing and unifying; Gregoire would look to sweep away these historic but confusing boundaries and replace them with a simpler (but ahistorical) grid during the 'R evolution. Who were Gregoire's earliest influences? He himself claimed that his greatest influences were his parents, modest artisans; they taught him that being virtuous was more important than being rich.13 As Gregoire was an only child, he was extremely attached to them. As he commented in his M emoires, "I thank the heavens for having given me parents who, having

virtually no riches but piety and virtue, took pains to transmit this heritage to me." As he would say throughout his life, he could not wait for the day when they would be reunited in Heaven: "Alas! Nothing remains for me but their tombs . . . but in my soul shines the hope of finding them in a better place . . . . How many times have I anticipated this happiness in my thoughts!"14 12 13

14

M em oires, 49; and Sutter, 15.

There is some controversy over whether Gregoire's mother was a Jansenist. Jean-Michel Leniaud noted that Louis Edmond Henri Maggiolo was the only one who asserted this, but Maggiolo himself only questioned the view of an unnamed historian, who had made this claim about Gregoire's mother (Leniaud, "Introduction," in Memoires, 22; Maggiolo, "L'abbe Gregoire, 1750 - 1789," Memoires de I'Academie de Stanislas 4th ser., vol. 5 [1873]: lxxxiii [henceforth "Maggiolo [1873]"). M em oires, 113.

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20 Gregoire began his education by studying with the local priest, who was probably a Jansenist. Sutter noted that Veho was served by the chanoines reguliers of Saint-Augustin de la Congregation de Notre-Sauveur; "Les Sauveurs," according to Rene Taveneaux, "professed Jansenism openly."15

By the age of eight, Gregoire knew how to read and write. The nineteenthcentury Lorraine scholar Louis Maggiolo tells us that Gregoire "would tell stories from the Bible with emotion, and the schoolmaster had nothing more to teach him. Gregoire would give the lesson to his younger classmates, who used to listen to him with respect."16 Since Veho held so little educational opportunity for the precocious Henri, he was sent to study at age eight in the neighboring town of Embermenil (about three kilometers away) with the parish priest, abbe Cherrier. The other children who studied with Cherrier were the offspring of the great local families. Young Henri was a "scholarship kid," studying through the grace of the clergy’s funds for the poor. According to Maggiolo, one of the formative experiences of Gregoire’s early years was spending vacations with the other boys at the chateau of a classmate's family (Euskerkem de Borroger) in Marimont-la-Basse. Maggiolo asserted that the experience gave rise to Gregoire's longtime hatred of aristocracy: "The contrast between the privations of his father's home and the splendors of chateau life exercised, if I can believe the stories I have heard [from conversations w ith Gregoire's childhood friend and lifelong confidant, the abbe Jennat], an unfortunate influence on the spirit of the young peasant from Veho." Citing an unspecified letter from 1789, Maggiolo says that 15 16

Taveneaux, Le Jansenisme en Lorraine, 1640 - 1789 (Paris: J. Vrin, 1960), 7; Sutter, 16. Maggiolo (1873): xxxiii-xxxiv.

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21 Gregoire had a "sort of poorly disguised animosity against the nobility, who 'regard the people like their slaves, the king as their rival, and the clergy as their prey."’17 While he may have felt socially inadequate among his peers, Gregoire was no one’s inferior in his studies. He seems to have loved the materials he was given and assimilated them easily. According to Maggiolo, the abbe Cherrier had him read Racine, Virgil, the Port-Royal Grammar and the Histoire de Vancien et du nouveau testament des juifs by Dom Augustin

Calmet. From Virgil and Racine, Gregoire would presumably get his love for poetry and French literature (see below).18 Calmet's work seems to have had a particularly strong influence on Gregoire; he seems to have taken to heart Calmet's dictum that "one can never have a truly distinct notion of Christianity unless one understands the history of the Jewish religion." As I will discuss later in this study, Gregoire would ultimately try to write a new history of the Jews; he would even visit Calmet's old order at the Abbaye de Senones. He may also have been influenced by the Christian universalism of the work's interpretation of Genesis; Calmet insisted that all nations, from China to Egypt to the Americas, had a common origin and that the history of Noah was also their Ibid., lxv, lxxii. Maggiolo hardly approved of Gregoire's revolutionary actions; he saw Gregoire's early nonpolitical writings as showing great genius before his intelligence was corrupted. On Gregoire's relationship with Jennat, see the letters at the BM Nancy (Ms. 1688) which were printed in Henri Cosson, "Lettres de l'abbe Gregoire a l'abbe Jennat," Revolution franqaise, no. 1/3 (1935): 70-89, 247 - 77. As he lay ill in 1830 (a year before he died), Gregoire wrote to Jennat: "Since our tender youth, brought together by our religious sentiments, our studies, our principles, and our status, it seems that Providence destined us to live together.” He begged Jennat to come to Paris so they could finish their years together until "God calls us to eternity" (Gregoire to Jennat, 19 mars 1830, reprinted in Cosson, 269). Jennat (1756 -1844) would remain in Lorraine and outlive his old friend. Maggiolo (1873): xxxiv, liii.

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22 history. During the nineteenth century, Gregoire would also propose a new edition of Calmet's 1751 Bibliotheque Lorraine, ou Histoire des hommes illustres with updated biographical notices. It is also possible that Gregoire

received his introduction to figurism from Calmet.19 Through these books and through Cherrier, the young Gregoire would also have an introduction to the "school of Port-Royal" (that centered around the abbey of Port-Royal, a legendary center of Jansenism). Plongeron wrote that Cherrier taught his students about the Jansenist controversies "then inflaming the universities of Louvain, Nancy and even the chief seminary of Metz." He insisted, however, that "whatever the love inculcated in Gregoire for Port-Royal by the good cure Cherrier,” Gregoire would never be a true Jansenist in doctrine.20 Gregoire may have also gained a sympathy for the persecuted Port-Royalists through hearing about the author of his grammar textbook, Antoine Amauld. Cherrier's teaching may also have sparked Gregoire’s interest in language. The Port-Royal Grammar would give Gregoire an introductory grounding in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, in addition to French. Its approach to the unity of languages may also have played a role in Gregoire's later fascination with languages, though no direct line can be drawn from its general study of language and Gregoire's later campaign to wipe out patois. 19

See Dom Augustin Calmet, Histoire de Vancien et du nouveau testament, et des Juifs, pour seroir d'introduction d I’Histoire ecclesiastique de M . I'Abbe Fleury. Nouvelle edition, revue & corrigee. A vec approbation & Privilege du Roi (Paris: Chez les

20

libraires associes, 1770), 1: iii, iv, 121-2. On figurism, see Chapter Eight. On Gregoire's visit to Senones, see Chapter Two. Hermon-Belot has stated that Gregoire actually went to hear Calmet lecture at Senones, but since Calmet died when Gregoire was seven, this seems unlikely ("Preface," in Essai sur la regeneration, 21). On Gregoire’s attempts to update Calmet's history of Lorraine in 1813, see BM Nancy mss. 957 (533), 958 (534), fol. 55 and 2074 (936). Plongeron, L'abbe Gregoire, 38 and passim. For more on the relationship between Gregoire and Jansenism, see Chapter Two.

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23 That interest, as Gregoire w ould later report, would come only in the 1770’s, after he had read a pam phlet by the Protestant theologian Jeremie-Jacques Oberlin.21 At the age of twelve, Gregoire felt a religious calling, and the abbe Cherrier looked for a suitable place for his pupil's continued education. At this point the trajectory of Gregoire's schooling becomes harder to trace, as it became caught up in battles between local Jansenists and Jesuits; in Metz, the Jesuits were chased out of the kingdom, but in Nancy they were protected by King Stanislas (former King of Poland, then Due de Lorraine). Whether Nancy was the abbe Cherrier's first choice for his pupil and whether the abbe Sanguine would be Gregoire's teacher there are points of contention between Maggiolo and Sutter; it is also unclear whether Gregoire was a full student or merely an extern.22 Whatever his status and whatever the reason he went, we do know that he studied in Nancy from 1763 - 1768 and was a student at a college run by the Compagnie de Jesus. Gregoire reported in his M em oires

See [Antoine Amauld and Claude Lancelot], Grammaire generate et raisonnee de PortRoyal (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1968). On the Oberlins and Gregoire's interest in patois, see Chapter Two. Maggiolo wrote simply that Gregoire went to study with Cherrier's friend the abbe Sanguine at a college directed by the Compagnie de Jesus in Nancy (Maggiolo [1873], xxxiv). Sutter, however, has concluded that Gregoire went to Nancy only as a political accident; Cherrier would have sent him to Metz, but the Jesuits were being chased out of the kingdom and were replaced in Metz by "maitres de rencontre [arbitrarily selected teachers]." The bishop of Metz it clear, however, that he would not ordain young men who had studied with the latter because he suspected them of Jansenism, so Cherrier sent Gregoire to the Jesuits in Nancy (Sutter, 18-19; Sutter also asserted that Gregoire was only an extern at this college, but his evidence on this point is less clear). As for being a student of Sanguine in Nancy, Sutter suggested that Maggiolo was confounding two periods; he argued that, though Sanguine may have helped Cherrier find a place for Gregoire in Nancy, Sanguine was living in Metz by the time Gregoire arrived. Sutter also maintained that Sanguine taught Gregoire later, at Pont-a-Mousson. Though Sanguine was ultimately a refractaire (non-oath taker) during the Revolution, Gregoire maintained his affection for him (Maggiolo [1873], lvi-lvii).

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24 that the Jesuits were excellent teachers: "I studied with the Jesuits in Nancy and received nothing b ut good examples and useful instruction."23 But Gregoire's days as a student of the Jesuits were numbered. With the death of Stanislas in 1766, the Jesuits no longer had a protector. In 1768, the French government expelled the Jesuits and disbanded the college where Gregoire had been studying. It seems to have taken several months for a new faculty to be reorganized. Gregoire remained in Nancy with the new teachers, who were apparently Jansenists from Notre-Sauveur, the same order that had served Veho. Among the teachers was Christopher Marc, the author of some Lettres a fean-Jacques Rousseau, whom Gregoire would later propose as a

great man of Lorraine history, worthy of inclusion in the updated edition of Dom Calmet’s original Bibliotheque Lorraine (see Chapter Six).24 The experience of seeing his Jesuit teachers expelled seems to have embittered Gregoire towards the political authorities. Even if he "did not like at all the spirit of the defunct society," he noted that he would always have a "respectful attachment" towards them.25 Maggiolo speculated that this helped inspire Gregoire’s hatred of monarchy: "Later, our confrere [Gregoire] would look here for a pretext for his hatred, so incompatible with Christianity, of the monarchy." He cited a National Assembly speech of 1790 in which Gregoire referred to the expulsion of the Jesuits as one of the "hundred thousand vexations of the old government, which burdened France so heavily."26

Memoires, 50.

Maggiolo (1873), Ix; Sutter, 22-3. Memoires, 50. Maggiolo (1873), xxxvi, lxiii.

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25 Gregoire's next stop was Metz; according to Sutter, he studied there in 1769 - 1771.27 There he became a student of the Lazarist Adrien Lamourette, who would be his future colleague in the National Assembly and the future constitutional bishop of Lyon.28 L£on Berthe claimed that Gregoire was not merely Lamourette's student, but more properly his "disciple"; he insisted that Gregoire's first essay on the Jews (1779) was written "so soon" after his studying with Lamourette that the teacher m ust have had a great influence.29 But since Gregoire's studies with Lamourette seem to have occurred eight to ten years before his composing this essay, it is difficult to reach the same conclusion. Lamourette's later writings reveal him to be highly sympathetic to the idea of the retour des juifs ('return' of the Jews to the Church preceding the Second Coming) and Gregoire may have been introduced to this idea by Lamourette. But the evidence suggests that, in his elaboration of what to do about Jews, the student was probably leading the teacher. At any rate, Gregoire would retain a great feeling of gratitude and esteem for his former teacher.30 Sutter, 23. Maggiolo provided a different chronology, with Gregoire studying in Metz in 1772. Sutter favored the earlier years; following the work of Leon Berthe on Gregoire as a student of Adrien Lamourette, Sutter concluded that 1769 - 1771 was the only period that they both could have been in Metz. See Sutter, 23; Maggiolo (1873), xxxviii; LeonNoel Berthe, "Deux illustres correspondants de l'Academie d'Arras: Lamourette et Gregoire," in Arras a la veille de la Revolution. Traditions et lumieres [Memoires de l'Academie des Sciences, Lettres et A rts d'Arras. 6e sir., T. I] (Arras: Imprimerie Mordacq, 1990), 191 - 208. Though an oath-taker like Gregoire, Lamourette would ultimately have a much different fate; in the face of Lyonnais resistance to revolutionary armies, Lamourette sided with his flock and was executed. Berthe, "Deux illustres correspondants," 204. Lamourette would write Observations sur I ’etat civil des Juifs (Paris: Chez Belin, 1790), applauding Gregoire's 1789 Motion en faveur des juifs (Paris: Chez Belin, 1789). See also the respectful letter Lamourette would write to his former pupil in September 1789: "Would you be kind enough to receive. Monsieur, from the hand of your former teacher a small work which might offer you some insights that would be to your liking? It is true that you have little time to read I have seen your work on the

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26

Whatever the precise content of Lamourette's teachings, Gregoire certainly gained personal familiarity with Jews in Metz. It is there that he befriended Isaiah-Berr Bing, who would remain his "dear friend" at least through the 1790's. Bing would help Gregoire prepare his Essai sur la regeneration . . . des juifs.31

After his studies in Metz, Gregoire continued on to Pont-a-Mousson, possibly because he was too young to be ordained. There, Sutter has maintained, Gregoire finally studied with the abbe Sanguine, who won him over to Richerism. Gregoire would later praise Sanguine's teaching in print while defending the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.32 Gregoire was also a professor at Pont-a-Mousson. Though Sutter only found evidence of Gregoire’s teaching one class during a single year of his studies, contemporary evidence suggests that he actually taught there for three years and directed study in the humanities. According to fellow Lorraine priest and deputy, the abbe Chatrian, who would become a critic and rival of Gregoire's, Gregoire's selection for the important position of professor was closely watched and discussed by others. Summarizing Gregoire's early years in an otherwise-critical assessment of the abbe, Chatrian Restoration of the Jews, and I recognized there the maturity of talent whose first flowering I saw at Metz. I would be thrilled if this portion of our brothers who have been so humiliated would feel all the effects of the zeal which animates you to reintegrate them into the human species"(Lamourette to Gregoire, 9 septembre 1789, BSPR-G, dossier "Rhone”). See Bing to Gregoire, 4 thermidor an III [22 juillet 1795], in BSPR-G, dossier "Meurthe." See also Gregoire's repeated references to Bing in his Essai sur la regeneration, e.g. ch. 25, note 7. For Sutter, though, it is not clear whether Bing helped Gregoire prepare his 1779 Strasbourg contest essay or his 1787 Metz one (Sutter, 46; see discussion of these contests below). See Gregoire's expression of his "feelings of gratitude, esteem and veneration" towards Sanguine and Lamourette in his Defense de I'ouvrage intitule: Legitimite du serment civique (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1791), 13-5. On Gregoire's Richerism, see Chapter Two.

