Jonas, Monument As Ex-Voto (1993)

Monument as Ex-Voto, Monument as Historiosophy: The Basilica of Sacre-Coeur
Author(s): Raymond A. Jonas

Source: French Historical Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 482-502
Published by: Duke University Press
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Monument as
Ex-Voto,
Monument as
Historiosophy:
The Basilica of Sacre-Coeur
Raymond
A.
Jonas
A sense of imminent and momentous
change
animated the crowd of
pilgrims gathered
at Chartres in
May
of 1873. The 1873
pilgrimage,
perhaps inevitably politicized
because it occurred three
days
after the
fall of the
government
of
Adolphe
Thiers,
was marked
by
the
presence
of over one hundred and
forty deputies
from the National
Assembly
and
many
of the
leading bishops
of France. A
yearning
for
spiritual
renewal,
prompted by shattering
national
defeat,
had followed the
Franco-Prussian
War,
and at this delicate
political
moment,
such a dis-
tinguished assemblage
seemed to demonstrate that the new
spirituality
spilled
over the
boundary separating private
sentiments from
public
life.
The featured
speaker
was
Bishop
Pie of
Poitiers,
easily
one of
France's most
imposing bishops,
both in
physical
and intellectual
terms. Pie for months had been
telling congregations
of the advent of
an era marked
by
the christianization of
public
institutions. At each
opportunity
he enunciated the
message
with new fervor: "The hour of
the Church has come. . . . The hour
approaches
when
Jesus
Christ
will return not
only
to the hearts and minds of
men,
but also to the
institutions,
the social
life,
and the
public
life of
peoples."'
In the con-
Raymond
A.
Jonas
is associate
professor
of
history
at the
University
of
Washington.
He is
currently studying
the cult of the Sacred Heart in
nineteenth-century
France.
The author wishes to
acknowledge
the
support
of the National Endowment for the Humani-
ties,
which
provided funding
in the form of a Summer
Stipend
and a Travel to Collections Grant,
and the
University
of
Washington
Graduate School Research Fund. Portions of this article were
presented
at the
Colloquium
in
Nineteenth-Century
French
Studies,
New
Orleans, 17 October
1991,
at the Conference of the Western
Society
for French
History,
Reno,
8 November
1991,
and at
the 1992
meeting
of the American Historical Association in
Washington
D.C. I would also like to
thank
Philippe Farge
at Hachette and Francois Furet for their
help
in
securing permission
to re-
produce
the banner of the Sacred Heart.
Louis Baunard,
Histoire du cardinal
Pie, eveque
de
Poitiers, 2 vols.
(Poitiers, 1886),
2:480.
Monument as
Ex-Voto,
Monument as
Historiosophy:
The Basilica of Sacre-Coeur
Raymond
A.
Jonas
A sense of imminent and momentous
change
animated the crowd of
pilgrims gathered
at Chartres in
May
of 1873. The 1873
pilgrimage,
perhaps inevitably politicized
because it occurred three
days
after the
fall of the
government
of
Adolphe
Thiers,
was marked
by
the
presence
of over one hundred and
forty deputies
from the National
Assembly
and
many
of the
leading bishops
of France. A
yearning
for
spiritual
renewal,
prompted by shattering
national
defeat,
had followed the
Franco-Prussian
War,
and at this delicate
political
moment,
such a dis-
tinguished assemblage
seemed to demonstrate that the new
spirituality
spilled
over the
boundary separating private
sentiments from
public
life.
The featured
speaker
was
Bishop
Pie of
Poitiers,
easily
one of
France's most
imposing bishops,
both in
physical
and intellectual
terms. Pie for months had been
telling congregations
of the advent of
an era marked
by
the christianization of
public
institutions. At each
opportunity
he enunciated the
message
with new fervor: "The hour of
the Church has come. . . . The hour
approaches
when
Jesus
Christ
will return not
only
to the hearts and minds of
men,
but also to the
institutions,
the social
life,
and the
public
life of
peoples."'
In the con-
Raymond
A.
Jonas
is associate
professor
of
history
at the
University
of
Washington.
He is
currently studying
the cult of the Sacred Heart in
nineteenth-century
France.
The author wishes to
acknowledge
the
support
of the National Endowment for the Humani-
ties,
which
provided funding
in the form of a Summer
Stipend
and a Travel to Collections Grant,
and the
University
of
Washington
Graduate School Research Fund. Portions of this article were
presented
at the
Colloquium
in
Nineteenth-Century
French
Studies,
New
Orleans, 17 October
1991,
at the Conference of the Western
Society
for French
History,
Reno,
8 November
1991,
and at
the 1992
meeting
of the American Historical Association in
Washington
D.C. I would also like to
thank
Philippe Farge
at Hachette and Francois Furet for their
help
in
securing permission
to re-
produce
the banner of the Sacred Heart.
Louis Baunard,
Histoire du cardinal
Pie, eveque
de
Poitiers, 2 vols.
(Poitiers, 1886),
2:480.
French Historical
Studies,
Vol. 18,
No. 2
(Fall 1993)
Copyright
?
1993
by
the
Society
for French Historical Studies
French Historical
Studies,
Vol. 18,
No. 2
(Fall 1993)
Copyright
?
1993
by
the
Society
for French Historical Studies
HISTORICAL VISION-SACRE-COEUR HISTORICAL VISION-SACRE-COEUR
text of the
interregnum brought
about
by
Thiers's
resignation, pilgrims
could
only guess
at what Pie
might
mean when he
opposed
the
Rights
of God to the
Rights
of Man as the condition for the
regeneration
of
France-surely
some
thought
it was the answer to their
prayers
for
spiritual
renewal in France. In
fact,
it amounted to an
agenda
for what
would be called the Government of Moral Order.2 The
hopes
for such
an
integriste
restoration would fade over the next four
years,
but on
that
day
all
things
seemed
possible.
Pie addressed the crowd of
pilgrims
on the theme of an imminent national
redemption
and
rebirth;
he of-
fered a vision of a
public
realm
thoroughly
rechristianized,
a formula
for social renewal
through
the recreation of l'ordre moral.
Moral order as a
philosophical category
and as a
political pre-
scription enjoyed
a
long history
in
nineteenth-century
France. It was a
key category
for
Joseph
de Maistre and the Vicomte de
Bonald,
who
understood the French Revolution as
having profound consequences
for the moral order.3 Felicite de
Lamennais,
another
key
Catholic
theorist of the nineteenth
century,
found the
concept
of moral order
indispensable
in his Essai sur
l'indifference
en matiere de
religion
and
explicitly
linked the dissolution of the moral order with the execution
of the
king.4
For de
Maistre,
de
Bonald,
and
Lamennais,
if the
killing
of
the
king
had
ruptured
the moral
order,
by implication
its restoration in
France would follow
upon
the restoration of monarchical
authority.
It is doubtful that
Adolphe Thiers,
whose fall announced the arriv-
al of the Government of Moral
Order,
fully
understood the
politically
prescriptive
nature of the term "moral order" in Catholic
philosophical
and
political
discourse. He
evidently
did understand the
importance
attached to the term
by
Catholics and
by
monarchists of a theocratic
bent, however,
and he was not averse to
employing
the term
himself,
although
in a less
politically
and
philosophically precise way.
When
Thiers sacked his
prefect
of the Rhone
early
in 1872 in an evident
attempt
to
appease
his monarchist
critics,
the action was
justified
as
2
FranCois
Pie,
"Discours
prononce
dans la solennit6 de cloture du
pelerinage
national a
Notre-Dame de
Chartres,
28 mai
1873,"
in Oeuvres de
monseigneur l'eveque
de Poitiers
(Poitiers,
1884),
7:542. Here is how Baunard described the mood
among
the
pilgrims
in the wake of the fall
of Thiers: "Les
pelerins,
encore tout emus de l'evenement du 24 mai,
le consideraient
deja
comme
un
premier
exaucement de tant de
prieres portees
a tous les sanctuaires." Baunard,
Histoire du
cardinal Pie, 2:498. See also Thomas Kselman,
Miracles and
Prophecies
in Nineteenth
Century
France
(New Brunswick, N.J., 1983),
125.
3
Joseph
de
Maistre,
Des Constitutions
politiques (Paris, 1959),
11. On de
Maistre,
see also
Isaiah
Berlin, "Joseph
de Maistre and the
Origins
of Fascism,"
New York Review
of
Books, 27
Sept. 1990,
57-64. For an
example
of de Bonald's use of the term,
see his Essai
analytique
sur les
lois naturelles de l'ordre social ou du
pouvoir,
du ministre et du
sujet
dans la societe
(Paris,
1836;
1982
reprint),
15-16.
4
Oeuvres
completes
de F. de La
Mennais, 12 vols.
(Paris, 1836-37),
1:224.
text of the
interregnum brought
about
by
Thiers's
resignation, pilgrims
could
only guess
at what Pie
might
mean when he
opposed
the
Rights
of God to the
Rights
of Man as the condition for the
regeneration
of
France-surely
some
thought
it was the answer to their
prayers
for
spiritual
renewal in France. In
fact,
it amounted to an
agenda
for what
would be called the Government of Moral Order.2 The
hopes
for such
an
integriste
restoration would fade over the next four
years,
but on
that
day
all
things
seemed
possible.