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27 explained: "After a few years at the Seminary of Metz, while still only a subdeacon, he was judged suitable for directing the humanities at the college of Pont-a-Mousson, and this choice was applauded. During the three years that he was form-master for the troisieme, he lived up to the favorable impression that people had formed of his abilities."33 Sutter maintained that Gregoire returned to Metz in 1774 for his ordination, which occurred on April 1,1775. This account seems to be confirmed by Chatrian’s chronology.34 Most scholars have indicated that Gregoire's first job was as the vicaire of Marimont, the town where he had spent vacations at the Borroger chateau while a schoolboy in Embermenil. But Sutter uncovered evidence of a sevenmonth stint Gregoire first served as vicaire of Chateau-Salins, a stay which would provide Gregoire with at least one life-defining experience. This moment may have sparked Gregoire's feelings about oppression of the peasants in the Old Regime and about the ability of the clergy to alleviate their suffering. Among all of the other tax burdens in ancien regime France, peasants in Lorraine felt particularly squeezed by the gabelle, a salt tax which required them to buy their salt at high rates. While Gregoire served in Chateau-Salins, a poor eighty-four year old was sent to prison and died there because he had dried some salt himself to make a thin soup. Gregoire, who administered last rites to him, still remembered this 50 years later, writing in his Histoire des confesseurs des empereurs, des rois et d'autres princes that "The confessor who gave him the sacraments has climbed different ranks of the hierarchy; but of all the functions he has performed, none left more 33

34

"Lettre d’un cure lorrain, emigre, sur l'abbe Gregoire," reprinted in La Revue lorraine populaire (decembre 1989): 21 - 5; Sutter, 26-7. Sutter called Gregoire the regent of the sixieme, rather than the troisieme, class. Gregoire used the title "Professeur a Pont-aMousson" in his Nancy contest essay. Sutter, 26-7.

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28 moving and honorable memories than that which we have just described." Gregoire would also remember this experience w hen elected to the National Assembly, where he would campaign against the gabelle in 1789.35 In early January of 1776, Gregoire became the vicaire-resident of Marimont, where he would remain for six years. We have two diametrically opposed accounts of Gregoire’s experience there. According to the abbe Chatrian, Gregoire cared little about his duties, and was scorned by the truly pious. An ambitious cad who cared little about propriety or decency, Chatrian’s Gregoire did nothing but cause trouble: Le sieur Gregoire showed himself there to be very occupied with his

clerical finery, leading a life of dissipation and amusement. He hardly cared about honoring the priesthood w ith which he had been invested, to the point of making others doubt w hether he recited the breviary and of scandalizing some pious persons through the philosophicoheretical tolerance of which he made a show . . . . It was also at this time that he caused a truly deplorable scene in the Church of Bassing [the parish seat]. He was there at the time of the patron saint's day; even though there was a Capuchin father there who had been invited in advance to preach the Panegyric of the Holy Patron, our young cad . . . insisted on ascending the altar and declaiming a completely Protestant sermon, in which he attacked nearly all Catholic practices of saint-worship as abuses . . . . M. Chapelier, the excellent cure of this parish, vigorously repented having allowed him to preach on this day in his church, and he never again thought of the incident without pain. Maggiolo and Sutter offer a completely different account of Gregoire's years in Marimont than Chatrian's. When he interviewed residents there about Gregoire in the 1830's, Maggiolo judged Gregoire to have been extremely popular there; the abbe was remembered fondly for his hard work, help for Sutter, 28-9; Gregoire, Histoire des confesseiirs des empereurs, des rois, et d'autres princes (Paris: Baudouin Freres, 1824), 28 (also cited in Sutter); Gregoire, Opinion de M. Gregoire, cure d'Embermenil, depute de Nancy, sur la gabelle, a la seance du 19 Septembre an soir (Versailles: Chez Baudouin, [1789]).

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the sick, and attention to the local school.36 There are reasons to view Chatrian's account as colored by his intense dislike of Gregoire, especially after the latter's near-overnight success in the Revolution. Nevertheless, it is doubtful that Chatrian completely made up these stories. As Gregoire pressed for change in the Church, he undoubtedly offended those who valued the status quo. Meanwhile, we should remember that even if Gregoire might have been acting "worldly," his job was still a meager one, which was extremely poorly paid; he earned the paltry sum of 200 livres. According to Sutter, "The lot of a vicaire-resident was not enviable . . . . This was the proletariat of the Church, and some of them remained their entire life in this miserable condition."37 Gregoire would have better luck: in 1782, he would be named cure of Embermenil, his old mentor Cherrier having designated him as his preferred successor. From this post, he would ultimately be elected to the Estates-General. But we must not get ahead of ourselves. We are still trying to determine what would distinguish this young cleric from others around him, what would spur his development into the famous "abbe Gregoire." So far, I have concentrated only on Gregoire's life within the seminary and the ministry. Part of the answer to this question surely lies within the Church. But to comprehend Gregoire's development fully, we m ust also look beyond this world. 36 37

See Sutter, 36; Maggiolo (1873): xiii. Sutter, 40. To understand this salary in relative terms, consider Timothy Tackett's finding that the cures (a step above vicaires) who became delegates to the National Assembly earned an average of 1,000 - 3,000 livres. The Third Estate deputies' median income "was only about 7,000 livres per year” (Becoming a Revolutionary: The Deputies of the French National Assembly and the Emergence o f a Revolutionary Culture (1789 -1790) [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996], 27,40).

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Intellectual Life in Enlightenment Nancy Even while completing his seminary studies, Gregoire was manifesting ambitions outside the closed world of the Church. Gregoire tells us in his Memoires that he sought mature intellectual mentors: "In my youth I always

sought (and I love to say this) friends older than me; this, I believe, gives one a mortgage on the experience of others." Gregoire suggested that his two greatest mentors were Pierre Joseph de la Pimpie Solignac, the former secretary to Stanislas, and Joseph Gautier, chanoine regulier. Solignac had written a history of Poland, along with other works which Gregoire claimed "hardly merited being cited"; Gautier had a varied literary career, encompassing work on applied geometry, an apology for Christianity, a response to Rousseau's discourse on the utility of the arts and sciences, an English textbook for Frenchmen and a French textbook published in London. Gautier, who was in correspondence with the Academies of Paris and London, may also have been the source for Gregoire’s longtime fascination with (if not admiration for) debates over natural history; Maggiolo noted that Gautier had a passion for natural history and had assembled a "rich collection [cabinet].” Though Gregoire did not provide the dates of his acquaintance

with these two men, Solignac died in 1773 and Gautier died in 1776, so Gregoire’s relations with them probably dated from the late 1760 s to early 1770's.38 The abbe Chatrian in fact wrote that during Gregoire's three years at Pont-a-Mousson, he was involved with doing work for the Nancy Academy.39

Memoires, 51; Maggiolo (1873), lxvii. On Gregoire's engagement with natural history

debates, see Chapters Seven and Eight. "L'abbe Gregoire vu par l’abbe Laurent Chatrian," 22.

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31 Gregoire was also displaying an independence of mind in his choice of reading material. One of Gregoire's first connections to intellectual life as a young campagnard was the world of books, with which Gregoire would maintain an intense love affair throughout his life. During his teenage years, he was an unusually voracious reader, a regular at the Bibliotheque municipale in Nancy.40 As he grew older, he filled his correspondence with discussions of books: books borrowed, books lent, books recommended; during the Revolution, he would be a passionate advocate of public libraries and national bibliographies.41 Particularly of relevance in our search for Gregoire's intellectual origins are the two books that he w ould later say were his favorites during his school days: Boucher's De justa Henrici tertii abdicatione and the Vindiciae contra tyrannos by Hubert Languet.42 The two books came from opposite

ends of the sixteenth-century religious spectrum: Boucher was a Catholic There is an often-repeated story in Gregoire’s Memoires about his first visit to the Bibliotheque municipale in Nancy. Gregoire wrote, "I was a child when, for the first time, I entered the public library of Nancy. The abbe Marquet, then assistant librarian . . . , said to me, 'What would you like?' 'Books to amuse myself.' 'My friend, you have come to the wrong place; here we only give books for instructing oneself.'" Gregoire reported that he had replied, ’"I thank you; I will never forget this reprimand for as long as I live"’ (M em oires , 51). On Gregoire's love for books as an adult, see for instance his correspondence with Antoine-Alexandre Barbier (BN, nouvelles acquisitions franqaises [henceforth "NAF"], Ms. 1391, fols. 231 - 344). Though Gregoire's later stint as a librarian at the Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal came because the closing of the Conseil des Cinq-Cents left him destitute, he filled this role with zeal, reading, preserving and classifying books with a passion and implementing first-hand the bibliography-related projects he had proposed during the Revolution. See Chapters Five and Six. Such retroactive information (penned by Gregoire in 1808) does not necessarily correspond with his actual childhood preferences and might reflect some politically savvy reconstitution of his youth. Still, Gregoire did seem to think that he was being courageous in revealing it: "How much my enemies will profit from this information, in imputing to me a seditious character which I never had!" (Memoires , 51). Gregoire also referred to "the immortal work of Languet" in his National Convention Rapport sur la bibliographic, seance du 22 Germinal, Van 2 . . . . (Paris: De l'lmprimerie de QuiberPallissaux, 1794), 6. Hermon-Belot has claimed that these books were given to Gregoire by the Jesuits ("Preface,” in Essai sur la regeneration, 15).

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32 ligueur, Languet a radical Protestant pamphleteer.43 Yet, as Bernard

Plongeron has noted, the Vindiciae was as influential among Catholics as among Protestants. In positing the idea of a political contract between the ancient Israelites and God, it established the rights of subjects as prior to those of their temporal rulers. As for Boucher, Dale Van Kley commented that in vesting sovereignty in the entire Catholic community and asserting that kings should be elected by and accountable to the Estates-General, Boucher and other Catholic ligueurs made similar arguments to —and even "shamelessly plagiarized" -- their Protestant adversaries. What we should remember in terms of Gregoire's intellectual development is that both books shared a justification of the right of subjects to resist and even kill an unjust ruler 44 Our exceedingly bright pupil and avid reader soon revealed his desire to establish himself as a literary figure, to make a name for himself in the intellectual world. In 1773, the Academy of Nancy held a prize-essay contest on the importance of poetry. Although his later works would focus on love for Jesus Christ and humanity, here Gregoire sounded like any classically trained young man of the mid-eighteenth century using romantic metaphors: "bom with a clear penchant for Poetry, I want to proclaim its praises; faithful lover, I will celebrate my beloved." He sang the praises of Virgil and Homer, Corneille and Balzac.45 43

44

45

As for "Languet," to whom Gregoire and many others once attributed authorship of the Vindiciae contra tyrannos, the book is now generally attributed to Philippe de Momay, seigneur du Plessis-Marly, Henri IV's Minister of State. Plongeron, Theologie et politique au siecle des Lumieres (1770 - 1820) (Geneva: Droz, 1973), 110. Van Kley noted that Boucher borrowed in particular from the Vindiciae (Religious O rigins, 30). Gregoire, £loge de la Poesie, discours qui a remporte le prix des belles lettres, au jugement de M M . de la Societe royale des Sciences et Belles-lettres de N ancy en Vannee M.DCC.LXXIII, par M. Gregoire (Nancy: Chez les Freres Leseure, 1773), 3.

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33 Yet Gregoire hardly stopped being a seminary student; his essay hinted at a desire that would stay with him throughout his life: carrying a religious perspective into a secular sphere. The first poetry, he informed the reader, was that of the Hebrews: [It was] the most sublime poetry, the most majestic, & all the riches of the secular Muses will never equal it. I open David, and what energy! What nobility! What images! Sometimes I see a merciful God who opens his hand, and the earth swims in abundance. Sometimes it is a terrible God who arms himself with wrath and makes the universe tremble from the sound of his lightning.46 Still, Gregoire minimized the religious content of the essay. He flattered Stanislas by calling him "a tender Prince, beneficent, sensitive to the misfortunes of humanity." He conjured up an image of Stanislas among Greek gods and great French poets: O Stanislas, I can see you in that illustrious assembly [of Muses and Greek gods]. Placed between Tituses and Theodores, an immortal crown is on your head, & the wishes of Lorraine are at your feet. The rare geniuses who have enlightened the universe are there. The Barclays, the Calmets, the Hugos, the Grafignis, & all those who have brought fame to my patrie, are [also] there. Gregoire celebrated secular muses, like the Cynthie, the Lesbie, and la belle Laure. And he was unashamed to make clear to the Academy members how

much he wanted to win the contest and to highlight his own talents: "A single desire remains in my heart and occupies it. That would be, Messieurs, to please you . . . . This desire has directed my brush, and I have tried to [paint] an elegy for Poetry. I hope I have made one for myself."47

Ibid., 29-30. Ibid., 56-8. Maggiolo claimed that "in his old age, Gregoire .. . seemed to regret that the tone of his tlo g e de la poesie was hardly suitable to the dignity of his ecclesiastical functions" (Maggiolo [1873], lxxvi). Maggiolo's assertion was presumably based on his conversations with the abbe Jennat.

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34 Gregoire won the contest, which gave him a standing from which to interact with the intellectual elite of Nancy.48 As Daniel Roche has shown, essay contests played an important role in the work of provincial academies and laureates enjoyed a position of prestige.49 But this heady experience posed unanticipated existential challenges. Gregoire reported in his Memoires that between his interactions with the elite of Nancy (a "society of

people of letters who, having lived in the court of the good Stanislas, were far from having religious sentiments") and his being introduced to the popular secular works of the day, he became unsure of his faith. He noted that he was "devoured with doubt after reading the works of the so-called philosophes." Ultimately, after "examining everything," he used the same eighteenthcentury tools of those he would later decry to decide that "I am Catholic, not because my fathers were, but because reason, aided by divine grace, has led me to revelation." Even as he criticized the philosophes elsewhere, Gregoire admitted that he had read them and taken their ideas seriously. In a description of his trip through the Vosges in the mid-1780’s, for example, Gregoire let slip that he had read through Voltaire's collected works.50

Gregoire would remain enamored with the intellectual life of such societies throughout his life. Years after being one of the founders of the Institut national, Gregoire would write a Plan i'association generate entre les savants, gens de lettres et les artistes (n.p., 1817); in 1824 he would write an Essai sur la solidarity litteraire entre les savants en tous les pays (Paris: Les principaux libraries, 1824). He would also speak frequently in letters in the intervening years of the benefits of instituting international associations of scholars. Daniel Roche, Le siecle des lumieres en province (Paris: Mouton, 1978). Memoires, 113; [Gregoire], "Lettre XIII [on the Vosges]," in Correspondance sur les affaires du tems, ou Lettres sur divers sujets de Politique, d'H istoire, de Litterature, d ’A rts et Sciences, etc. (Paris: Imprhnerie Polemique, 1797), 1: 159; on this essay’s

having been written earlier, see note in Chapter Two. Gregoire's profession that reason had led him to faith was similar to that of other enligthened Christians; see Plongeron's discussion of Armand Gaston Camus in L'abbe Gregoire, 40.

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35 Enlightenment works thus played an important role in Gregoire's early intellectual development, even if his ultimate evaluation of them would be negative. Gregoire’s confession makes clear that he was initially convinced by the philosophes' antireligious arguments; it was only after soul-searching in response to their criticisms that Gregoire felt firm in his faith. As we will

see later in this chapter and in the succeeding chapters, Gregoire's worldview would continue to be formed, at least in part, by encounters w ith the Enlightenment and with secular philosophes. Meanwhile, Gregoire would continue to write poetry, which he gave to Gautier and de Solignac to correct, but which he later burned.51 He would enter the Academy's contest again the next year, it seems, with w hat the Academy would call a "ridiculous" poem with verses of nine syllables.52 The Philanthropes of Strasbourg But Gregoire was soon looking beyond Nancy for intellectual companionship. He began to travel in Lorraine and to Alsace. His interactions w ith a circle of intellectuals in and near Strasbourg are essential to understanding these early years, and it is to them that we now turn. Maggiolo (1873), xl; Memoires, 51. Despite Gregoire’s reports that he burned all his poetry, Maggiolo has claimed to have seen some of Gregoire's early attempts via the abbe Jennat (Maggiolo [1873], Ixxvii). Gregoire omitted mention of this contest in his Memoires. He did say, however, that the one poem he regretted burning was "a work in verses of nine syllables," a format which he noted was popular in Italian poetry but unknown in French. Christian Pfister, a Lorraine historian, found the following evaluation of a strikingly similar sounding poem in the records of the 1774 Academie contest: "It is a faithful enough imitation of an idyll by G essner Among a host of bizarre features, the most striking is that the author correctly presents the poem as representing a completely new genre, in its choice of rhythm. His ear has tricked him if he is convinced that verses of nine syllables can be harmonious." Given that Gregoire was a fan of Gessner’s and went to see him in Switzerland in the 1780's, Pfister's conclusion that "These verses seem to us to be those to which Gregoire alluded" seems sound (Pfister, "Histoire de 1'Academie de Stanislas," in Table alphabetique des publications de VAcademie de Stanislas [17501900], ed. Justin Favier [Nancy: Imprimerie Berger-Levrault & Cie, 1902], 25).

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36 Around 1770, a group of ministers and lay people (primarily Protestant, but heavily Enlightenment-influenced) formed a quasi-secret society in Strasbourg called the Societe des Philantropes (henceforth "SPS"). They imagined an international brotherhood like the Masons which w ould have its headquarters in Strasbourg. The society’s aims were oriented towards helping unfortunate members of society; its intellectual roots lay both in the Enlightenment and in Lutheran Christianity. The society can also be seen as part of a larger movement in the late eighteenth century of paternalistic bourgeois philanthropism.53 Though it has played little role in previous studies of Gregoire, the SPS appears to have played an essential role in Gregoire's intellectual development.54 Gregoire not only interacted with the founders of the SPS in Strasbourg, but he helped to found a satellite branch of the Societe in Nancy. Moreover, he seems to have participated in its contest on "the Jewish question" in 1778, four years before Christian Wilhelm Dohm’s famous pamphlet on the Jews and seven years before the Metz contest of 1785 (see Chapter Three). Finally, he remained friends with several of its founders well into the nineteenth century, indicating that they were some of his closest intellectual "soulmates." The evidence suggests that a careful examination of this society is essential to understanding Gregoire's later activities.

On connections between philanthropism, capitalism, and paternalism, see the exchange between David Brion Davis and Thomas Haskell, reprinted in John Ashworth, Davis, and Haskell, The Antislavery Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism as a Problem in Historical Interpretation, ed. Thomas Bender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). Sutter has been the only historian to make any detailed comments about Gregoire’s involvement in the society, but his discussion is limited and focuses only on the contest about the Jews (37 - 40).

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37 What exactly is the evidence which links Gregoire to this society? A few traces of it remain in Gregoire's letters, his library and his Motion en faveur des juifs. Gregoire's library at the BSPR contains the program for the Societe des Philantropes' contest on the Jews.55 Other materials suggest that

Gregoire entered this contest. In a letter to the Academy of Arras in 1789, Gregoire noted that "twelve years ago I read to my friends in Alsace a memoire on the physical, moral and political regeneration of this people." In

his Motion en faveur des juifs, Gregoire informs us that he had "circulated a memoire on this subject among my fellow members [emphasis added] of the Societe philantropique de Strasbourg [sic]." Sutter maintained that Gregoire

went on a sort of field trip to the Sundgau region of Alsace to gather material for this essay, but his evidence is not altogether clear.56 In addition to this evidence of Gregoire's contest entry, other materials reveal Gregoire's wider involvement with the society. Gregoire helped found a Nancy branch of the SPS, as a reprint of a Nancy copy of the SPS's 1776 Statuts generaux suggests. The back cover of this copy features a list of signatories, presumably organizing themselves into one of the local branches of at least twelve members prescribed in the statutes. Among the thirteen signatures, we find member number two: a young "henri Gregoire."57 The abbe Chatrian asserts that the Philantropes were a masonic lodge, but his 55 56 57

BSPR-G, Rev. 86/6. Berthe, "Deux illustres correspondants,” 199; Gregoire, Motion en faveur des juifs, iii; Sutter, 39. See Societe des Philantropes, Statuts generaux de la Societe des Philantropes, rediges dans les cornices de 1776 ([Strasbourg]: n.p., 1776) (1932 facsimile edition including signatures of Gregoire and others, conserved at Hollins College, South Carolina, with the inscription "Leslie S. Brady, Rotary Club, Nancy, February, 1949"). Sutter wrote that he found in the BM Nancy a proces-verbal from the first meeting, which he calls the "only document which we have found on the Nancy society" (Sutter, 37-8). But perhaps he was referring simply to the original of this facsimile.

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word is not the best evidence; as I note in the next chapter, Chatrian often labeled those he did not like as masons.58 Gregoire’s remaining early letters also reveal his frequent interactions with the members of the Strasbourg headquarters. By 1788, he was referring to SPS leaders Jean de Turckheim, Jean Laurent Blessig, and FredericRodolphe Salzmann as old friends and asking to be recalled to "our friends in Strasbourg."59 The SPS also included Dohm, the author of the pam phlet which would help launch a reevaluation of Jewish status in France and Germany in the 1780's. Well into the nineteenth century, Gregoire retained these men as some of his closest intellectual friends.60 His letters to them, to Blessig's student Ehrmann and to Jeremie-Jacques Oberlin (sprinkled with references to "our other friends" in Strasbourg) show his great affinity with them. Sutter has asserted that Gregoire's later entry into the Metz essay contest on Jews was merely an excerpt from his 1779 essay. With the source "L'abbe Gregoire vu par l'abbe Laurent Chatrian,” 22. See letters in M. Ginsburger, "Zwei unverdffentlichte Briefe von Abbe Gregoire," in Festschrift zu Simon Dubnows siebzigstem Geburtstag (2. Tischri 5691), ed. Ismar Elbogen, Josef Meisl, Mark Wischnitzer (Berlin: Jiidischer Verlag, 1930), 201-6. Though Ginsburger did not know how Gregoire knew these Strasbourgeois, it seems clear that he met them through the SPS. Ehrmann, a Protestant minister to whom one of the letters is written, does not appear on the 1777 membership list found by Jurgen Voss, who has written a study of the society's contests of that year (Voss, "Die Strassburger 'Societe des Philantropes' und ihre mitglieder im Jahre 1777," Revue d'Alsace, 108 [1982]: 6580). Even if he was not a member, however, Ehrmann was a student of Blessig; since nearly all of the people Gregoire refers to in the letter were members of the SPS, it is likely that Gregoire met Ehrmann through them. Gregoire's continued friendship with these men is evidenced in his extended correspondence with them after the Revolution. See for example the correspondence in BSPR-G, dossier "Bas-Rhin”; and Gregoire’s letters to Blessig, Ars. Ms. 14635, fols. 2-4. See also the letter cited in Rodolphe Peter, "Le pasteur Oberlin et l'abbe Gregoire," Bulletin de I'histoire du Protestantisme franqais 126 (juill/aout/sept 1980), from 1827, when Oberlin’s grandson visited Gregoire and reported that he "told m e he still had good friends in Strasbourg, especially Mme. Blessig, M. de Turckheim [Jean's brother Bernard, also a member of the Societe], M. Haffner . . .." (327).

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39 for his statement unclear and the early essay no longer to be found, it is difficult to corroborate his conclusion. Nevertheless, even with only the contest program and what we know about Gregoire's later views, it appears that Gregoire’s participation in this contest and his desire to be accepted into this society, composed mostly of wealthy businessmen and nobles, would indeed influence his own views towards society's oppressed in general and Jews in particular.61 What were the operating principles of this group, its philosophical outlook, its aims? An undated announcement of its formation (written around 1777, according to Jurgen Voss) began with an account of the origins of human society. Men, we are told, "even among the most savage," naturally form societies. The members of the SPS aimed to make that society as humane as possible. They wrote: "The sensible soul . . . does not limit itself to doing good deeds. It seeks above all to communicate enlightenment and the need for beneficence and virtue to its fellow citizens & successively to all other men; it regards them all as brothers" (emphasis added). The society aimed to be international and wanted to help people everywhere. "The Societe de Philantropes is being instituted only to enlighten and give relief to Jean Tild, in his L'abbe Gregoire d'apres ses Memoires recueillis par H yppolyte Carnot (Paris: Nouvelles editions latines, 1946), 11), said that Gregoire's entry was called Memoire sur les moyens de recreer le peuple ju if et, partant, de I'amener a la vertu et au bonheur, but he seems to have created this title based on Gregoire's description of the essay in his 1789 Motion en faveur des juifs. Leniaud wrote that "Jean Tild is practically the only one to cite this text" (Memoires , 29nl7), and the essay seems to have disappeared. Voss noted that the group published memoires and transactions

which might contain such an essay, but he could not find them in France or elsewhere. Neither could he find more information about the SPS in the family papers of its president, Jean de Turckheim (Voss, 79). Sutter has asserted that the SPS never actually awarded a prize, citing from an unnamed document: "The Strasbourgeois wanted to award me the prize, [Gregoire] writes, when unforeseen events wiped out the moneys destined for the prize." Sutter explained that Gregoire thus kept the memoire in his own possession: "In the hope of a more favorable circumstance, he carefully kept the manuscript in his own possession" (Sutter, 40).