Pie addressed the crowd of
pilgrims
on the theme of an imminent national
redemption
and
rebirth;
he of-
fered a vision of a
public
realm
thoroughly
rechristianized,
a formula
for social renewal
through
the recreation of l'ordre moral.
Moral order as a
philosophical category
and as a
political pre-
scription enjoyed
a
long history
in
nineteenth-century
France. It was a
key category
for
Joseph
de Maistre and the Vicomte de
Bonald,
who
understood the French Revolution as
having profound consequences
for the moral order.3 Felicite de
Lamennais,
another
key
Catholic
theorist of the nineteenth
century,
found the
concept
of moral order
indispensable
in his Essai sur
l'indifference
en matiere de
religion
and
explicitly
linked the dissolution of the moral order with the execution
of the
king.4
For de
Maistre,
de
Bonald,
and
Lamennais,
if the
killing
of
the
king
had
ruptured
the moral
order,
by implication
its restoration in
France would follow
upon
the restoration of monarchical
authority.
It is doubtful that
Adolphe Thiers,
whose fall announced the arriv-
al of the Government of Moral
Order,
fully
understood the
politically
prescriptive
nature of the term "moral order" in Catholic
philosophical
and
political
discourse. He
evidently
did understand the
importance
attached to the term
by
Catholics and
by
monarchists of a theocratic
bent, however,
and he was not averse to
employing
the term
himself,
although
in a less
politically
and
philosophically precise way.
When
Thiers sacked his
prefect
of the Rhone
early
in 1872 in an evident
attempt
to
appease
his monarchist
critics,
the action was
justified
as
2
FranCois
Pie,
"Discours
prononce
dans la solennit6 de cloture du
pelerinage
national a
Notre-Dame de
Chartres,
28 mai
1873,"
in Oeuvres de
monseigneur l'eveque
de Poitiers
(Poitiers,
1884),
7:542. Here is how Baunard described the mood
among
the
pilgrims
in the wake of the fall
of Thiers: "Les
pelerins,
encore tout emus de l'evenement du 24 mai,
le consideraient
deja
comme
un
premier
exaucement de tant de
prieres portees
a tous les sanctuaires." Baunard,
Histoire du
cardinal Pie, 2:498. See also Thomas Kselman,
Miracles and
Prophecies
in Nineteenth
Century
France
(New Brunswick, N.J., 1983),
125.
3
Joseph
de
Maistre,
Des Constitutions
politiques (Paris, 1959),
11. On de
Maistre,
see also
Isaiah
Berlin, "Joseph
de Maistre and the
Origins
of Fascism,"
New York Review
of
Books, 27
Sept. 1990,
57-64. For an
example
of de Bonald's use of the term,
see his Essai
analytique
sur les
lois naturelles de l'ordre social ou du
pouvoir,
du ministre et du
sujet
dans la societe
(Paris,
1836;
1982
reprint),
15-16.
4
Oeuvres
completes
de F. de La
Mennais, 12 vols.
(Paris, 1836-37),
1:224.
483 483
FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES
necessary
to the defense of moral order.5 And when Thiers courted
Monsignor
Guibert,
archbishop
of Tours and Thiers's candidate to
succeed the murdered
Darboy
as
archbishop
of
Paris,
moral order
plainly
was at the
top
of the
agenda.
Thiers,
in a statement intended to
enlist Guibert as an
ally
in a common cause but also
designed
to re-
mind the
prelate
of his
dependence
on
Thiers,
confided to his
archbishop-elect
that the reconstruction of moral order would rank
among
their common concerns as
spiritual
and secular authorities.
"Material order is
assured,"
Thiers
wrote,
"moral order will be the
work of
time,
good government
and
religious
influence
wisely
and
forcefully applied by
the
prelate
we have chosen."6 Indeed it
would,
Guibert
might plausibly
have
replied,
but reconstruction of the moral
order,
at least
properly
understood,
would not be the work of
Adolphe
Thiers! The establishment of the Government of Moral Order a mere
twenty-one
months later marked a
sharp
turn toward monarchist
poli-
tics
tightly coupled
with a search for national
spiritual
renewal.
The basilica of Sacre-Coeur holds a
special place
in the
history
of
the era of Moral Order.
Indeed,
it is
arguably
Moral Order's most en-
during accomplishment
and
certainly
its most
tangible.
Moral Order
as a
political project
derived its
vigor
from events such as the 1873
pil-
grimage
and the
piety
of the
deputies
who
participated
in it as well as
from the
fleeting
circumstances attendant
upon
the conclusion of the
war. Monarchists were the
party
of Peace
during
the elections of Feb-
ruary
1871,
an
advantage
that
disappeared
with the
negotiation
of final
terms with Bismarck. The national search for renewal after the
war,
whether
expressed
in secular or
religious
terms,
was a
widely
shared
ambition.7
However,
until 1877 moral order served as rhetorical short-
5 See
Republiquefrancaise,
27
Jan.
1872. See also
Jacques
Gadille,
La Pensee et l'action
poli-
tiques
des
eveques francais
au debut de la Troisieme
Republique,
1870-1883, 2 vols.
(Geneva,
Paris, 1967.)
6
BN,
MSS
n.a.f.,
20.623 cited in vol. 2 of
Paguelle
de
Follenay's
Vie du cardinal Guibert
(Paris,
1896), 515,
and in
Gadille,
La
Pensee,
251. On Thiers's life and
political
career,
see
J.
P. T.
Bury
and R. P.
Tombs, Thiers,
1797-1877: A Political
Life (London, 1986);
and Pierre
Guiral, Adolphe
Thiers,
ou de la necessite en
politique (Paris, 1986). Jean Dubois,
who has
rigorously
studied the
lexical field of French
politics
between 1869 and
1872,
cites two
postwar
uses of the
expression
ordre moral, dating
from
June
and December 1871. See Le Vocabulaire
politique
et social en
France de 1869 a 1872
(Paris, 1962),
360.
7
The sentiment was
part
of
Darboy's pastoral
letter of 10 March 1871: "La nation tout entiere
a besoin d'un
changement
moral
auquel
le malheur ne
parait pas
encore nous avoir amenes. Elle
souffre de vices
qui
lui sont chers et dont elle ne consent
pas
a se
deprendre." J.
A. Foulon
[Mgr.
archeveque
de
Lyon],
Histoire de la vie et des oeuvres de
Mgr. Darboy, archeveque
de Paris
(Paris,
1889),
500. For a secular statement of the need for
renewal,
see Ernst Renan in La
Reforme
intellec-
tuelle et morale de la France
(Paris, 1871), excerpted
and translated in David Thomson,
France:
Empire
and
Republic,
1850-1940
(New
York, 1968),
and
reprinted
in
Jan
Goldstein and
John
W.
Boyer, eds., Nineteenth-Century Europe:
Liberalism and its Critics
(Chicago, 1988),
351-55.
necessary
to the defense of moral order.5 And when Thiers courted
Monsignor
Guibert,
archbishop
of Tours and Thiers's candidate to
succeed the murdered
Darboy
as
archbishop
of
Paris,
moral order
plainly
was at the
top
of the
agenda.
Thiers,
in a statement intended to
enlist Guibert as an
ally
in a common cause but also
designed
to re-
mind the
prelate
of his
dependence
on
Thiers,
confided to his
archbishop-elect
that the reconstruction of moral order would rank
among
their common concerns as
spiritual
and secular authorities.
"Material order is
assured,"
Thiers
wrote,
"moral order will be the
work of
time,
good government
and
religious
influence
wisely
and
forcefully applied by
the
prelate
we have chosen."6 Indeed it
would,
Guibert
might plausibly
have
replied,
but reconstruction of the moral
order,
at least
properly
understood,
would not be the work of
Adolphe
Thiers! The establishment of the Government of Moral Order a mere
twenty-one
months later marked a
sharp
turn toward monarchist
poli-
tics
tightly coupled
with a search for national
spiritual
renewal.
The basilica of Sacre-Coeur holds a
special place
in the
history
of
the era of Moral Order.
Indeed,
it is
arguably
Moral Order's most en-
during accomplishment
and
certainly
its most
tangible.
Moral Order
as a
political project
derived its
vigor
from events such as the 1873
pil-
grimage
and the
piety
of the
deputies
who
participated
in it as well as
from the
fleeting
circumstances attendant
upon
the conclusion of the
war. Monarchists were the
party
of Peace
during
the elections of Feb-
ruary
1871,
an
advantage
that
disappeared
with the
negotiation
of final
terms with Bismarck. The national search for renewal after the
war,
whether
expressed
in secular or
religious
terms,
was a
widely
shared
ambition.7
However,
until 1877 moral order served as rhetorical short-
5 See
Republiquefrancaise,
27
Jan.
1872. See also
Jacques
Gadille,
poli-
tiques
des
eveques francais
au debut de la Troisieme
Republique,
1870-1883, 2 vols.
(Geneva,
Paris, 1967.)
6
BN,
MSS
n.a.f.,
20.623 cited in vol. 2 of
Paguelle
de
Follenay's
Vie du cardinal Guibert
(Paris,
1896), 515,
and in
Gadille,
La
Pensee,
251. On Thiers's life and
political
career,
see
J.
P. T.
Bury
and R. P.
Tombs, Thiers,
1797-1877: A Political
Life (London, 1986);
and Pierre
Guiral, Adolphe
Thiers,
ou de la necessite en
politique (Paris, 1986). Jean Dubois,
who has
rigorously
studied the
lexical field of French
politics
between 1869 and
1872,
cites two
postwar
uses of the
expression
ordre moral, dating
from
June
and December 1871. See Le Vocabulaire
politique
et social en
France de 1869 a 1872
(Paris, 1962),
360.
7
The sentiment was
part
of
Darboy's pastoral
letter of 10 March 1871: "La nation tout entiere
a besoin d'un
changement
moral
auquel
le malheur ne
parait pas
encore nous avoir amenes. Elle
souffre de vices
qui
lui sont chers et dont elle ne consent
pas
a se
deprendre." J.
A. Foulon
[Mgr.
archeveque
de
Lyon],
Histoire de la vie et des oeuvres de
Mgr. Darboy, archeveque
de Paris
(Paris,
1889),
500. For a secular statement of the need for
renewal,
see Ernst Renan in La
Reforme
intellec-
tuelle et morale de la France
(Paris, 1871), excerpted
and translated in David Thomson,
France:
Empire
and
Republic,
1850-1940
(New
York, 1968),
and
reprinted
in
Jan
Goldstein and
John
W.
Boyer, eds., Nineteenth-Century Europe:
Liberalism and its Critics
(Chicago, 1988),
351-55.
484 484
hand in French
political
discourse for a
project
of
religious
and national
renewal,
the main features of which were the restoration of
monarchy
and the defense of Rome within a cultural framework of official
piety-a project
which the Sacre-Coeur
symbolized.8
Given that the
Government of Moral Order
ultimately
failed to
carry
out the
political-
cultural reorientation envisioned for itself in
1873-namely,
national
renewal
through
Christian monarchical restoration-the
spiritual
and
national aims embodied
by
Sacre-Coeur stand as a monument to the
unfulfilled aims of the
partisans
of Moral Order.9
The Historical Vision of the Sacre-Coeur
In what sense could the construction of the church of the Sacre-Coeur
be construed as a national
enterprise
as well as a
religious
one? The
origins
of the basilica of Sacre-Coeur cannot be
found,
as is often as-
serted,
in the sense of shame and horror felt
by
a Catholic and bour-
geois Right
confronted with the
revolutionary
Commune of
Paris,
although
such sentiments
helped
to drive the
project
to its
completiohn.0
Devout Parisian
Catholics,
under the shadow of
occupation
and exiled
from their
city,
made the vow to build a church to the Sacre-Coeur in
January
of
1871,
that
is,
before the declaration of the Commune. The
inspiration
for such an edifice-half
place
of
worship,
half
political
profession
de
foi-had,
in
fact,
been
developing
over
nearly
a
century.'l
A mood of national shame seemed to
envelop
France after the humil-
iating
defeats in the
opening campaigns
of the Franco-Prussian
War;
the vow to build a church dedicated to the Sacred Heart was one of its
forms of
expression.12
For the
following
four decades the cult and the
8
On Thiers's life and
political career,
see
J.
P. T.
Bury
and R. P.
Tombs, Thiers; and
Guiral,
Adolphe
Thiers.
9
For the failure of monarchism,
see Marvin L.
Brown,
The Comte de Chambord: The Third
Republic's Uncompromising King (Durham, 1967);
le comte de
Falloux,
Memoires d'un
royaliste
(Paris, 1888);
Arthur
Loth,
L'Echec de la restauration
monarchique
en 1873
(Paris, 1910).
10
For a recent formulation of this
idea,
see David
Harvey
"Monument and
Myth:
The Build-
ing
of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart,"
in Consciousness and the Urban
Experience:
Studies in
the
History
and the
Theory of Capitalist
Urbanization
(Baltimore, 1985);
and
idem,
"Monument
and
Myth,"
Annals
of
theAssociation
of
American
Geographers
69
(1979):
362-81. Fora
rejoinder,
see
Jacques
Benoist,
"Le Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre:
Spiritualite,
art et
politique (1870-1923)"
(these
de doctorat, Universit~ de Paris-Sorbonne,
Paris
IV, 1990).
l See Abbe P.
Laligant,
Montmartre: La
Basilique
du Voeu national du Sacre-Coeur
(Gren-
oble, 1933);
Paul Lesourd,
La Butte
Sacree, Montmartre,
des
origines
au XXe siecle
(Paris, 1937).
A
similar vow was made
by Lyonnais
Catholics with
respect
to Notre-Dame de la Fourviere.
12
Here is how Pie described the sense of national defeat as divine retribution in his "Discours
prononce
dans la solennite de cloture du
pelerinage
national a Notre-Dame de
Chartres,"
538-39:
"Mais, apres que
Dieu s'est ri de ses contradicteurs en faisant
triompher
son oeuvre nonobstant
leurs contradictions, et au
moyen
meme des ces contradictions,
si la resistance continue,
si la
hand in French
political
discourse for a
project
of
religious
and national
renewal,
the main features of which were the restoration of
monarchy
and the defense of Rome within a cultural framework of official
piety-a project
which the Sacre-Coeur
symbolized.8
Given that the
Government of Moral Order
ultimately
failed to
carry
out the
political-
cultural reorientation envisioned for itself in
1873-namely,
national
renewal
through
Christian monarchical restoration-the
spiritual
and
national aims embodied
by
Sacre-Coeur stand as a monument to the
unfulfilled aims of the
partisans
of Moral Order.9
The Historical Vision of the Sacre-Coeur
In what sense could the construction of the church of the Sacre-Coeur
be construed as a national
enterprise
as well as a
religious
one? The
origins
of the basilica of Sacre-Coeur cannot be
found,
as is often as-
serted,
in the sense of shame and horror felt
by
a Catholic and bour-
geois Right
confronted with the
revolutionary
Commune of
Paris,
although
such sentiments
helped
to drive the
project
to its
completiohn.0
Devout Parisian
Catholics,
under the shadow of
occupation
and exiled
from their
city,
made the vow to build a church to the Sacre-Coeur in
January
of
1871,
that
is,
before the declaration of the Commune. The
inspiration
for such an edifice-half
place
of
worship,
half
political
profession
de
foi-had,
in
fact,
been
developing
over
nearly
a
century.'l
A mood of national shame seemed to
envelop
France after the humil-
iating
defeats in the
opening campaigns
of the Franco-Prussian
War;
the vow to build a church dedicated to the Sacred Heart was one of its
forms of
expression.12
For the
following
four decades the cult and the
8
On Thiers's life and
political career,
see
J.
P. T.
Bury
and R. P.
Tombs, Thiers; and
Guiral,
Adolphe
Thiers.
9
For the failure of monarchism,
see Marvin L.
Brown,
The Comte de Chambord: The Third
Republic's Uncompromising King (Durham, 1967);
le comte de
Falloux,
Memoires d'un
royaliste
(Paris, 1888);
Arthur
Loth,
L'Echec de la restauration
monarchique
en 1873
(Paris, 1910).
10
For a recent formulation of this
idea,
see David
Harvey
"Monument and
Myth:
The Build-
ing
of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart,"
in Consciousness and the Urban
Experience:
Studies in
the
History
and the
Theory of Capitalist
Urbanization
(Baltimore, 1985);
and
idem,
"Monument
and
Myth,"
Annals
of
theAssociation
of
American
Geographers
69
(1979):
362-81. Fora
rejoinder,
see
Jacques
Benoist,
"Le Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre:
Spiritualite,
art et
politique (1870-1923)"
(these
de doctorat, Universit~ de Paris-Sorbonne,
Paris
IV, 1990).
l See Abbe P.
Laligant,
Montmartre: La
Basilique
du Voeu national du Sacre-Coeur
(Gren-
oble, 1933);
Paul Lesourd,
La Butte
Sacree, Montmartre,
des
origines
au XXe siecle
(Paris, 1937).
A
similar vow was made
by Lyonnais
Catholics with
respect
to Notre-Dame de la Fourviere.
12
Here is how Pie described the sense of national defeat as divine retribution in his "Discours
prononce
dans la solennite de cloture du
pelerinage
national a Notre-Dame de
Chartres,"
538-39:
"Mais, apres que
Dieu s'est ri de ses contradicteurs en faisant
triompher
son oeuvre nonobstant
leurs contradictions, et au
moyen
meme des ces contradictions,
si la resistance continue,
si la
485 485
PROCESSIONAL BANNER OF THE VOEU NATIONAL AU
SACR!-COEUR. Reproduced
by permission
of
Jean-Loup
Charmet.
PROCESSIONAL BANNER OF THE VOEU NATIONAL AU
SACR!-COEUR. Reproduced
by permission
of
Jean-Loup
Charmet.
basilica of Sacre-Coeur would be a central feature of official and
lay
Catholic
piety.