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40 men," they noted. As they elaborated in their 1777 Statuts, "An active beneficence is the basis of Philanthropy, & its principal goal is the physical and moral perfection [emphasis added] of man, from which results the

greatest happiness he can enjoy in civil society. All human knowledge which can help console, relieve, or enlighten man are the source of Philanthropy."62 The founders of the SPS outlined several means for implementing these lofty principles. First and foremost, they wanted to support morality among the simple people in the countryside. They wanted to recognize local do-gooders by writing about their good qualities. They pledged to "honor publicly honest men, to accord them flattering and useful distinctions, & to make all of this serve to support morals." They might sponsor festivals like those of Salency or Canon, "to conserve the purity of morals in the countryside." They would also support technical education for the poor: "in a city which lacks the resources for the education of poor children, who are commonly destined for the arts and trades, we will give a priority to obtaining for them instruction suited to their status" (emphasis added). Moreover, they would provide food for bastard children. Finally, they aimed to "enlighten men about their true interests."63 In addition to these pursuits, the SPS declared that it would maintain two sections (economic and literary) which would prepare useful works and sponsor literary contests. The economic section would focus on political economy and rural economy. Its political economy emphasis would be on "legislation, morals in general, and especially education, the basis of public 62

63

Societe des Philantropes, Precis instructif sur la Societe des Philantropes ([Strasbourg]: n.p., n.d.), 3, 4, 5, 11; Societe des Philantropes, Statuts de la Societe des Philantropes ([Strasbourg]: n.p., [1777]), 3-5. Societe des Philantropes, Precis instructif, 20, 21,13; Societe des Philantropes, Statuts de la Societe, Art. 6.

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41 happiness, whose perfection has interested all philosophes of our century." It pledged to have a universal outlook: "The philanthropist-citizen observes man at all ages and in all climates. No nation, happy or unhappy, savage or civilized, will escape his penetration. . . . " The rural economy section promised to "help the simple inhabitant of the countryside participate in the Enlightenment and in the beneficent philosophy of his century." Instead of emulating other societies who asked vague and vast questions about agriculture all over the world, they vowed to do something practical in France itself, with a "direct usefulness for [the farmer's] region [pays]." They pledged to help farmers with techniques, and "to propose prizes for the invention of new and useful instruments." Through these works, they proclaimed that they would be the peoples' advocates before the magistracy and "the tribunal of reason."64 Like the economic section, the literary section aimed at enlightening other men. Philanthropes could write poetry consecrated "to religion, to the great moral truths." They would also write histories and biographies whose goal was to educate: "The members of this class will attach themselves above all to furnishing us with historical elegies and short and instructive biographies of true sages, who, having made themselves useful to men through their knowledge [lumieres] and their virtues, should serve as models for Philanthropes." Finally, they pledged to write accounts of their travels. Rather than highlighting sights to see, philanthropes would talk about the customs of those they encountered: "Travel accounts are also a branch of

Societe des Philantropes, Precis instructif, 16-8.

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42 instruction. The Philanthrope, who makes a vow to love men, must hasten to know them."65 A final purpose of the society was to foster equality and fraternity among its members. "All philanthropes will revive together the ties of equality and primitive fraternity: ranks and titles will not impose upon them at all." They aimed to unite "rich men, sensitive to the culture of letters and to the pleasure of doing good, who want to make use of their fortunes respectably, and educated and hardworking people, ready to consecrate their leisure to the general utility and the moral, economic and political perfection [emphasis added] of society."66 Still, though they proclaimed these utopian-sounding values, the founders of the SPS did not hide what Jurgen Habermas has made clear about "the bourgeois public sphere": not all could participate.67 "We will exclude those," the members declared, "whom a negligent education, a dangerous ignorance, a reason w ithout culture, render unworthy of bearing the beautiful name of Philanthropes." Members would also need "certain literary dispositions" and to "have made progress in the sciences." They made clear that their society would be a closely knit one in which all must get along: "The sweet intimacy which m ust reign between Philanthropes . . . requires the greatest circumspection in the choice of members." Members could only be selected with unanimous approval.68

Ibid., 18; Societe des Philantropes, Statuts de la Societe, 15. Societe des Philantropes, Precis instructif, 6-7. See Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: A n Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991). Societe des Philantropes, Precis instructif, 7-9.

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43 The always-critical abbe Chatrian in fact viewed the Nancy branch as pretentious, false humanitarians. The members of this "Societe furieuse," he charged, were more interested, in their own aggrandizement than in helping others. "In Nancy," he commented acerbically, "there exists . . . a society of socalled philanthropists who attract the alms of the rich while putting their names in the newspapers."69 Who fit these criteria and was permitted to join the society? According to the 1777 list, the membership of the Societe philantropique de Strasbourg [sic] was indeed international, including members from Hamburg, Basel, Poland, and Turin. The list included nobles and professors, Catholic priests and Protestant ministers, merchants and lawyers, doctors and foreign officials. The largest groupings were military officers (14), jurists and statesmen (13), and theologians and priests (7) 7° Notwithstanding the num ber of theologians, the society had a decidedly "Enlightenment" bent. One can see from the above citations how an Enlightenment discourse of "humanity" and "universalism" permeated SPS publications. We also know that its founder and president Jean de Turckheim -- an aristocrat who belonged to Strasbourg's leading family -- was a devotee of Voltaire, with whom he had an extended correspondence. Like several other members of the SPS in Strasbourg and in Nancy (possibly including Gregoire, though the evidence is sketchy), Turckheim was also a high official in the freemasons.71 In a study of Strasbourg intellectual elites 69

70 71

See Chatrian’s comments in Cardinal Franqois-Desire Mathieu, L'ancien regime en Lorraine et Barrois, d'apres des documents inedits (1698 - 1789), troisieme ed. revue et augmentee (Paris: Librairie Honore Champion, 1907), 440. Voss, 74-5. On members of the Societe who were also masons, see Jean Bossu, "Reponse: Henri Gregoire eveque et franc-maqon," L 'interm ediate des chercheurs et des curieux 5, 6, 7 (1955,1956, 1957): 204,170,11; and Voss. Although Gregoire asserted that he himself

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44 on the eve of the Revolution, David A. Bell has also shown how particular members of the society were heavily influenced by the Enlightenment.72 Still, we should keep in mind that the society did not only reflect the irreligious side of the Enlightenment; it also had a Christian component. Moreover, though the members gave a nod to tolerance by recognizing other religions, they signaled that Christianity would be the one for them: "Any revealed religion which sincerely aims at the happiness of men merits the homage of Philanthropes. Christianity is the object of veneration in this regard . . . .”73 They made it clear that they did not want irreligious people or atheists as members; for them, enlightened ideals were not opposed to Christianity, but part of it. Yet though the society would be Christian, it was "a complete outsider [absolument etranger] with respect to Freemasonry" (Gregoire, Histoire des sectes religieuses qui sont tiees, se sont modifiees, se sont eteintes dans les dijferentes contrees du globe, depuis le commencement du siecle dernier jusqu'd I'epoque actuelle. N ouvelle edition, corrigee et considerablement augmentee, 6 vols. [Paris:

Baudouin, 1828 -1845], 2:17), unsupported rumors linking Gregoire to the masons persist. Sutter cites a recent exhibition in Veho "which indicated that Gregoire was also a member of the 'Harmony' masonic lodge in Nancy, explaining however that sources are rare" (Sutter, 55). Bossu suggested that Gregoire might have belonged during the First Empire (along with his episcopal comrades Mauviel and Saurine) to the masonic Ordre du Temple "without considering himself a mason." He noted that a historian named M. Bouton had told him definitively that Gregoire was a mason, but "without giving me a precise reference." These rumors persist on the internet. See for example the article claiming Gregoire as an illustrious mason: Claude Wauthier, "Africa’s Freemasons: A Strange Inheritance," in Le monde diplomatique, English edition (Aug/Sept 1997) [URL: http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/md/en/1997/08-09/masons.html]. On Turckheim, see Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary, 44, 52, 53. Turckheim was elected to the National Assembly as a noble, but sat with the Third Estate. For more information on the men who formed the core of the society, such as Blessig and Turckheim, see Bell, "Nation Building and Cultural Particularism in EighteenthCentury France: The Case of Alsace," Eighteenth-Century Studies 21, no. 4 (1988): 472 490. Necheles claimed that the Societe had Jewish members, but there seems to be no evidence of this; it also does not fit with the society's outlook (Abbe Gregoire, 15n20). She was citing the letter from Ehrmann in Ginsburger (see above), but though Gregoire indicated in the letter that one of Ehrmann's grandfathers had been Jewish, Ehrmann himself was a Protestant minister. Moreover, though Ehrmann was a student of Blessig's and would be associated with several of the members, his name does not appear on the 1777 list.

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45 would also be nondenominational to avoid battles between its Protestant and Catholic members. The society noted that "aside from [Christianity's] sublime morality, the Philanthrope is forbidden to discuss the dogmas which have so often disunited men."74 Though the society's description of its goals (its "Precis") reads like the work of a diverse group of sincere Christians who agreed to keep their particular theological beliefs to themselves, however, it also seems to suggest a strikingly agnostic view of religion, perhaps reflecting a committee-drafted document.

Echoing Rousseau's Profession de fo i du vicaire Savoyard, the

document declared that, rather than look for an ultimate religious truth, the Philanthrope should just believe in the universal aspects of religion and follow the rites of his parents. The Philanthrope should have "love for his neighbor, for good deeds, and for purity of the heart. In regard to the exterior form of his worship, he follows that of his fathers and their regions [pays]."75 The SPS’s Christianity was also decidedly reformist. According to the abbe Chatrian, the society published transactions, called Memoires de la Societe des Philantropes. These transactions apparently included an

anonymous article attacking ecclesiastical greed ("Memoire anonyme sar les abus de la Secularisation des biens ecclesiastiques") -- the author of whom,

Chatrian insisted, was none other than the future cure of Embermenil.76 It is clear, then, that the Societe mixed Enlightenment and Christian ideals. But all of this is very abstract. What principles did the SPS evince when they actually proposed contests? Let us look at the one existing program available, proposing one contest on Jews and another on rural 74 75 76

Societe des Philantropes, Precis instructif, 21. Ibid., 22. "Lettre d'un cure lorrain, emigre, sur l'abbe Gregoire," 22.

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46 economy.77 Taken together, the contests evince a paternalist concern with improving the lot of peasants, by improving the technology available to them (even if they did not wish to use it), and by finding a way to rid hard-working Christian country-dwellers of the scourge of Jewish usury. The society's concern with Jews thus grew in large measure out of its broader concern with rural conditions; this connection would also be central to Gregoire's interest in the "Jewish question" (see Chapter Three). The rural economy contest reflected a desire to implement new ideas about agriculture, while recognizing the variability of local conditions. Eschewing the methods farmers had long used locally, the SPS solicited those with new scientific ideas to apply them to cultivation. Noting that their principal goal was to "make themselves useful to hum anity [aux hommes]," the members decried other humanitarians whose efforts to improve agriculture had been too abstract, and had not focused on "local needs." Contest entries should show how a particular crop could benefit particular regions of Alsace; the prize would be given to the most "solid," that which would be most certain to improve a particular kind of Alsatian agriculture. The philanthropes of the SPS noted, however, that their efforts might not be appreciated by the farmer himself. "Slave to routine, he is ordinarily difficult to persuade to make some change in the way he farms his land or to plant a new crop." The philanthrope, armed with science, should thus work hard to "destroy deeply rooted prejudice” by convincing farmers to change their long-standing practices. The philanthrope needed to be sure, however,

The following five paragraphs are based on Societe des Philantropes, Programmes de la Societe des Philantropes ([Strasbourg]: n.p., n.d.).

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47 that his proposed changes would work, or the farmer would lose faith in new methods. If the society's highly paternalistic stance on agriculture could be considered benevolent, its framing of the "Jewish question" was decidedly less so. Its view of the Jewish situation in Europe was wholly ambivalent, and the lofty humanitarian principles of its charter were suddenly mixed with harsh anti-Jewish prejudices. Certainly, Enlightenment thinking did not exclude prejudices against Jews and others.78 But these prejudices were remarkably distilled in the contest program, echoing not merely Voltaire's denunciations of Jews, but perhaps lingering Protestant resentment of the Jewish refusal to follow Luther. On the one hand, the program began by suggesting that Jews, through their pride in their religion and their cruel business practices, bore the responsibility for their outcast status among the nations. "For more than two thousand years," they noted, "the Jewish nation, separated from all others by peculiar ceremonies and an exclusive form of worship to which it holds w ith enthusiasm, has been dispersed around the globe." In trying to eke out a living in their admittedly precarious situation, Jews had made themselves "onerous to the common people." The program cited (without contesting) arguments that "their industry has been ruinous and calculated on fraud; that in the cities they have received stolen goods and consume life savings [patrimoines] with usury . . . ; that in the countryside they have devoured the substance of farmers with easy advances [and] extorted reimbursements at the

wrong m o m e n t . . . ." Jewish usury, the society's program hinted, posed

78

See Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968).

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terrible dangers for the social, economic and moral order of the French countryside. On the other hand, the SPS held out the possibility that the Jewish condition should be improved. One of the reasons Jews were so onerous to others, the members suggested, was because "the ordinary rights of citizens, the exercise of the arts et metiers, and nearly any honest means of gaining subsistence" had been forbidden them. The program recognized that Jews were humans and had greatly suffered from prejudice: "The imprescriptible rights of humanity have often been denied them. In the dark centuries of the middle ages, all of the physical ills which have desolated the earth were imputed to them." Though the last sentence suggested an explicitly Enlightenment view of history (i.e., that the Middle Ages were dark rather than a religious golden age), the program suggested that the Gospels, rather than secular political goals, should be the true determinant of Jews' fate: "The interest of the moment, rather than the spirit of the Gospels, has alternatively tolerated and oppressed them." The question posed by the society was thus how to reconcile these opposing considerations —humanity and the corruption of the Jews —to decide what to do about this "delicate question." The principles of the SPS, while not identical to what Gregoire would espouse in later years, have a striking resemblance to many of his later activities and to his idea of regeneration. Gregoire's concern for peasants was not something he suddenly gained in this society; no one needed to teach the prodigy from Veho that an individual's moral and intellectual worth hardly corresponded with his social and economic origin. Gregoire's love for Jesus Christ and the Gospels also predated his involvement with this group and preinclined him to help the forgotten members of society. But here, in the

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49 crucible of this lay provincial society, Gregoire found secular (or even Protestant) confirmation for his views, developed them among a cohort of kindred spirits and discovered practical ways to implement them. We therefore should not underestimate the influence of this group — to which Gregoire would later refer as "a society now dissolved, to my great regret" —on Gregoire's development as a thinker and as an activist.79 Might there not be a connection between the goals of the society and Gregoire's later interest in educating peasants and providing them w ith educational materials? His emphasis on improving agricultural technologies available to rural dwellers? His attempts to write a history of great figures from the Lorraine past, an instructional effort in which figures would serve as models of virtue? His habit of writing travel narratives explaining the customs of those he would meet? His belief in cultural events as a way of instilling values? And the conflicted, ambivalent view of the "Jewish question," seeing Christians as responsible for persecuting Jews but holding Jews firmly culpable for maintaining their exclusive and wrong-headed ways? The links seem clear.

Gregoire's involvement with the SPS thus suggests that the role of the Enlightenment in his intellectual development is more complicated than scholars have assumed.

It is therefore difficult to concur with Bernard

Plongeron’s assertion that "the mission of Bishop Gregoire had its roots, not in the philanthropism of the Enlightenment, but in the pastoral love for the entire 'grand human family' . . . ."80 Gregoire's desire to affiliate with such a 79 80

Gregoire, Motion en faveur des juifs, iii. Plongeron, L 'abbe Gregoire, 9. Plongeron has been the pioneer in studying eighteenthcentury "enlightened religion," and has identified Gregoire as a leader of the

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50 society (and his longtime friendship with its members) should also call into question the common belief that Gregoire's only relationship to the Enlightenment was one of "hostility."81 It seems clear, on the contrary, that Gregoire's intellectual inspirations, like those of the Revolution, were highly heterogeneous. While Catholicism played an important role in his intellectual development, his own social origins and his interactions w ith those steeped in Enlightenment and Protestant ideals helped him crystallize his views in the 1770's. Though later years would make such a notion suspect (and would spur Gregoire to erase any trace of Enlightenment origins in his background), Gregoire’s early years bear the traces of the great mixture of ideas current in eighteenth-century France, of enlightened and of religious thinking. Ultimately, however, the origins of an individual's thought are less important than how he or she cobbles together diverse ideas to form a worldview. What Gregoire did with all of these loose strands in the 1780's will be the subject of the following two chapters. We turn first to his educational efforts as a cure, and then to his entry in the Metz contest on the Jews of 1785-8.

Aufklarung catholique in the postrevolutionary period. Yet his comments about

Gregoire suggest that he sees this movement as a separate Catholic version of the irreligious Enlightenment, rather than as a synthesis of ideas from Catholicism and from the philosophes. For him, Gregoire represented a Catholic alternative to the secular Enlightenment rather than a partial product of it. See for example Leniaud, "Introduction," in Memoires, 23 ("Gregoire is hostile to the Enlightenment [la philosophic ]”); Auguste Pouget, Les idees religieuses et reformatrices de I'eveque constitutionnel Gregoire (Paris: Societe nouvelle de librairie et d'edition, 1905), 68; Jolly; and Taveneaux, "L'abbe Gregoire et la democratic clericale," 155 ("Contrary to a common and often-expressed idea, he did not have any sympathy for the philosophy of the Enlightenment and always detested Bayle, Voltaire, Diderot, Condorcet and Saint Lambert").

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51

Chapter Two THE BON CURE’ OF EMBERMENIL Now that Gregoire had finished his schooling and obtained a benefice in Embermenil, his life was set. Rescued from the possibility of living as a struggling rural artisan —or even a poorly paid vicaire —all of his life, he could have remained an important man in Embermenil, enjoying a modest but comfortable income, until his death. Yet Gregoire was to set his sights higher. What happened in the 1780's to prepare him for his eventual political career and turn him into the "friend of Jews and blacks"? How would the cure of little Embermenil come to share the prize in the Academy of Metz's essay contest on Jews in 1788, and to be elected to the EstatesGeneral, along with the rich and famous of the ancien regime? Reconstructing Gregoire's years in Embermenil remains difficult because sources are few, especially for the early part of this period. Aside from his poetry essay, the cure of Embermenil does not seem to have published anything before his 1788 essay on the Jews. As for prerevolutionary personal papers, Gregoire seems to have destroyed nearly all existing papers during the Terror, though a few letters he sent to others still exist.1 Adding these letters to the retrospective information in his Memoires, we can reconstitute these years enough to identify four main categories of his activity in the 1780's: preaching and ecclesiastical politics; educating country dwellers in morals and practical knowledge; traveling; and dealing with Jews. Combining enlightened and religious ideals, Gregoire aimed to improve his parish and those who lived in it. 1

Paul Pisani, "Henri Gregoire," in Dictionnaire de theologie catholique, ed. E. Mangenot A. Vacant and Mgr. £. Amann (Paris: Letouzey et A n6,1947), col. 1854 - 63. There is a surfeit, however, of post-1794 Grdgoire papers, particularly at the BSPR, the Arsenal, the Archives nationales and the BM Nancy.

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52 As I noted in the last chapter, most existing work on Gregoire starts after 1789.2 This chapter will thus have a biographical purpose: to reconstruct —to the extent possible ~ Gregoire's activities during the 1780’s. In examining Gregoire's early career, this chapter extends the arguments made in Chapter One concerning the heterogeneity of Gregoire's intellectual lineage; the chief influences upon him during this period included Catholics, irreligious philosophes, and Protestants. My discussion of Gregoire's prerevolutionary years also serves to illustrate two larger points about eighteenth-century French society. First, looking at Gregoire as the model of an eighteenth-century bon cure, an enlightened priest, gives us a further reminder that "enlightenment" and "religion" were not as opposed as they now seem.3 Second, since some of the ideas Gregoire developed in this period became government policy during the Revolution (such as his campaign to eradicate patois), we need to recognize that the origins of revolutionary policy were as multiple as Gregoire’s, and included enlightened, Catholic and Protestant elements. Enlightened Religion: Improving the Peasants Once Gregoire arrived in Embermenil, with his very own benefice, he was keen to effect reform in his parish. As Sutter has pointed out, the parish had only 340 communicants. The new cure therefore had plenty of leisure time to think about reform.4 Later in this chapter, I shall discuss the reforms Gregoire wanted to make within Church structure as a whole. But first, let us focus on Gregoire’s attempts to be the model bon cure within his own parish.

For exceptions, see the works I cited in Chapter One, especially Sutter and Maggiolo. David A. Bell also alluded to Gregoire as "the very model of the late eighteenthcentury cure eclairi' in his "Tearing Down the Tower of Babel." Sutter, 40.

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53 He would later seek to use this model of the cure as the key to social change during the Revolution. Gregoire was not alone in proposing a new role for the cure in the late eighteenth century. As Timothy Tackett has discussed, there was a growing ideal among "enlightened" portions of the eighteenth-century clergy, of the cure as "key agent of the king, tutor of society, servant of Enlightenment in the countryside." Tackett has noted, however, that this model was not unanimously accepted throughout France: "Though the new model of 'citizen' cure —servant to the parish and tutor of Enlightened reform -- had deeply [a]ffected the self-image of many, the older Tridentine model of the priest, tightly bound to the hierarchical lines of clerical authority, also maintained a powerful hold."5 Choosing to be a bon cure was a decidedly reformist stance. The idea of a bon cure also was part of a larger movement in the eighteenth century, that of enlightened religion. Though scholars have long known about the existence of religious forms of the Enlightenment in Germany and in England, the French Enlightenment is usually considered to have been absolutely irreligious. As I have noted, Bernard Plongeron has led the way in complicating this view by showing the existence of an Aufklarung catholique (Catholic Enlightenment). Gregoire would later be prominent in

this ultimately unsuccessful (especially after the Revolution) movement, as his participation in the Societe de philosophie chretienne would dem onstrate (see Chapter Six).6 Yet the Revolution would soon make Enlightenment and 5

6

Timothy Tackett, Priest and Parish in Eighteenth-Century France: A Social and Political Study of the Cures in a Diocese of Dauphine, 1750 - 1791 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 169; Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary, 129. See also Suzanne Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred: Lay Religion and Popular Politics in Revolutionary France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 77-8. See Plongeron, "Recherches sur l'Aufklarung catholique"; and Plongeron, Theologie et p o litiq u e.

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54 religion seem opposites. Meanwhile, in following Gregoire’s efforts in his parish, we should remember that while his particular vision of how peasants should be improved was in some ways original, in other ways it was part of a larger movement whose existence should not be ignored. Gregoire’s model of the cure started with moral probity. He regarded it as essential that cures be close to their parishioners, but that they police their own conduct to avoid temptation. As he would write in his Memoires: Confession establishes in the Catholic religion more immediate relationships between pastors and their faithful than in societies [e.g. Protestant ones] where this part of the sacrament of penitence has been suppressed. Well, such was the confidence of my parishioners, that if I had not placed mandatory limits on their spontaneous revelations, they would often have exceeded them. From this I concluded how necessary it is for priests to have a [standard of] conduct at least as severe for themselves, because the ministry sometimes offers personal dangers. Gregoire’s model seems to have worked well for him. His bond with his parishioners was so close that when he left them to become bishop of Loir-etCher, he said it was the most difficult decision of his life.7 But Gregoire's interactions with his parishioners were not limited to a confessional plane; he particularly focused his attention on educating his parishioners. Now that he had a benefice, he could at last implement some of the ideas he had discussed with the SPS. Gregoire would embark on a lifelong campaign to "improve" the inhabitants of the countryside and allow them to participate in the advances of the century. Yet Gregoire differed in a key way from many other eighteenth-century reformers. It is somewhat misleading to depict Gregoire as the type of Parisian outsider who had "stereotypes of a savage France" and saw the

M emoires, 118.

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peasant as "a creature comparable to a farm animal [tin animal d ’elevage]"8 He was undoubtedly influenced by his urban education and by the elites of Nancy and Strasbourg, and he had internalized the idea that country dwellers were inferior to city ones. Yet, as a product of the countryside, he could never view the peasants as completely "Other." Throughout his life, Gregoire would remain suspended between the urban and rural worlds, never fully belonging to either. He viewed himself as an outsider to the city and criticized its values, but nonetheless believed that other country people needed to be improved with urban learning. While believing sincerely that what he had learned in the city could benefit other peasants, he may also have felt embarrassed by what he now considered the backwardness of his origins. In seeking to change his parishioners, Gregoire's plans involved introducing elite knowledge without making peasants want to give up farming. He notes in his Memoires that "I formed the project to carry, as far as possible, enlightened piety, the purity of morals, and the culture of intelligence among the country people: not only without distancing them from agricultural work, but in fortifying their attachment to this type of work."9 Gregoire wanted to bring new ideas to his parishioners, but he also idealized the agrarian character of the society in which he had been reared. Despite his interest in the latest agricultural technology, which we will see in passing in various places in this study, Gregoire idealized the agrarian nature of the countryside. He imagined that rural societies were the most prone to good morals.

See the otherwise fascinating study by de Certeau, Julia, and Revel, 140,149. M em oires, 117-8.

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56 Gregoire's chief weapon in the battle for his parishioners' hearts and minds was the establishment of a parish library. He filled it w ith "wellchosen ascetic books and works relative to agriculture, hygiene, the mechanical arts, etc."10 Gregoire would remain interested in libraries long after he had left Embermenil for the Estates-General.11 In trying to reconstruct the Catholic Church after the Terror, he would look back on his old parish library and recommend that other priests emulate him in establishing libraries in their parishes. He noted in a 1795 pamphlet, such a library could not only educate parishioners, but also bind them to their pastor: When I was a cure, I had a library for the use of my parishioners. Its object was all that was useful and possible to teach country-dwellers: books about rural economy, veterinary arts, knowledge of plants, care for the sick, and especially well-chosen pious books. They themselves [the parishioners] asked me . . . to lend diem the books, to indicate the chapters most suited to their needs. Gregoire recommended that if priests did not have enough funding, they should raise money among the faithful.12 If we are to believe Maggiolo, the people of Embermenil seem to have appreciated Gregoire's efforts and not regarded them as high-minded. Though he disapproved of Gregoire's post-Embermenil activities, Maggiolo reported in 1873 that "I have met many of the children [of Gregoire's tenure

M em oires, 118.