The
origins
of the basilica of Sacre-Coeur can be found in the cult
of the Sacred
Heart,
a movement of Catholic
popular piety
that ante-
dated the French Revolution but
acquired
a Catholic counterrevolu-
haine
s'obstine,
alors . . . il fait retentir le tonnerre de sa
voix,
la menace de ses
vengeances
. .
et si ce solennel avertissement n'est
pas
entendu,
il
passe
de la menace aux effets, et,
dans l'exces de
sa
fureur,
il
trouble,
il
deconcerte,
il
ebranle,
il
arrache,
il deracine ces insolents ennemis." Charles
de
Freycinet expressed
a similar sentiment in a secular form. "Un ensemble de coincidences mal-
heureuses . . . s'est
joint
a la faiblesse
organique
de la France
pour dejouer
tous ses efforts. Et cet
ensemble a ete tel
que
veritablement, quand
on
l'envisage,
on est tente de se demander s'il
n'y
a
pas
eu la
quelque
raison
superieure
aux causes
physiques,
une sorte
d'expiation
de fautes nationales,
ou le dur
aiguillon pour
un relevement necessaire." Charles de
Freycinet,
La Guerre en
province
pendant
le
siege
de
Paris, 350-51,
cited in Francois Pie, Oeuvres, 7:323.
basilica of Sacre-Coeur would be a central feature of official and
lay
Catholic
piety.
The
origins
of the basilica of Sacre-Coeur can be found in the cult
of the Sacred
Heart,
a movement of Catholic
popular piety
that ante-
dated the French Revolution but
acquired
a Catholic counterrevolu-
haine
s'obstine,
alors . . . il fait retentir le tonnerre de sa
voix,
la menace de ses
vengeances
. .
et si ce solennel avertissement n'est
pas
entendu,
il
passe
de la menace aux effets, et,
dans l'exces de
sa
fureur,
il
trouble,
il
deconcerte,
il
ebranle,
il
arrache,
il deracine ces insolents ennemis." Charles
de
Freycinet expressed
a similar sentiment in a secular form. "Un ensemble de coincidences mal-
heureuses . . . s'est
joint
a la faiblesse
organique
de la France
pour dejouer
tous ses efforts. Et cet
ensemble a ete tel
que
veritablement, quand
on
l'envisage,
on est tente de se demander s'il
n'y
a
pas
eu la
quelque
raison
superieure
aux causes
physiques,
une sorte
d'expiation
de fautes nationales,
ou le dur
aiguillon pour
un relevement necessaire." Charles de
Freycinet,
La Guerre en
province
pendant
le
siege
de
Paris, 350-51,
cited in Francois Pie, Oeuvres, 7:323.
486 486
tionary
focus
during
the Revolution.13 The
symbol
of a wounded heart
topped by
a crucifix on a "Bourbon white" field became
synonymous
with rebellions on behalf of "God and
King"
in the Vendee and else-
where in the 1790s. Louis
XVI,
whose own
sufferings
often blended in
the
popular
mind with those of the Sacred
Heart,
was
widely
believed
to have dedicated France to the Sacre-Coeur
shortly
before his execu-
tion.14 The
"martyred" king
became the focus of the desire to atone for
the collective sins of
revolutionary
France and a
symbol
of Catholic
royalism's
desire to see France united with its Most Christian
King.15
This cult's adherents believed in a
deity
who intervened
directly
in na-
tional affairs in such a fashion that the moral status of the nation could
be "read"
through
its status in the world. Seen
through
this
optic,
the
record of France since 1789 was
transparently
one of national decline-
both moral and
political.
The final
chastisement,
following
the ex-
travagant,
amoral,
and sensual Second
Empire,
came with France's
defeat
by
Prussia in
1870,
after which
pious lay
Catholics vowed to
build a church to the Sacred
Heart,
an
expression
of their
spirituality
but also of their
political
will to see France return at last to "God and
King."16
In this
sense,
moral order was more than
simply
a convenient
way
of
identifying
a conservative
regime;
it was more than
public
order or
good
conservative
government.
Moral order was
historiosophy:
a
logi-
cally
consistent and
internally
coherent vision of the
past,
a
philosophy
of
history.
It
expressed
a view of France and its
history
in terms of
13
For the cult of the Sacre-Coeur, see
Jacques Bainvel, "Devotion au coeur-sacre de
Jesus,"
Dictionnaire de
Theologie Catholique
(Paris, 1938), 3:271-351; Louis Baunard, Histoire de Ma-
dame Barat, fondatrice
de la Societe du Sacre-Coeur de
Jesus, 2 vols.
(Paris, 1876).
For
important
episodes
in the
political history
of Sacre-Coeur, see Jean-Clement Martin,
La Vendee et la France
(Paris,
1987); Jean
Huguet,
Un Coeur
d'etoffe rouge:
France et Vendee 1793,
le
mythe
et l'histoire
(Paris, 1985); Louis Baunard, Le General de Sonis
(Paris, 1891).
14
See "Le Sacre-Coeur et l'art chretien,"
in
L'Union, 26 Oct. 1875,
in Archives
historiques
du
diocese de Paris (henceforth AHDP), Basilique
du Sacre-Coeur, carton 3, and "Discours du R. P.
Monsabre," reproduced
in Guide officiel
du
pelerin
au Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre
(Paris, 1892),
27-28, in
AN,
F19 2371, Eglise
du Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre.
15
On these themes, see also Mona Ozouf, "Ballanche: L'Idee et
l'image
du
regicide,"
in
L'Homme
regenere:
Essais sur la Revolution
francaise (Paris, 1989), esp.
188.
16
For a secular variant of the mood after Sedan, see Renan,
La
Reforme.
See also Allan Mit-
chell, Victors and
Vanquished:
The German
Influence
on
Army
and Church in France
after
1870
(Chapel
Hill, N.C., 1984);
on the war itself, see Michael Howard,
The Franco-Prussian War: The
German Invasion of France, 1870-1871
(London, 1989). Turning
to the Sacre-Coeur
during grave
crises was already
a
well-developed
reflex. For
example, municipal
officials in Marseille and
Amiens invoked the Sacre-Coeur when threatened
by epidemics
in the
eighteenth century.
See
Jacques Bainvel, "Devotion au coeur-Sacre de
Jesus," 337, 344.
Iconographic representations
of
these incidents in the
history
of the Sacred Heart devotion were
planned
for the interior of the
basilica. A letter from Hubert Rohault de
Fleury,
dated 6
Apr. 1891, enumerates dozens of
appro-
priate topics
for the decoration of the basilica. AHDP, basilique
du Sacre-Coeur, carton 1.
tionary
focus
during
the Revolution.13 The
symbol
of a wounded heart
topped by
a crucifix on a "Bourbon white" field became
synonymous
with rebellions on behalf of "God and
King"
in the Vendee and else-
where in the 1790s. Louis
XVI,
whose own
sufferings
often blended in
the
popular
mind with those of the Sacred
Heart,
was
widely
believed
to have dedicated France to the Sacre-Coeur
shortly
before his execu-
tion.14 The
"martyred" king
became the focus of the desire to atone for
the collective sins of
revolutionary
France and a
symbol
of Catholic
royalism's
desire to see France united with its Most Christian
King.15
This cult's adherents believed in a
deity
who intervened
directly
in na-
tional affairs in such a fashion that the moral status of the nation could
be "read"
through
its status in the world. Seen
through
this
optic,
the
record of France since 1789 was
transparently
one of national decline-
both moral and
political.
The final
chastisement,
following
the ex-
travagant,
amoral,
and sensual Second
Empire,
came with France's
defeat
by
Prussia in
1870,
after which
pious lay
Catholics vowed to
build a church to the Sacred
Heart,
an
expression
of their
spirituality
but also of their
political
will to see France return at last to "God and
King."16
In this
sense,
moral order was more than
simply
a convenient
way
of
identifying
a conservative
regime;
it was more than
public
order or
good
conservative
government.
Moral order was
historiosophy:
a
logi-
cally
consistent and
internally
coherent vision of the
past,
a
philosophy
of
history.
It
expressed
a view of France and its
history
in terms of
13
For the cult of the Sacre-Coeur, see
Jacques Bainvel, "Devotion au coeur-sacre de
Jesus,"
Dictionnaire de
Theologie Catholique
(Paris, 1938), 3:271-351; Louis Baunard, Histoire de Ma-
dame Barat, fondatrice
de la Societe du Sacre-Coeur de
Jesus, 2 vols.
(Paris, 1876).
For
important
episodes
in the
political history
of Sacre-Coeur, see Jean-Clement Martin,
La Vendee et la France
(Paris,
1987); Jean
Huguet,
Un Coeur
d'etoffe rouge:
France et Vendee 1793,
le
mythe
et l'histoire
(Paris, 1985); Louis Baunard, Le General de Sonis
(Paris, 1891).
14
See "Le Sacre-Coeur et l'art chretien,"
in
L'Union, 26 Oct. 1875,
in Archives
historiques
du
diocese de Paris (henceforth AHDP), Basilique
du Sacre-Coeur, carton 3, and "Discours du R. P.
Monsabre," reproduced
in Guide officiel
du
pelerin
(Paris, 1892),
27-28, in
AN,
F19 2371, Eglise
du Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre.
15
On these themes, see also Mona Ozouf, "Ballanche: L'Idee et
l'image
du
regicide,"
in
L'Homme
regenere:
francaise (Paris, 1989), esp.
188.
16
For a secular variant of the mood after Sedan, see Renan,
La
Reforme.
See also Allan Mit-
chell, Victors and
Vanquished:
The German
Influence
on
Army
and Church in France
after
1870
(Chapel
Hill, N.C., 1984);
on the war itself, see Michael Howard,
The Franco-Prussian War: The
German Invasion of France, 1870-1871
(London, 1989). Turning
to the Sacre-Coeur
during grave
crises was already
a
well-developed
reflex. For
example, municipal
officials in Marseille and
Amiens invoked the Sacre-Coeur when threatened
by epidemics
in the
eighteenth century.
See
Jacques Bainvel, "Devotion au coeur-Sacre de
Jesus," 337, 344.
Iconographic representations
of
these incidents in the
history
of the Sacred Heart devotion were
planned
for the interior of the
basilica. A letter from Hubert Rohault de
Fleury,
dated 6
Apr. 1891, enumerates dozens of
appro-
priate topics
for the decoration of the basilica. AHDP, basilique
du Sacre-Coeur, carton 1.
487 487
covenant,
a formal
relationship
between God and a select
people.
In
1871 the
bishop
of
Angers freely employed
the
language
of covenant and
explicitly
assimilated the French nation with Israel when he asked him-
self if France were destined to receive "the same chastisements as the
deicide nation of the Old
Testament,"
presumably diaspora.'7
Thus the
nadir of 1870
suggested
that it was time to renew the
pact
of Clovis-
analogue
to the covenant of Abraham-to
prepare
the renaissance of
France
through
the rechristianization of
public
life.18
Restoring
the
moral order was thus to be both a
spiritual
and
political enterprise.
In
fact,
it became an overt
political
issue in 1873
when,
once the Mont-
martre site for the Sacr6-Coeur was
chosen,
the
archbishop
of Paris
requested parliamentary
authorization to
acquire
the construction site.
Such
expropriations required
a
parliamentary
declaration of
"public
utility."
The
only way
that the church of the Sacre-Coeur would be
built on that
site,
given
that it was
already occupied by
several
owners,
was if the
deputies
of the
Assembly
could be
persuaded
that the
proposed
"Church of the National Vow to the Sacred Heart of
Jesus"
was a mat-
ter of national interest and
public utility.
On 5
May
1873,
the
archbishop
of Paris
requested
the
legal authority
he needed. In a letter to
Jules
Simon,
the author of a work on natural
religion
and,
for a few
days
still
Thiers's minister of
religion,
he described the church as "a monument
that must be like a new
profession
of our faith" and asked if it could be
built
"anywhere
but on the
holy
mountain which was the cradle of the
Christian
religion
in our old France."'9
Legislative approval
came
exactly eight
weeks after the fall of
Thiers
when,
by
a vote of 382 to
138,
the National
Assembly
declared it a
matter of
"public
utility
to build a church on Montmartre.' 20 Orleanist
17
See lettre de
Freppel (eveque Angers)
a Pie
(eveque Poitiers)
14 Nov.
1871,
Archives dio-
cesaines Poitiers cited in Gadille,
politiques
des
eveques,
222.
18
On the
pact
of Clovis
(A.D. 496) Francois
Veuillot wrote,
"Des cette
epoque
. . . notre
patrie
se fait la servante de
Dieu,
et
Dieu,
de son
c6te,
consent a devenir le
protecteur
de notre
patrie."
See "Le
Drapeau
du Sacre-Coeur,"
Bulletin du Voeu national au Sacre-Coeur de
Jesus
(henceforth Bulletin), 23,
n. 8
(15 Apr. 1898),
313.
19
Lettre du cardinal Guibert au ministre des
Cultes,
5 March 1873,
cited in
Gadille,
La Pen-
see, 232. See also Guide
officiel
du
pelerin
(Paris, 1892), 33,
in AN
F'9
2371, Eglise
du Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre. On what
possible grounds
did
Archbishop
Gui-
bert believe that the anticlerical
Jules
Simon was
approachable
on this
subject? Perhaps
Guibert
hoped
Simon could be influenced
by
his wife. Madame
Jules
Simon,
unlike her husband,
was
devout. She was also
apparently caught up
in the sentiments which
inspired
the Sacre-Coeur.
According
to a
police report
she was
among
the hundreds of
dignitaries
who crowded into the
Chapelle expiatoire
to attend mass on 21
January 1872,
the
anniversary
of the execution of Louis
XVI. See AN F19
2379,
Lieux de cultes
speciaux.
"Bref
police." Unsigned report
assembled in
Jan-
uary
1882.
20
Thiers
resigned
on 24
May
1873;
the law was
passed
on 24
July
1873. For the
parliamentary
debate,
see
Journal officiel
de la
RKpubliquefranfaise,
22
June
1873, 4084; 24
June
1873, 4149; 25
July
1873, 5012-14. See also AN C
2870, Eglise
de Montmartre.
covenant,
a formal
relationship
between God and a select
people.
In
1871 the
bishop
of
Angers freely employed
the
language
of covenant and
explicitly
assimilated the French nation with Israel when he asked him-
self if France were destined to receive "the same chastisements as the
deicide nation of the Old
Testament,"
presumably diaspora.'7
Thus the
nadir of 1870
suggested
that it was time to renew the
pact
of Clovis-
analogue
to the covenant of Abraham-to
prepare
the renaissance of
France
through
public
life.18
Restoring
the
moral order was thus to be both a
spiritual
and
political enterprise.
In
fact,
it became an overt
political
issue in 1873
when,
once the Mont-
martre site for the Sacr6-Coeur was
chosen,
the
archbishop
of Paris
requested parliamentary
authorization to
acquire
the construction site.
Such
expropriations required
a
parliamentary
declaration of
"public
utility."
The
only way
that the church of the Sacre-Coeur would be
built on that
site,
given
that it was
already occupied by
several
owners,
was if the
deputies
of the
Assembly
could be
persuaded
that the
proposed
"Church of the National Vow to the Sacred Heart of
Jesus"
was a mat-
ter of national interest and
public utility.
On 5
May
1873,
the
archbishop
of Paris
requested
the
legal authority
he needed. In a letter to
Jules
Simon,
the author of a work on natural
religion
and,
for a few
days
still
Thiers's minister of
religion,
he described the church as "a monument
that must be like a new
profession
of our faith" and asked if it could be
built
"anywhere
but on the
holy
mountain which was the cradle of the
Christian
religion
in our old France."'9
Legislative approval
came
exactly eight
weeks after the fall of
Thiers
when,
by
a vote of 382 to
138,
the National
Assembly
declared it a
matter of
"public
utility
to build a church on Montmartre.' 20 Orleanist
17
See lettre de
Freppel (eveque Angers)
a Pie
(eveque Poitiers)
14 Nov.
1871,
Archives dio-
cesaines Poitiers cited in Gadille,
politiques
des
eveques,
222.
18
On the
pact
of Clovis
(A.D. 496) Francois
Veuillot wrote,
"Des cette
epoque
. . . notre
patrie
se fait la servante de
Dieu,
et
Dieu,
de son
c6te,
consent a devenir le
protecteur
de notre
patrie."
See "Le
Drapeau
du Sacre-Coeur,"
Bulletin du Voeu national au Sacre-Coeur de
Jesus
(henceforth Bulletin), 23,
n. 8
(15 Apr. 1898),
313.
19
Lettre du cardinal Guibert au ministre des
Cultes,
5 March 1873,
cited in
Gadille,
La Pen-
see, 232. See also Guide
officiel
du
pelerin
(Paris, 1892), 33,
in AN
F'9
2371, Eglise
du Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre. On what
possible grounds
did
Archbishop
Gui-
bert believe that the anticlerical
Jules
Simon was
approachable
on this
subject? Perhaps
Guibert
hoped
Simon could be influenced
by
his wife. Madame
Jules
Simon,
unlike her husband,
was
devout. She was also
apparently caught up
in the sentiments which
inspired
the Sacre-Coeur.
According
to a
police report
she was
among
the hundreds of
dignitaries
who crowded into the
Chapelle expiatoire
to attend mass on 21
January 1872,
the
anniversary
of the execution of Louis
XVI. See AN F19
2379,
Lieux de cultes
speciaux.
"Bref
police." Unsigned report
assembled in
Jan-
uary
1882.
20
Thiers
resigned
on 24
May
1873;
the law was
passed
on 24
July
1873. For the
parliamentary
debate,
see
Journal officiel
de la
RKpubliquefranfaise,
22
June
1873, 4084; 24
June
1873, 4149; 25
July
1873, 5012-14. See also AN C
2870, Eglise
de Montmartre.
488 488
deputies provided
a
significant portion
of the
margin
of
victory. They
did not share with the
partisans
of the
project any
enthusiasm for the
cult of the Sacred
Heart, linked,
as it
was,
to a historical narrative which
gave pride
of
place
to the
memory
of a
martyred
Bourbon
king.
But
they
did not wish to alienate their
Legitimist
allies,
some of whom wished
for a flat-out dedication of France to the Sacre-Coeur. The final word-
ing
of the
legislation only
mentioned the
public utility
of
building
a
church on
Montmartre,
an initiative that
perhaps
even a Voltairean
Orleanist could
support.2' Legitimists
knew that the church in
question
would be dedicated to the
Sacre-Coeur,
while Orleanists
looked the other
way.
But what
public utility
was there in the construction of a church at
Montmartre? Montmartre
already
had its
parish
church
and,
in
any
event,
the church envisioned was not destined for the
ordinary
affairs of
a
parish.