As discussed in Chapter Five, he would remain keenly interested in public libraries during the Revolution; after the Conseil des Cinq-Cents ended in 1799, he would himself become a librarian at the Bibliotheque de 1'Arsenal, from 1799 to 1801. Gregoire, Compte rendu aux eveques reunis a Paris de la visite de son diocese (Paris, le 8 decembre 1796) (Paris: Imprimerie-librairie chretienne, 1796), 30-1. Julia has maintained that an additional goal of Gregoire's project was countering the "pernicious effects of the almanacs” (de Certeau, Julia, and Revel, 20). Plongeron fixed the establishment of the library in 1783, without giving a source (Plongeron, L'abbe Gregoire, 17). The library must have been destroyed during the revolutionary years; in 1816, Gregoire referred to the desire of a recently deceased young woman named Mile. Marchal to establish a "circulating depot of books, particularly religious ones" in Embermenil. Gregoire sent sixty-nine volumes to fulfill her wish (Gregoire to Jennat, 10 mai 1816, in Cosson, 249).

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57 in the parish] who have reached their old age. Not a single one had forgotten the instructions, the examples, or the virtues of the good cure." When Gregoire would leave to become the bishop of Loir-et-Cher, the local inhabitants would write a letter filled with genuine regret. Even as late as 1812, they would inaugurate a new bell at the parish church and declare him its "godfather [parrain ]." Gregoire himself would claim in his Memoires that his days in Embermenil were the happiest in his life.13 On the eve of the Revolution, Gregoire proposed w riting a work which would teach others how to educate country people properly. In late 1788, having won the Academy of Metz's essay contest on the Jews, Gregoire wanted to pen four new works. One of them, he told a correspondent, would be a study on how to educate country dwellers [campagnards]. According to this letter, discovered by Leon Berthe, Gregoire aimed to pick up where an author named Philipon de la Madelaine had left off. In 1783, Philipon had published a work called Vues patriotiques sur Veducation du peuple, tant des villes que de la campagne.

Because Gregoire never completed the work, we do not know exactly what it would have said. But we can gather a few things from what he said and from looking at Philipon's work. Heavily influenced by Rousseau and Locke, Philipon's work aimed to apply Enlightenment ideals to education in France; its sources included the Encyclopedic, d'Alembert, Buffon, and Helvetius.14 Not at all a religious work, it valorized, in accordance with 13

14

Maggiolo (1873): xlii; M emoires, 118; "Lettres des habitants d’Embermenil a M. Gregoire du 7 mars 1791," in Memoires, 182*3; Joseph Marchal to Gregoire, 22 janvier 1812, BM Nancy, Ms. 958 (534), no. 46. Philipon did not always agree with Rousseau, however. He considered Rousseau's ignoring the education of the poor to be elitist. At the same time, Philipon himself was not a believer in social mobility. He thought, for example, that Rousseau had been too generous in allowing £mile to have a "very hard bed." For the poor, who would grow up to be soldiers, Philipon insisted that it was more important to teach them to sleep on the floor from an early age ([Louis Philipon de la Madelaine], Vues patriotiques sur

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58 secular Enlightenment ideals, the de-theologized bon cure who could bring secular education and morality to the common people. Philipon hoped that cures would not simply read the word of God, but also explain to them the latest in rural economy. His work was hardly egalitarian; for Philipon, "the true goal of educating the common people is to make them love their [social] station."15 While Gregoire presumably wanted more religious content for the cure’s teachings, his letter suggests that he aimed to extend Philipon's arguments, not counter them. For him as for Philipon, a project aimed at "educating the common people" implied that they needed an education different from those above them. Gregoire thus envisioned a parish priest as a bearer of the enlightened and religious knowledge best suited for peasant minds. While maintaining hierarchy in society, he aimed to educate the common people for their station and to alleviate the burdens placed on them by their economic status. Fellow Travelers: The Oberlins. Lavater, and Social Change In the spirit of the SPS's discussions of travel, Gregoire w as continuing to educate himself about the areas around him and to look for information that would help him improve the lot of his parishioners. Though the SPS was now defunct, Gregoire still maintained intellectual connections beyond his parish, especially in eastern France. Among them, the Swiss writer Johann Kaspar Lavater and the Protestant brothers Jeremie-Jacques and Jeanieducation du peuple, tant des villes que de la campagne; avec beaucoup de Notes interessantes. Ouvrage qui peut etre egalement utile aux autres classes de citoyens

15

[Lyon: Chez P. Bruyset-Ponthus, 1783], 9-19,69). Philipon de la Madelaine, 24. That Gregoire continued to admire Philipon during the Revolution can be seen in the latter's being allocated a scholarly pension during the Convention, when Gregoire was in charge of compiling recommendations for such funding (see James Guillaume, Proces-verbaux du Comite d'instruction publique de la Convention nationale, 6 vols. [Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1891 - 1907], 5: 384).

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59 Frederic Oberlin particularly influenced Gregoire's developing vision of social change. During 1784-7, Gregoire traveled through the Vosges, to Alsace, and to Switzerland. In his 1784 trip to Switzerland, he w ent to Notre-Dame-desHermites, where his father had gone as a pilgrim; he would also go to meet Hirzel ("the author of the Socrate Rustique"), the poet Gessner and a M. Fellenberg who had a model agricultural school from which Gregoire gained ideas to bring back to Embermenil.16 Gregoire also went to see Lavater, then one of the most "famous" men in Europe. The Vosges and Alsace trips, in 1784,1786 and 1787, were especially significant. Strasbourg was of course a city where Gregoire still maintained strong intellectual and personal ties, and, as he himself noted, "I have always left this city with regret and always return with pleasure.” While there, as Sutter has noted, Gregoire "revisited his philanthrope friends interested in what was happening in the patrie of Jean-Jacques Rousseau." One of the other towns which most marked him was that of Senones, where Gregoire was able to see two marvelous collections of rare books in the libraries of the local castle and of the Benedictine monks. Gregoire was particularly excited at seeing the original manuscript of the founder of Richerism, which, the abbe was later disturbed to learn, would disappear during the revolutionary turmoil. While in Senones, Gregoire was also able to pay homage to the late 16

Maggiolo (1873), xli; [Gregoire], "Lettre XXX [on the Vosges and Switzerland]," in Correspondance sur les affaires du terns, 2:168. Maggiolo reported seeing Gregoire's travel journals from these trips in the BM Nancy during the nineteenth century; I have only been able to find the essay Gregoire wrote after his 1799 trip (Maggiolo [1873]: xli, lxxxii; BM Nancy, Ms. 469 [532]). Benoit maintained, however, that the travel essay which Gregoire inserted into Correspondance sur les affaires du tems was based primarily on notes from the 1784-7 trips, with some minor updating (A. Benoit, "Description des Vosges, par l’abbe Gregoire, publiee pour la premiere fois et annotee," Annales de la Societe d'emulation du departement des Vosges 71 [1895]: 223-4). The events described in this essay accord with Maggiolo’s description of the earlier trip and its travel journal.

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60 Dom Calmet, whose influence on the young Gregoire was discussed in Chapter One.17 More importantly, Gregoire cemented his long-term and crucial friendships with the Oberlin brothers, Jeremie-Jacques and Jean-Frederic. The two had grown up in Strasbourg, sons of a professor at the Protestant Gymnasium. Despite confessional differences, Gregoire shared with the Oberlin sons an abiding faith in God and a fascination with country-dwellers and patois. They seem to have exercised a strong influence on Gregoire. Jeremie-Jacques Oberlin, the older brother, would ultimately become a professor at the University in Strasbourg. Though it is unclear how he and Gregoire first met, it seems highly probable that the connection was made through the Societe des Philantropes. Though Oberlin does not appear on its 1777 list, he was closely associated with several of its leaders, having edited the short-lived Strasbourg newspaper Der Biirgerfreund with Blessig, Salzmann and Turckheim during the period of that society's most intense activity (1776-7).18 While evidence of their earliest encounters are hard to find, Gregoire and Jeremie-Jacques knew each other at least as of Gregoire's 1784 trip to Alsace. Some of their extensive post-1790 correspondence still exists at the BN (fonds allemands, Ms. 195) and at the BSPR-G (dossier "BasRhin").19 17

18

19

Gregoire, "Promenade dans les Vosges," 146,157-8,170-1; Sutter, 41-2. As Maggiolo noted, Richer's manuscript would later turn up at the Bibliotheque nationale (Maggiolo, "La vie et les oeuvres de l'abbe Gregoire, 1794 -1831,” Memoires de VAcademie de Stanislas 5th ser., vol. 2 [1884]: 16) (henceforth "Maggiolo [1884]"). See [Blessig, Turckheim, Salzmann, and J.-J. Oberlin], D er Biirgerfreund, 1776-7 (at Bibliotheque nationale et universitaire de Strasbourg); authorship is attributed to these four men plus J. Lenz and H. L. Wagner in the Encyclopedie d'Alsace (Strasbourg: Editions publitotal, 1986), 11: 6630. See references to these men ("nos amis") in Gregoire's letters to J.-J. Oberlin in BN, fonds allemands [henceforth "All."], Ms. 195. The BN letters between J.-J. Oberlin and Gregoire are reprinted in Christian Pfister, "Lettres de Gregoire a Jeremie-Jacques Oberlin," Memoires de la Societe d ’archeologie lorraine et du Musee historique lorrain 42 [3d ser., vol. 20] (1892): 333 - 373, which discusses Gregoire's 1784 visit on p. 334.

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61

Gregoire’s relationship with the older Oberlin was to play a key role in his interest in language as a means for transforming the countryside. Gregoire would in fact later credit Jeremie-Jacques with having first interested him in the patois. Oberlin had been known in eastern France and Germany for his pioneering studies of patois, and had published some of this research in 1776 as Essai sur le patois lorrain des environs du comte du Ban de la Roche. This work, which Gregoire owned, depicted patois as the "coarse language of their [rural dwellers'] ancestors," opposing it to the refined language spoken by men of letters and "le beau monde." Oberlin insisted that patois was the unrefined language of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which needed to be modernized and updated. The "corruptions" of standard French made in the patois, he suggested, were the result of "ignorance and laziness."20 As Gregoire would write Oberlin in 1798 about his own language investigation of 1790 (often cited as the beginning of the eradication of patois in France), "it was you who once gave me the idea by your writings."21 Gregoire's relationship with Jeremie-Jacques transcended the study of language. Gregoire w ould ultimately help Oberlin obtain a grant for scholarly work from the National Convention, and the two would become colleagues in the Institut national. During their long correspondence, Gregoire often sent copies of his works to Oberlin for comments. After he returned from

Jeremie-Jacques Oberlin, Essai sur le patois lorrain des environs du comte du Ban de la Roche, fie f Royal d'A lsace (Strasbourg: Chez Jean Fred. Stein, 1775), 2, 84. "Catalogue de ma bibliotheque,” BSPR-G, Rev. 254; and Gregoire to J.-J. Oberlin, 26 vendemiaire an 7 (17 octobre 1798), BN All. Ms. 195, fol. 161 v. Despite Gregoire's praise, Jeremie-Jacques himself saw Gregoire as the pioneer, for making eradication of the patois a part of government policy. As he wrote Gregoire in 1794, "When I presented my book to the public, I was far from thinking that the time would be so. near when one would attempt to get country-dwellers to exchange their shoddy jargon for the cultivated language" (J.-J. Oberlin to Gregoire, 21 prairial an II [9 juin 1794], BN NAF Ms. 2798, fol. 95).

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62 England in 1802, he told Jeremie-Jacques "how many times I wished to have you there with me."22 Gregoire’s relationship with the younger Oberlin, Jean-Frederic (also called Johann Friedrich or Fritz), was no less important in developing his social vision. Jean-Frederic took over the pastorship of the Protestant Vosgien town of Waldersbach (Waldbach) in Ban-de-la-Roche in 1767 and remained there until his death in 1826. Wildly popular among Alsatian intellectuals even now, he is renowned for bringing education, roads, farming techniques, and commerce to this rugged wilderness. His efforts reached such celebrity in the eighteenth century that a congregation of Austrian Protestant emigres to the United States seems to have asked him to be their pastor in 1774. Oberlin wanted to go, especially in order to be a missionary to local Indians and to build schools for "young Negroes." Though he never actually made it to the United States, the founders of a small college in Ohio decided to name it for him posthumously (Oberlin College); they hoped to be as successful in bringing knowledge to their stretch of back-country as Oberlin had been in his.23 While it is not completely clear when Gregoire and the younger Oberlin first came into contact, Jean-Frederic was also friendly with Gregoire’s Strasbourg group of friends (like Salzmann and Hermann). See BN All. Ms. 195, especially Gregoire to J.-J. Oberlin, 1 frimaire an HI (21 novembre 1794) and 4 novembre 1802, fols. 152 and 178. Gregoire would also help obtain pensions for Jean-Frederic Oberlin and for his Strasbourg friends Jean Hermann and JeanChretien Ehrmann (Ibid.; and J.-F. Oberlin to Gregoire, 9 vendemiaire an HI [30 septembre 1794], in Archives nationales [henceforth "AN"] 510 AP 2 (Gregoire Papers). On J.-F. Oberlin's works, see M. Grucker, "Le pasteur Oberlin," Memoires de VAcademie de Stanislas 5th ser., vol. 4-6 (1888): xxxi - lvi; and Malou Schneider and Marie-Jeanne Geyer, Jean-Frederic Oberlin: Le divin ordre du monde, 1740 - 1826 (Strasbourg/Mulhouse: Les Musees de la ville de Strasbourg/Editions du Rhin, 1991). The latter, an exhibition catalogue for a recent show at the Musee alsacien, also . discusses his enduring popularity in Alsace. There is also a Musee Oberlin in Waldersbach. On J.-F. Oberlin's American popularity, see John F. Kurtz, John Frederic Oberlin (Boulder: Westview Press, 1976), 149-150, 283.