The answer was that the church at Montmartre was to be both
the vehicle for and the
symbol
of the renewal of France. This idea was
neatly expressed
in the so-called National Vow drafted in
1871,
a vow
that
sought
to
bring
an end to France's troubles-seen as
having
Pro-
vidential
origins-and
offered a church in return and as a token of the
national will to atone. Thus the basilica was to be a massive
"ex-voto,"
the embodiment of the
prayerful
wish that the
spiritual
union of France
with God be restored. This is how the
archbishop
of Paris
expressed
the
idea in 1873 in a
special episcopal
letter to
provincial bishops,
a letter
that took the form of a direct address to God. "The blood that ran from
your
side redeemed the
world; may
a
drop
of this divine
blood, through
its
all-powerful capacity
to
expiate,
redeem once
again
this France that
you
loved and
who, turning
from her
many
errors,
wishes to return to
her Christian vocation. . . .
May
the
temple
that is
going
to be built
by
our hands . . . become for us an
impenetrable
citadel which will
protect
Paris and our
patrie."22
In their
replies
to the
appeal
of the
archbishop
of
Paris,
the
bishops
of
provincial
France elaborated on the theme of national
redemption
through
the church of the National Vow. Here is how the
bishop
of
Frejus
et Toulon
put
it,
"This
appeal
to divine
pity
will
complete
the
expiation
for the
impious
acts that have
brought upon
France the
wrath of God
and,
with France
regenerated,
the church will
emerge
21
For minutes of the
discussion,
see AN C
2870, Eglise
de Montmartre.
Projet
de construction.
22
Mandement de son eminence
Monseigneur l'archeveque
de Paris touchant le
projet
de
construction a Montmartre d'une
eglise
votive au Sacre-Coeur de
Jesus (Paris, 1873), p. 9,
in AHDP
basilique
du Sacre-Coeur,
carton 2.
deputies provided
a
significant portion
of the
margin
of
victory. They
did not share with the
partisans
of the
project any
enthusiasm for the
cult of the Sacred
Heart, linked,
as it
was,
to a historical narrative which
gave pride
of
place
to the
memory
of a
martyred
Bourbon
king.
But
they
did not wish to alienate their
Legitimist
allies,
some of whom wished
for a flat-out dedication of France to the Sacre-Coeur. The final word-
ing
of the
legislation only
mentioned the
public utility
of
building
a
church on
Montmartre,
an initiative that
perhaps
even a Voltairean
Orleanist could
support.2' Legitimists
knew that the church in
question
would be dedicated to the
Sacre-Coeur,
while Orleanists
looked the other
way.
But what
public utility
was there in the construction of a church at
Montmartre? Montmartre
already
had its
parish
church
and,
in
any
event,
the church envisioned was not destined for the
ordinary
affairs of
a
parish.
The answer was that the church at Montmartre was to be both
the vehicle for and the
symbol
of the renewal of France. This idea was
neatly expressed
in the so-called National Vow drafted in
1871,
a vow
that
sought
to
bring
an end to France's troubles-seen as
having
Pro-
vidential
origins-and
offered a church in return and as a token of the
national will to atone. Thus the basilica was to be a massive
"ex-voto,"
the embodiment of the
prayerful
wish that the
spiritual
union of France
with God be restored. This is how the
archbishop
of Paris
expressed
the
idea in 1873 in a
special episcopal
letter to
provincial bishops,
a letter
that took the form of a direct address to God. "The blood that ran from
your
side redeemed the
world; may
a
drop
of this divine
blood, through
its
all-powerful capacity
to
expiate,
redeem once
again
this France that
you
loved and
who, turning
from her
many
errors,
wishes to return to
her Christian vocation. . . .
May
the
temple
that is
going
to be built
by
our hands . . . become for us an
impenetrable
citadel which will
protect
Paris and our
patrie."22
In their
replies
to the
appeal
of the
archbishop
of
Paris,
the
bishops
of
provincial
France elaborated on the theme of national
redemption
through
the church of the National Vow. Here is how the
bishop
of
Frejus
et Toulon
put
it,
"This
appeal
to divine
pity
will
complete
the
expiation
for the
impious
acts that have
brought upon
France the
wrath of God
and,
with France
regenerated,
the church will
emerge
21
For minutes of the
discussion,
see AN C
2870, Eglise
de Montmartre.
Projet
de construction.
22
Mandement de son eminence
Monseigneur l'archeveque
de Paris touchant le
projet
de
construction a Montmartre d'une
eglise
votive au Sacre-Coeur de
Jesus (Paris, 1873), p. 9,
in AHDP
basilique
du Sacre-Coeur,
carton 2.
489 489
THE PROPOSED CHURCH OF THE VOEU NATIONAL.
Drawing
for the architectural
competition
in
1874, by
Paul Abadie.
(AHDP).
Photo: author.
THE PROPOSED CHURCH OF THE VOEU NATIONAL.
Drawing
for the architectural
competition
in
1874, by
Paul Abadie.
(AHDP).
Photo: author.
triumphant
from its
long
trials."23 From the
bishop
of Constantine
came similar sentiments: "The
day
when France will be
solemnly
con-
secrated to the Sacred Heart of
Jesus
will be for her a
day
of rebirth. It is
the
holy
ark where she must seek
refuge
from the disaster that threatens
to
engulf
her. . . . We work for the Christian
regeneration
to which
Providence has called our nation."24 These statements allude to events
("impious acts")
that are the source of a
rupture
in France's divine rela-
tionship; they
also
emphasize
national,
collective
culpability. They
draw
upon
some stock ideas in
counterrevolutionary
and
integriste
discourse: France as a
divinely
favored nation which had turned its
back on
God;
the Revolution as the moment of
rupture,
and the
rupture
itself
symbolized by
the execution of the annointed
King;
the Second
Empire
as a
political
and moral
quagmire
and the inevitable conse-
quence
of the
rupture;
Protestant Prussia as the sword brandished
by
a
23
See lettre de
l'eveque
de
Frejus
et Toulon, 26
Sept. 1873,
in AHDP
Basilique
du Sacre-Coeur,
carton 2.
24
Lettre de
1'eveque
de
Constantine,
6 Oct. 1873,
in
AHDP, Basilique
du Sacre-Coeur,
carton
2.
triumphant
from its
long
trials."23 From the
bishop
of Constantine
came similar sentiments: "The
day
when France will be
solemnly
con-
secrated to the Sacred Heart of
Jesus
will be for her a
day
of rebirth. It is
the
holy
ark where she must seek
refuge
from the disaster that threatens
to
engulf
her. . . . We work for the Christian
regeneration
to which
Providence has called our nation."24 These statements allude to events
("impious acts")
that are the source of a
rupture
in France's divine rela-
tionship; they
also
emphasize
national,
collective
culpability. They
draw
upon
some stock ideas in
counterrevolutionary
and
integriste
discourse: France as a
divinely
favored nation which had turned its
back on
God;
the Revolution as the moment of
rupture,
and the
rupture
itself
symbolized by
the execution of the annointed
King;
the Second
Empire
as a
political
and moral
quagmire
and the inevitable conse-
quence
of the
rupture;
Protestant Prussia as the sword brandished
by
a
23
See lettre de
l'eveque
de
Frejus
et Toulon, 26
Sept. 1873,
in AHDP
Basilique
du Sacre-Coeur,
carton 2.
24
Lettre de
1'eveque
de
Constantine,
6 Oct. 1873,
in
AHDP, Basilique
du Sacre-Coeur,
carton
2.
490 490
vengeful
God;
atonement as the
only possible
means to
regeneration.25
The rhetoric
conveys
a vision of France's
past
which
recapitulates
the
basic
soteriological
narrative:
original
state of
harmony
-
transgression
and
rupture
-
decadence and chastisement
-
atonement and
redemp-
tion. Within this narrative the Sacre-Coeur would
symbolize
the work
of atonement and the ardent desire for
redemption.
In his
reply
to the
archbishop
of
Paris,
the
bishop
of
Perpignan
fashioned for the church of the Sacre-Coeur a memorable
image
of
hope
and
protection against any
future divine retribution: "Raised like
a
lightning
rod on the
highest point
of
[France's] capital,
this church
will
protect
us
against
the
lightning
bolts of divine
anger.
Founded
upon
faith and
patriotism,
[the
church]
will recount to future
genera-
tions the sad
story
of our
sufferings
and their causes-as a monument
of
expiation,
the church will call down
upon
our dear France the most
abundant
blessings
of heaven."26 The basilica was
inspired by
the fear
of an
angry
God,
but also
by
the
hope
that it would
intercept
future
chastisements. Its
purpose
was to renew the
special relationship
be-
tween God and the
people
of France.
The themes of a broken
covenant,
a chosen
people,
and of deliver-
ance were taken
up
in broader
appeals
to the faithful. From the
pages
of the Bulletin of the
Oeuvre,
a
monthly pamphlet produced by
the
lay
Catholics
charged
with
building
the
Sacre-Coeur,
the
appeal
went out.
Without
any exaggeration, may
we not consider this monument...
a
reproduction
of the ark of the covenant which served as a
sign,
a
symbol,
to the
people
of God and which reminded them of the en-
gagements
undertaken for all time with the God of
Abraham, Isaac,
and
Jacob?
All
prayers,
all
sacrifices,
all invocations will be directed
toward the
place
where the ark of the covenant
resides,
it
having
be-
come the
center,
the
foyer
of the
religious
life of the chosen nation.
According
to this
vision,
the church of the national vow was to become
a kind of
powerhouse
of
prayer
and
grace.
"We ask our associates to
form a current of
prayers,
of
pious
acts. . . . These rivers of
grace
will
return to their source and there will thus be a
perpetual
movement of
life and
regeneration."27
25
On
violence, sacrifice,
and the
sacred,
see Ren6
Girard,
La Violence et le Sacre
(Paris, 1972),
27-52.
26
Lettre de
l'eveque
de
Perpignan,
19
Sept. 1873,
in
AHDP, Basilique
du Sacre-Coeur,
carton
2.
27
See "Venite Adoremus,"
Bulletin 9
(10
Dec.
1884),
947. The
imagery
recalls that of the
story
of the flood in Genesis 9:12-13 and of the account of the ark of the covenant in Exodus 25:8 "And
let them make me a
sanctuary;
that I
may
dwell
among
them."
vengeful
God;
atonement as the
only possible
means to
regeneration.25
The rhetoric
conveys
a vision of France's
past
which
recapitulates
the
basic
soteriological
narrative:
original
state of
harmony
-
transgression
and
rupture
-
decadence and chastisement
-
atonement and
redemp-
tion. Within this narrative the Sacre-Coeur would
symbolize
the work
of atonement and the ardent desire for
redemption.
In his
reply
to the
archbishop
of
Paris,
the
bishop
of
Perpignan
fashioned for the church of the Sacre-Coeur a memorable
image
of
hope
and
protection against any
future divine retribution: "Raised like
a
lightning
rod on the
highest point
of
[France's] capital,
this church
will
protect
us
against
the
lightning
bolts of divine
anger.
Founded
upon
faith and
patriotism,
[the
church]
will recount to future
genera-
tions the sad
story
of our
sufferings
and their causes-as a monument
of
expiation,
the church will call down
upon
our dear France the most
abundant
blessings
of heaven."26 The basilica was
inspired by
the fear
of an
angry
God,
but also
by
the
hope
that it would
intercept
future
chastisements. Its
purpose
was to renew the
special relationship
be-
tween God and the
people
of France.
The themes of a broken
covenant,
a chosen
people,
and of deliver-
ance were taken
up
in broader
appeals
to the faithful. From the
pages
of the Bulletin of the
Oeuvre,
a
monthly pamphlet produced by
the
lay
Catholics
charged
with
building
the
Sacre-Coeur,
the
appeal
went out.
Without
any exaggeration, may
we not consider this monument...
a
reproduction
of the ark of the covenant which served as a
sign,
a
symbol,
to the
people
of God and which reminded them of the en-
gagements
undertaken for all time with the God of
Abraham, Isaac,
and
Jacob?
All
prayers,
all
sacrifices,
all invocations will be directed
toward the
place
where the ark of the covenant
resides,
it
having
be-
come the
center,
the
foyer
of the
religious
life of the chosen nation.
According
to this
vision,
the church of the national vow was to become
a kind of
powerhouse
of
prayer
and
grace.
"We ask our associates to
form a current of
prayers,
of
pious
acts. . . . These rivers of
grace
will
return to their source and there will thus be a
perpetual
movement of
life and
regeneration."27
25
On
violence, sacrifice,
and the
sacred,
see Ren6
Girard,
La Violence et le Sacre
(Paris, 1972),
27-52.
26
Lettre de
l'eveque
de
Perpignan,
19
Sept. 1873,
in
AHDP, Basilique
du Sacre-Coeur,
carton
2.
27
See "Venite Adoremus,"
Bulletin 9
(10
Dec.
1884),
947. The
imagery
recalls that of the
story
of the flood in Genesis 9:12-13 and of the account of the ark of the covenant in Exodus 25:8 "And
let them make me a
sanctuary;
that I
may
dwell
among
them."
491 491
CHURCH AS EX-VOTO. A
kneeling
Cardinal
Guibert, archbishop
of
Paris,
holds the model of Sacre-
Coeur.
Study
for
Sculpture.
AHDP. Photo: author.
CHURCH AS EX-VOTO. A
kneeling
Cardinal
Guibert, archbishop
of
Paris,
holds the model of Sacre-
Coeur.
Study
for
Sculpture.
AHDP. Photo: author.
Such statements
lay
bare a
profound anxiety
about social order and
an ardent desire for restoration. The lessons of the annee terrible of
1870-71 showed that the Revolution had commenced not the
regenera-
tion of France but a
near-century
of
political
disorder and social chaos.28
The Sacre-Coeur would
inaugurate
a new
beginning
and fix it
symbol-
ically
in one
place,
the
"foyer,"
the
hearth,
the charismatic center of the
religious
life of a select
people. Many
devout Catholics of the
early
Third
Republic
thus saw the construction of the church of the Sacre-
Coeur as an act of
paramount
national as well as
spiritual importance.
The church was to be an enormous
ex-voto,
a votive
offering, expressing
the
prayerful
wishes of the French nation to restore the
holy
covenant,
the
only
sound foundation for a restored moral order.
They
would build
this ex-voto at a
point
of intersection between heaven and a chosen
Such statements
lay
bare a
profound anxiety
about social order and
an ardent desire for restoration. The lessons of the annee terrible of
1870-71 showed that the Revolution had commenced not the
regenera-
tion of France but a
near-century
of
political
disorder and social chaos.28
The Sacre-Coeur would
inaugurate
a new
beginning
and fix it
symbol-
ically
in one
place,
the
"foyer,"
the
hearth,
the charismatic center of the
religious
life of a select
people. Many
devout Catholics of the
early
Third
Republic
thus saw the construction of the church of the Sacre-
Coeur as an act of
paramount
national as well as
spiritual importance.
The church was to be an enormous
ex-voto,
a votive
offering, expressing
the
prayerful
wishes of the French nation to restore the
holy
covenant,
the
only
sound foundation for a restored moral order.
They
would build
this ex-voto at a
point
of intersection between heaven and a chosen
28
On the Revolution as the
opening
of an extended crisis of
authority,
see
Lynn Hunt,
The
Family
Romance
of
the French Revolution
(Berkeley, 1992).
28
On the Revolution as the
opening
of an extended crisis of
authority,
see
Lynn Hunt,
The
Family
Romance
of
(Berkeley, 1992).
492 492
people. Nothing
less than the future of France and the life of the nation
depended upon
its
completion.
If the Sacre-Coeur were to be France's sacred
lightning rod,
pru-
dence dictated that it be
put
in
place
as soon as
possible.
As the work of
the Oeuvre
dragged
on into the
1880s,
the leaders of the National Vow
remarked that the work of a
providential
Hand was
visibly
active in
world affairs. The
portents
were not
good. They
cited as
proof
the
"constant menace of dreadful
evils,
of
war,
of
scourges
of all kinds."
Such
jeremiads
made them
easy targets
of
ridicule,
but in
reply
to those
who scoffed at such an
interpretation
of events
they
offered a
warning:
"Take
care,
for if Our Lord bides His
time,
if He threatens us but does
not follow
through
on His
threats,
it is because there remain a few
just
persons among
us;
but
open your eyes
to the
warning signs,
because if
He waits to condemn us, He continues to warn us that we are un-
worthy. Therefore,
attend to what He asks of us and do not hesitate to
accomplish
it."29 This
image
of the
patient
God,
withholding
a
fully
merited chastisement for the sake of a handful of the
just,
recalls the
story
of Sodom. But Sodom was
destroyed,
and for that reason the
story
offers little
reassurance;
the Bulletin's audience knew that even divine
patience
has its limits.
On the eve of the
centenary
of the French
Revolution,
the sense of
urgency
to
complete
the monument increased. In a letter to France's
provincial bishops,
Rohault de
Fleury, secretary general
of the com-
mittee for the
Oeuvre,
underlined the
special importance
of the Sacre-
Coeur
among
the
many worthy projects
undertaken
by
Catholics
throughout
France.
We know how much the
provinces,
like
Paris,
are overburdened with
projects
of various kinds. But we also know that these
projects
are
threatened and that
they
will
perish
in the
general
disaster that we are
making every
effort to
forestall;
therefore we all have an interest in
hastening
the
completion
of the Vow of
France,
and that is what em-
boldens us to demand the
help
of
everyone
and to do so to the
point
of
importunity,
because we are certain that we work for the salvation of
all.30
All the works of Catholic France remained at risk as
long
as the Na-
tional Vow remained unfulfilled.
29
Bulletin 13
(supplement
of
June 1887),
3-4.
30
Lettre de Rohault de
Fleury,
secretaire
general
du Voeu National au Sacre-Coeur de
Jesus,
June
1888,
in
AHDP, basilique
du
Sacre-Coeur,
carton 2.
people. Nothing
less than the future of France and the life of the nation
depended upon
its
completion.
If the Sacre-Coeur were to be France's sacred
lightning rod,
pru-
dence dictated that it be
put
in
place
as soon as
possible.