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63 Gregoire and Jean-Frederic were destined to be close friends, for Oberlin represented exactly the kind of minister Gregoire aimed to be. Despite their different confessions, Oberlin and Gregoire were kindred spirits in nearly everything else. Both were men of God who were conversant with a wide variety of eighteenth-century ideas. Both had a taste for austerity. Gregoire would once note that "the conduct of the minister of Walderspach [s/c] is a lesson and a reproach to many Catholic priests." In turn, Gregoire was one of the only people whom Jean-Frederic felt comfortable enough to address by the familiar "tu."24 Gregoire's comments (at the time and in the nineteenth century) on Oberlin's efforts in the countryside reveal what Gregoire thought of his own activities during this period. Oberlin first came to visit Gregoire in Embermenil in 1785 because he had heard of Gregoire's visit to Lavater in 1784.25 Among his many other interests, Oberlin was an enthusiast of Lavater's physiognomic theories. Building on an ancient "science" which held that people's external traits existed only to reveal their interior, Lavater provided extensive commentary on what various facial features meant. Lavater’s ideas, although strange to us now, enjoyed vast popularity throughout Europe in the eighteenth century, making him an important figure in popular culture, and turning physiognomy into a favorite parlor game. John Graham has noted that when he died, Lavater was memorialized in obituaries as '"one of the most famous men in Europe."’ His fame came from the extraordinary circulation of his Physiognomische Fragmente zur

24

25

Gregoire would later report that he had known J.-F. Oberlin since approximately 1778, though the earliest confirmation I have found of their meeting is not until 1785. See Gregoire to Franqois de Neufchateau, 1 mars 1818, and "Extrait d'un voyage dans les Vosges en 1787’ in Archives municipales de Strasbourg, Fonds Oberlin (15 NA) (henceforth "AMS-O”), no. 172, fols. 87, 89. See also Kurtz, 17, 277. On J.-F. Oberlin’s visit to Embermenil, see Peter, 301.

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64 Beforderung der M enschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe.

Graham found

that, "by 1810, there had been published sixteen German, fifteen French, two American, one Dutch, one Italian and no less than tw enty English versions ~ a total of fifty-five editions in less than forty years." Bernard Keller asserts that Lavater was one of the "key characters" in the story of Oberlin's life; though they never met, they had an extended correspondence.26 Gregoire shared Oberlin's fascination for Lavater, calling his work on physiognomy "great." He had been lucky enough to receive an audience with the famous author because they had a mutual friend in Strasbourg: Stouber, the Protestant minister who had preceded Oberlin in Waldbach. Gregoire wrote that "Lavater, who has written on physiognomies, himself has a happy one. There are faces more beautiful than his, b ut there is not one which announces more the great thinker."27 In a quest for self-understanding, Gregoire was anxious to know about his own physiognomy and w hat it signaled about his character. While in Embermenil, Oberlin had used a homemade device to make a silhouette of Gregoire (probably the most exact likeness of Gregoire which exists) 28 After Gregoire visited Oberlin in 1787, Gregoire asked Oberlin to analyze his profile using his knowledge of physiognomy. Gregoire's profile suggested to Oberlin a man with a promising future. His forehead and nose were "very happy, very productive, ingenious"; his chin implied someone "bold, active, 26

27 28

John Graham, Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy: A S tu dy in the H istory of Ideas (Beme/Las Vegas: Peter Lang, 1979), 61-2; Bernard Keller, "Relations et rayonnement: Les contacts de J.-F. Oberlin avec l'Europe de la culture," in Schneider and Geyer, 21-2; Geyer, "La pedagogie du portrait," in Schneider and Geyer, 183-194. [Gregoire], "Lettre XXX," in Correspondance sur les affaires du terns, 2: 170-1. See silhouette at AMS-O, no. 428-III (reprinted in Peter, 307). The pictorial representations of Gregoire are so varied that this one, based on a silhouette, may be the most reliable, at least for the time at which it was made. For a sample of the different depictions of Gregoire in engravings, see the Gratz Collection at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, including engravings of Gregoire by Raffet and Haywood, F. Bonneville and Gautier, and A. Claussens.

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65 enterprising, without being too thoughtless." All in all, Oberlin noted, Gregoire's profile revealed a "man hardly still [peu tranquille ] who can do much for the good of society by his activities and abilities."29 Gregoire would display further enthusiasm for Lavater's physiognomy in his Essai on the Jews, as I will discuss in the next chapter. Beyond Lavater, Gregoire and Oberlin would have much more in common. Gregoire would particularly admire Oberlin's commitment to and success in educating the peasants in his area. The two shared a taste for the rural ministry and for seeking to improve their parishioners. In a travel journal from this visit, Gregoire wrote admiringly of Oberlin's educational efforts, mirroring his own aims in Embermenil: He has advanced education in the countryside very far. It is surprising in this wild terrain [contree sauvage] of Ban-de-la-Roche to find among the peasants such developed common sense, a delicacy of emotions, an amiable politeness and pure morals, of which one finds few examples in some cities. Gregoire noted with approval Oberlin's facilitating students’ apprenticeships of trades, and his teaching the peasants those principles of botany necessary for their farming. Gregoire praised Oberlin as being "very laborious, very active, very educated." He noted with pleasure that Oberlin was "very close [rapproche] to Catholicism on many matters," even if he was also prone to the

"reveries of [the Swedish mystic Emmanuel] Swedenborg" and other visionary sect-leaders.30 Gregoire's descriptions of his visit to Waldbach reveal a growing rejection of "city values" in preference for those of the countryside.

AMS-O, no. 428-HI. See "Extrait d’un voyage dans les Vosges en 1787," AMS-O, no. 172, fol. 87. On Gregoire’s attitudes towards Christian sects, see Chapter Eight.

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66 In Ban-de-la-Roche, nature has not lavished its favors, but the industry of its inhabitants and their patience combat the harshness of the climate. In their poverty, a near golden age exists for them. What a difference between these places and our cities, where one sees foolishness and vices of all kinds.31 This idealization of country values was certainly not unique in the eighteenth century. As I noted above, however, we should remember that Gregoire was himself a country boy; his critique of the city was that of a newcomer rather than a city denizen contrasting the city with an idealized and primitive rural utopia. Gregoire was also influenced by Oberlin's efforts to substitute French for the patois of Ban-de-la-Roche. Like his older brother, Jean-Frederic viewed patois as a major obstacle to learning. He was also personally frustrated when he could not understand his parishioners. He thus tried to eliminate the particularly "difficult" patois of Ban-de-la-Roche.

Grucker

notes that "he succeeded, if not in eradicating it, at least in relegating it to the interior of the family and substituting French as the public and official language." Gregoire never forgot Jean-Frederic's Frenchifying efforts; during the National Convention's discussion of national education in 1794, he cited Oberlin’s success in eliminating patois as a m odel32 Despite their close friendship, Gregoire seems to have always entertained the hope of trying to make a Catholic out of Jean-Frederic. Oberlin, who had grown up in a family influenced by German pietism, had a religion more of the heart than of a commitment to a particular denomination’s dogmas. Because of Jean-Frederic's heterodox ideas (including offering communion to Protestant and Catholic alike and signing

Ibid., fol. 88. Grucker, xxxi - lvi, xlii; Edmond Stussi, "Oberlin pedagogue," in Schneider and Geyer, 75; Schneider, "Le Ban-de-la-Roche," in Schneider and Geyer, 55; Kurtz, 56, 77.

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67 his letters "ministre catholique-evangelique"), Gregoire hoped he would "return" to Catholicism. Gregoire never stopped proselytizing his friend, but they retained mutual respect for each other’s beliefs.33 Gregoire's relationship w ith the Oberlins reminds us yet again of the importance of the Strasbourg Protestant group in forming Gregoire's worldview. Gregoire seemed to have idealized his friendships with these men, and looked back to his carefree days with some nostalgia. In 1795, when Gregoire was working feverishly with several groups of men who seemed close to him (see Chapter Six), Gregoire suggested that his only true "friends" were in Strasbourg. As he wrote Jeremie-Jacques that year: "When will I be able to be . . . my own master and to delight in the pleasure of seeing my friends, of conversing w ith them!"34 Until his death Gregoire would regard Jean-Frederic as one of his closest friends and retain a connection with his family. Gregoire would recall in 1818 when recommending the younger Oberlin for a prize that: Differing in our manner of thinking on religion, we were on everything else nearly in unison: the same taste and activity for sparking among the habitants of the countryside the progress of good morals and Enlightenment [lumieres ], improving the educational system [and] enlightening [eclairer] rural industry and economy 35 Across the borders of their confessional differences, Gregoire saw JeanFrederic Oberlin as his spiritual twin. Moreover, Lavater, even while a Kurtz, 12-15,122,277. See also Gregoire to Franqois de Neufchateau, 1 mars 1818, AMSO, no. 172; and Oberlin’s grandson Louis Rauscher's report that Gregoire had hoped Jean-Frederic and other Protestants would "rejoin” the Catholic Church, Rauscher to Daniel-Ehrenfried Stoeber, 3 mai 1827, in Peter, 321-4. Gregoire to J.-J. Oberlin, 30 mars 1795, BN All. 195, fol. 156. See Gregoire to Franqois de Neufchateau, 1 mars 1818, AMS-O, no. 172. While gathering information for a possible new edition of his 1808 De la litterature des negres, Gregoire solicited information on Africans in Russia from J.-F. Oberlin’s oldest son, Henri-Gottfried; in 1827, Gregoire would help Oberlin's grandson compile material for a biography of the late pastor of Waldersbach. See "Questions qui ont ete proposees par M. le Comte Gregoire en 1810,” in Grand journal de Henri G. Oberlin, AMS-O, no. 459, loose folio; and Rauscher to Stoeber, 3 mai 1827, in Peter, 321-4.

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68 Protestant minister, gave Gregoire a key part of the conceptual framework which would help form his idea of regeneration. Richerism and Restructuring the Church Even while focusing on his own parish, the abbe Gregoire was beginning to gain a certain renown elsewhere in the Lorraine clerical world. In addition to preaching in Embermenil, he was sometimes asked to give guest sermons or lead prayers in other churches. In September 1786, for example, he was asked to speak at the parish church of Saint-Jacques in Luneville on the opening of a synagogue in that city. He also gave an oration for the crowning of the village maiden (Rosiere) at the festivals in 1782 and 1783 (and possibly 1779) in Rechicourt-le-Chateau. For Gregoire, speaking at this festival was a powerful way to help spread morality. He very much adm ired the efforts of the abbe Marquis, cure at Rechicourt, to deliver his parish from "libertinage" and to spread virtue through moralistic pageantry.36 Gregoire was also making himself infamous in some eyes. The abbe Chatrian, no friend of Gregoire's, has left us a record of how Gregoire's preaching was perceived by more traditional local clerics. Chatrian suggested that Gregoire was a highly unorthodox orator, who shocked those who came to listen to him. Of a service led by the cure of Embermenil one day in Luneville, Chatrian wrote in his diary:

Sutter, 43; de Certeau, Julia, and Revel, 21; C. Maire, "La Rosiere de Rechicourt," La Revue lorraine populaire, no. 52 (1983): 174-6. Gregoire would long remember the

festival in Rechicourt-le-Chateau and its founder the abbe Marquis; he would later write a biographical note about the latter. See his letters of 14 decembre 1811 and 2 mars 1812 to Jennat, along with that of 20 fevrier 1812 (in which Gregoire would note his pleasure at seeing the revival of the ceremony and the crowning of the virgin) in Cosson, 70 - 89,247 - 77. In the biographical note on Marquis, Gregoire would write that "the editor of this article has attended and taken an active role in his ministerial capacities in similar festivals in many parts of France. Never had he found a ceremony as touching as that in Rechicourt [sic]” (BM Nancy, Ms. 957 [533], reprinted in de Certeau, Julia, and Revel, 21).

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69 M. Gregoire will not allow in his Church paintings or statu es He preaches without a square cap, does not bend to his knees in the pulpit before beginning, does not use a Bible, does not even pretend to preach but rather converses with his listeners, does not make divisions nor subdivisions [in the organization of his speech]. No Ave Maria, no references to the Holy Scriptures or the Fathers, [no] pretty phrases. But besides having no brilliant figures [of speech], no oratorical movements, this 'English orator’ finishes suddenly, without recapitulating, without which one has no idea what the point was of his worldly conversation from the pulpit, before God, before a Catholic audience.37 Chatrian also asserted that Gregoire scandalized his parishioners from the moment he arrived because of his hatred for iconography and his "Protestant" soul. The new cure, Protestant in his soul —or rather nothing [rieniste] — did not waste any time in Embermenil in showing himself to be an iconoclast. He scandalously pillaged the tableaux, statues and Saints' portraits which were in his church, to the point where his parishioners, justifiably unable to contain their indignation, complained about it throughout the region as a vexation worthy of a Lutheran or Calvinist minister.38 Given Chatrian's taste for hyperbolic critiques of those he disliked, one should not accept this description literally. Certainly, by the time of the Revolution, Gregoire would become renowned for his fiery oratory. Moreover, by the end of the 1780's, Gregoire had become a leader of other cures by being "imposing by his presence, his inflamed words, his art of handling the masses and dominating them."39 Chatrian did, however, reveal two key aspects of Gregoire's developing clerical style: his taste for simplicity and his willingness to publicly turn convention on its head. Gregoire was ready to crusade for change he desired, no matter what others thought of him. One of the most important causes

Mathieu, 357. "Lettre d'un cure lorrain, emigre, sur l'abbe Gregoire," 22. Taveneaux, "L'abbe Gregoire et la democratic clericale," 142.

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70 which occupied Gregoire at this stage was Richerism. This philosophy, founded by Edmond Richer in the early seventeenth century, aimed to raise the status of cures within the Church structure. Richer posited authority in the entire Church, not just among the bishops and higher officials. "Richerism" was primarily a movement of parish priests. In the spirit of a Richerist tradition which was particularly well implanted in Lorraine, and to which he seems to have been introduced by the abbe Sanguine, Gregoire saw cures as the basic and most important element of the Church.40 Bishops had arrogated power to themselves alone for too long, the Lorraine lower clergy felt. Like other lower clergy members, Gregoire believed in the Richerist idea of divine institution of cures (with cures being the descendants of the disciples) and the idea of the Church as an egalitarian society. An egalitarian church could be achieved especially through the institution of national councils instead of clerical assemblies, and if priests could "unionize" (se syndiquer) to defend their rights when the bishops opposed them.41 Gregoire, who remained ambitious and was increasingly gaining in local prominence, became an important figure in the local Richerist movement on the eve of the Revolution. Rene Taveneaux has in fact called him the "soul of this presbyterian movement" in Lorraine of the late 1780's.

Edmond Richer tried to democratize the Church in the seventeenth century, but his influence was limited to a small circle. By the eighteenth century, Richerism would become "one of the key components of the mentalite of the lower clergy" in Lorraine. Taveneaux has argued that Lorraine, whose clergy had a "golden age" in the eighteenth century, was a particularly fertile ground for Richerism for two key reasons. First, because priests in Lorraine were materially better off than their counterparts elsewhere in France, they had the leisure time to engage in campaigns to extend their authority. Second, because of the peculiarities of their geographic/political status, if a bishop appointed by France objected to their activities, Stanislas would protect them (Taveneaux, "L’abbe Gregoire et la democratic clericale," 137-8). On the relationship between Richerism and Jansenism, see below. On Richerism, see also Van Kley, Religious Origins, 68 and passim.

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71 During the writing of the cahiers de doleance, he would play an active role in editing at least two cahiers, those of Embermenil and of the Luneville clergy, both of which were imbued with Richerist ideals.42 According to Taveneaux, it was Gregoire who introduced the idea of clerical councils into the cahier de doleance of the Luneville clergy, and his enthusiasm for Richerist ideas also

influenced the way other local cahiers were written by others.43 Gregoire would remain interested in building this theoretically egalitarian church during the Directory, and would be a leader of the Conciles nationaux of 1797 and 1801. Once the voting for the Estates-General got underway, Gregoire continued to be an activist on behalf of the cures. In late January 1789, he joined with two other cures to demand that the lower clergy be represented in Paris. "First of all, we are citizens," they wrote. And "as cures, we have rights [too]."44 Once he arrived in Paris, Gregoire would become an instant celebrity by the force of his arguments and his charisma, as we will see in the next chapter. He would write an extremely popular pamphlet urging the lower clergy to join the Third Estate, and would play a major role in the "revolt of the lower clergy" ultimate union of the orders, as numerous studies have shown.45

See E. Duvemoy, "Le cahier d'Embermenil, paroisse de l'abbe Gregoire en 1789,” Annales de I'Est 12 (1898): 577 - 583; L. Jerome, Les elections et les cahiers du clerge lorrain aux £ tats generaux de 1789 (Bailliages de Nancy, Luneville, Blamont, Rosieres, Vezelise et Nomeny) (Nancy: Berger-Levrault et Cie., 1899); and Taveneaux, "L'abbe

Gregoire et la democratic clericale," 144. Taveneaux, Le Jansenisme en Lorraine, 721; Taveneaux, "L'abbe Gregoire et la democratic clericale," 142-4. Gregoire, Valentin (Cure de Leyr), and Didry (Cure de Farroy), Lettre a M M . les cures lorrains et autres ecclesiastiques seculiers du diocese de M etz (Nancy: n.p., 1789), 2. [Gregoire], Nouvelle lettre d ’un cure, a ses confreres, deputes aux Ltats-Generaux (n.p., [1789]). This pamphlet was published quasi-anonymously ("M. G***, Cure d’l**** en Lorraine") because of its incendiary attacks on the irreligiosity of portions of the higher clergy. On the revolt of the cures, see Maurice G. Hutt, "The Role of the Cures in the Estates-General of 1789,” Journal o f Ecclesiastical H istory 6 (1955): 190 - 220; and

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72 Gregoire's plans for reorganizing the Church were not limited to its structure; he also wanted a new kind of clerical education. In addition to the pam phlet on educating country people, one of the four tracts Gregoire was planning in 1788 (as discussed earlier in this chapter) would be about educating clerics. Gregoire suggested that, in the eighteenth century's fever for rethinking education, no one had thought to write about the education of clerics: "I have a work in progress . . . on the education of clerics, who are charged with teaching three-quarters of the kingdom. It is astonishing that among so many treatises on education, there is none on that o f the clergy . . . . " (emphasis added).46

Did Gregoire ever complete this work? Like the other works-inprogress which Gregoire was planning at the time, no definitive record has been found. Leon Berthe, who discovered the letter in which Gregoire wrote of these projects, also uncovered a 1790 pamphlet about the education of clerics. He could not decide, however, if it was written by Gregoire or by Martin-Fran^ois Thibault, the former superior of the Seminaire Saint-Simon in Metz.47 It seems likely that the author was indeed our abbe, for several reasons. First, the pamphlet was published by the same printer who published Gregoire's only other wide-circulation work under the ancien regime, Claude Lamort in Metz 48 Second, the language and word choice sounds very much like Gregoire. Third, in addition to putting forward a bon cure model just like Gregoire's, the pamphlet's suggestions for clerical education closely

46 47 48

Necheles, "The Cures in the Estates-General of 1789," Journal o f M odem H istory 46 (1974): 425 - 44. See Gregoire to Dubois de Fosseux, 8 decembre 1788, in Berthe, "L’abbe Gregoire, eleve de l'abbe Lamourette,” Revue du Nord 44 (1962): 39 - 46. Berthe, Ibid. Though the work was published in 1790, it hardly contains any hint of the Revolution, suggesting that the work might been written in early 1789 or before.

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73 resemble the proposals Gregoire would make as bishop of Loir-et-Cher; when he arrived there in 1791, one of his first projects would be the reorganization of clerical education.49 Finally, if Gregoire was correct in writing that no other authors were interested in this topic, that would be an additional reason to suggest that the work was his. If the pamphlet found by Berthe was indeed the work of Gregoire, then we can add some more information to our knowledge of Gregoire's model of the bon cure. For the author of the pamphlet, educating cures properly was the key to social morality. A cure needed to be trained to instill morality and a love of duty among his parishioners, without thinking about his own aggrandizement: A pastor, in his village, is the only person from whom one can expect help in moral and religious instruction. If his education was flawed, if he neglects his duties, if he is ignorant, and if he attaches more worth to simple practices than to the accomplishment of essential duties, his people will remain ignorant of their principal obligations, or will become superstitious and fanatic. Nations! Devote care to the studies of your p rie sts Do not corrupt them with riches and with distinctions which flatter their pride. Talents and virtues should be the costuming of a minister of religion, and not crosses and ribbons, which are the frivolous diversions of a childish vanity. Instead of training priests in the scholastic system of objections, which the author believed "makes one regard the most certain principles as problematic," it would be best to teach priests using a simple and direct m ethod.50 The author also suggested that a priest should be capable not only of instructing his parishioners in religious matters, but also about political and

See Chapter Four. Plan d'etudes pour les jeunes ecclesiastiques (Metz: De I'imprimerie de Claude Lamort,

1790), 1, 7-8.

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74 social duties; he should also be able to act as a sort of paramedic. A priest, he argued, should learn natural law, in order to teach men about their duties, about the simple style of the Holy Scriptures and the early Church, and about moral theology. He should also educate himself about "sacred and profane history, natural history, physics and medicine." The author complained that, as far as the peasants were concerned, the great medical discoveries of the eighteenth century were nonexistent. A priest, as the most learned man in a rural parish, should try to learn as much as he could about medical discoveries and plants in order to prevent peasants ("the most useful portion of society") from dying needlessly. Lest his readers believe that such activity was too far afield from ministering to souls, the author noted that Jesus Christ himself had worked to cure the sick.51 Whether or not Gregoire wrote this pamphlet, it is clear he wanted reform of the Church during this period and, as a Richerist, believed that cures were the most fundamental part of the Church. Does this also mean that Gregoire was a Jansenist at this time? There has been considerable discussion about the extent to which Jansenism (a seveneenth-century Catholic theology which emphasized man's depravity in the wake of original sin and the role of divine grace in saving an elect few) influenced Gregoire’s early thinking.52 The case for his early (and enduring) Jansenism has been made most emphatically by Rita Hermon-Belot and Paul Grunebaum-Ballin. Hermon-Belot detected in the abbe's thinking an "enduring familiarity with Jansenism which would only need to be expounded in adversity, and which is explained by the very strong presence of Jansenism in the Lorraine of his

51 52

Ibid., 4, 8-9, 16-19. On eighteenth-century Jansenism and its seventeenth-century origins, see Van Kley's works The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits; The Damiens Affair, and Religious Origins.

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75 b ir th

”53 A similar view was held by Grunebaum-Ballin, a lawyer and

politician who was a great admirer and scholar of Gregoire in the mid­ twentieth century. In attempting to absolve Gregoire of the charge that he wished simply to convert Jews, Grunebaum-Ballin summed up Gregoire’s view of the world in "three words: Gregoire etait janseniste."54 Making similar arguments, at least in part, have been Jean-Michel Leniaud, who recently re-edited Gregoire’s Memoires, and A ugustin Gazier, the great chronicler of the Jansenist movement. Leniaud asserted that "If [Gregoire] would keep, as he said, 'a respectful attachment' towards his [Jesuit] teachers, it is to Jansenism that he would remain faithful." For his part, Gazier declared that Gregoire "revealed himself to be a fervent disciple of Port-Royal," even before the Revolution.55 Though the evidence of Gregoire's choosing to identify with PortRoyal after the Revolution is clear (see Chapter Six), however, the available evidence from this period seems to point in other directions, towards the other types of influences I have discussed. The evidence offered so far by Hermon-Belot dates from after the Revolution.56 As for that given by Hermon-Belot, "Introduction," in Les Ruines de Port-Royal, 14. Paul Grunebaum-Ballin, "Gregoire convertisseur? ou la croyance au ’Retour d'lsrael'," Revue des £tudes Juives 4th ser., vol. 1 (labeled vol. 121), no. 1 /2 (1962), 388. Like Hermon-Belot and Grunebaum-Ballin, David A. Bell highlighted the Jansenist origins of Gregoire's early thought in his 1995 article, "Lingua Populi, Lingua Dei." Bell has moved away from this emphasis on Gregoire’s Jansenist origins since the Clark Library Conference, and now recognizes the importance of the other kinds of influences discussed in this chapter. See his conference paper "Tearing Down the Tower of Babel: Gregoire and French Multilingualism.'' Leniaud, "Introduction," in M em oires, 22; Gazier, ttu d e s sur I'histoire religieuse de la Revolution frangaise d'apres des documents originaux et inedits (Paris: Armand Colin, 1887), 4. Several recent works on Gregoire, especially nonacademic ones, have repeated the idea that Gregoire's main intellectual influence was Jansenism. Since these simply cite the works discussed here rather than rest on new research, I do not identify them separately in my discussion. See for example Hermon-Belot, "Introduction," in Les Ruines de Port-Royal, 7 - 25;.and "Preface," in Essai sur la regeneration, 7 - 39, citing from texts such as Gregoire's 1809 Les Ruines de Port-Royal and his 1828 edition (though the "Preface" mistakenly says 1825) of the Histoire des sectes religieuses.

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Leniaud, he mistakenly cited Maggiolo to suggest that Gregoire's mother was a Jansenist (when Maggiolo had simply contested someone else's suggestion that she was Jansenist).57 Both Leniaud and Grunebaum-Ballin also relied on the fact that the abbe Chatrian called Gregoire a Jansenist. As we have seen, however, Chatrian may not be the most reliable source when it comes to Gregoire; moreover, he used "Jansenist" and "Protestant" as epithets. As the Lorraine historian and cardinal Fran