As the work of
the Oeuvre
dragged
on into the
1880s,
the leaders of the National Vow
remarked that the work of a
providential
Hand was
visibly
active in
world affairs. The
portents
were not
good. They
cited as
proof
the
"constant menace of dreadful
evils,
of
war,
of
scourges
of all kinds."
Such
jeremiads
made them
easy targets
of
ridicule,
but in
reply
to those
who scoffed at such an
interpretation
of events
they
offered a
warning:
"Take
care,
for if Our Lord bides His
time,
if He threatens us but does
not follow
through
on His
threats,
it is because there remain a few
just
persons among
us;
but
open your eyes
to the
warning signs,
because if
He waits to condemn us, He continues to warn us that we are un-
worthy. Therefore,
attend to what He asks of us and do not hesitate to
accomplish
it."29 This
image
of the
patient
God,
withholding
a
fully
merited chastisement for the sake of a handful of the
just,
recalls the
story
of Sodom. But Sodom was
destroyed,
and for that reason the
story
offers little
reassurance;
the Bulletin's audience knew that even divine
patience
has its limits.
On the eve of the
centenary
of the French
Revolution,
the sense of
urgency
to
complete
the monument increased. In a letter to France's
provincial bishops,
Rohault de
Fleury, secretary general
of the com-
mittee for the
Oeuvre,
underlined the
special importance
of the Sacre-
Coeur
among
the
many worthy projects
undertaken
by
Catholics
throughout
France.
We know how much the
provinces,
like
Paris,
are overburdened with
projects
of various kinds. But we also know that these
projects
are
threatened and that
they
will
perish
in the
general
disaster that we are
making every
effort to
forestall;
therefore we all have an interest in
hastening
the
completion
of the Vow of
France,
and that is what em-
boldens us to demand the
help
of
everyone
and to do so to the
point
of
importunity,
because we are certain that we work for the salvation of
all.30
All the works of Catholic France remained at risk as
long
as the Na-
tional Vow remained unfulfilled.
29
Bulletin 13
(supplement
of
June 1887),
3-4.
30
Lettre de Rohault de
Fleury,
secretaire
general
du Voeu National au Sacre-Coeur de
Jesus,
June
1888,
in
AHDP, basilique
du
Sacre-Coeur,
carton 2.
493 493
Mobilizing
the
Many
for the Oeuvre
Such was the vision of those committed to build the church of the
Sacre-Coeur. But even as the
episcopal correspondence
elaborated the
principal
themes
inspiring
the
edifice,
giving
monumental form to
this rhetoric would
prove
to be a
daunting
task. Like most monumental
projects,
the construction costs of the church
quickly
overran the 7 mil-
lion francs
originally budgeted.
In
fact,
7 million had
already
been
spent
before
any part
of the church was visible above
ground.
The
Sacre-Coeur cost over 40 million francs to
complete,
a
figure
which
matches that of the
great
civil monuments of
nineteenth-century
France,
such as Garnier's
Opera.
Unlike these civil monuments, how-
ever,
the church was built
entirely
from donated funds. As the desired
political changes
of the
period
of Moral Order
appeared
more and
more
remote,
attention focused
intently
on the
completion
of the
church. In
fact,
the cult of the Sacred Heart would become the central
feature of Catholic
religious
life in the late nineteenth
century.
For
supporters
of the
cult,
the
completion
of the
Sacre-Coeur,
along
with a
plan
to
put
the
symbol
of the Sacred Heart on the tricolor
flag
and a
grass-roots
effort to dedicate
parishes
and communes to the Sacred
Heart,
crowded out all other concerns.31
Had the
project stayed
within
budget,
the Oeuvre need never have
continued its
fundraising
efforts
beyond
the 1870s. But as the
project
encountered new
obstacles,
obstacles which could be overcome
only
through
the infusion of
significant
new
quantities
of
cash,
the Oeuvre
and its
organizers began
to take a
long-term perspective. Despite
the
rhetoric
invoking
fears of the imminent renewal of acts of divine ven-
geance against France,
the first need of the committee of the
Oeuvre,
in
view of the fact that the church would be
ready
neither as a
place
of
worship
nor as ex-voto
any
time
soon,
was to
begin
to
plan
for decades
of fund
raising
and
expensive
construction. From the
beginning,
the
committee envisioned the church of the Sacre-Coeur as no
ordinary
place
of
worship.
In the instructions distributed to architects
planning
to
participate
in the
design competition,
the committee had warned
that the church of the Sacred Heart was to be a
place
of
pilgrimage.
Now the committee
sought
to make that vision a
reality by building
a
provisional chapel
on Montmartre.
The
chapelle provisoire helped
to
prepare
the Oeuvre's
public
31
These efforts
paralleled
the construction of the basilica and were seen as
every
bit as
impor-
tant to the renewal of France. This
aspect
of the Sacred Heart
phenomenon
will be the
subject
of
another article.
Mobilizing
the
Many
for the Oeuvre
Such was the vision of those committed to build the church of the
Sacre-Coeur. But even as the
episcopal correspondence
elaborated the
principal
themes
inspiring
the
edifice,
giving
monumental form to
this rhetoric would
prove
to be a
daunting
task. Like most monumental
projects,
the construction costs of the church
quickly
overran the 7 mil-
lion francs
originally budgeted.
In
fact,
7 million had
already
been
spent
before
any part
of the church was visible above
ground.
The
Sacre-Coeur cost over 40 million francs to
complete,
a
figure
which
matches that of the
great
civil monuments of
nineteenth-century
France,
such as Garnier's
Opera.
Unlike these civil monuments, how-
ever,
the church was built
entirely
from donated funds. As the desired
political changes
of the
period
of Moral Order
appeared
more and
more
remote,
attention focused
intently
on the
completion
of the
church. In
fact,
the cult of the Sacred Heart would become the central
feature of Catholic
religious
life in the late nineteenth
century.
For
supporters
of the
cult,
the
completion
of the
Sacre-Coeur,
along
with a
plan
to
put
the
symbol
of the Sacred Heart on the tricolor
flag
and a
grass-roots
effort to dedicate
parishes
and communes to the Sacred
Heart,
crowded out all other concerns.31
Had the
project stayed
within
budget,
the Oeuvre need never have
continued its
fundraising
efforts
beyond
the 1870s. But as the
project
encountered new
obstacles,
obstacles which could be overcome
only
through
the infusion of
significant
new
quantities
of
cash,
the Oeuvre
and its
organizers began
to take a
long-term perspective. Despite
the
rhetoric
invoking
fears of the imminent renewal of acts of divine ven-
geance against France,
the first need of the committee of the
Oeuvre,
in
view of the fact that the church would be
ready
neither as a
place
of
worship
nor as ex-voto
any
time
soon,
was to
begin
to
plan
for decades
of fund
raising
and
expensive
construction. From the
beginning,
the
committee envisioned the church of the Sacre-Coeur as no
ordinary
place
of
worship.
In the instructions distributed to architects
planning
to
participate
in the
design competition,
the committee had warned
that the church of the Sacred Heart was to be a
place
of
pilgrimage.
Now the committee
sought
to make that vision a
reality by building
a
provisional chapel
on Montmartre.
The
chapelle provisoire helped
to
prepare
the Oeuvre's
public
31
These efforts
paralleled
the construction of the basilica and were seen as
every
bit as
impor-
tant to the renewal of France. This
aspect
of the Sacred Heart
phenomenon
will be the
subject
of
another article.
494 494
who became accustomed to
thinking
of Montmartre as a
place
of
pil-
grimage,
and
pilgrimages began
almost
immediately.
The
chapel
also
provided
a venue for the
offering
of
prayers
of
expiation;
this
according
to one
source,
was
something
even
Pope
Pius IX saw as crucial if the
church of the National Vow itself were to be decades in
preparation.32
Prayer
must
begin immediately,
even if the ex-voto itself would not soon
be
ready.
But
equally important
was the role of the
chapelle provisoire
as a site of
donation, because,
by
the
early 1880s,
the
principal
source of
revenue for the Oeuvre would not come from the
gifts
of
wealthy
bene-
factors
directly
to the committee or to the
archbishop
of Paris but from
pilgrims
to Montmartre and the
chapelle provisoire.
The
chapelle
was
blessed in a
ceremony
on the third of March
1876,
less than a
year
after
the
laying
of the first stone for the basilica itself. It was
designed
to ac-
commodate as
many
as 730
persons
at a
time;
by
the end of the
year
over
114,760 pilgrims
had made their
way
to the site.33 In
1877,
the first full
year
of collections at the
chapelle provisoire, pilgrims dropped
over two
hundred and
forty
thousand francs into Montmartre collection
boxes,
a
figure
which doubled the
following year.34
For the next
thirty years,
pilgrims
to the
chapelle
would donate five hundred to six hundred
thousand francs
per year-representing
from 50 to 60
percent
of all an-
nual donations to the basilica.
The ideal of the cult of the Sacre-Coeur had demonstrated its
ability
not
only
to mobilize
Catholics,
but to
persuade
them to contribute. As
such,
and
given
the
politico-religious
nature of the
cult,
it
represents
a
significant step
in the
adaptation
of the Catholic Church to the
demands of modern mass
organization. By making
the Sacre-Coeur a
place
of
pilgrimage,
in addition to a
place
of
symbolic importance,
the
church showed that it could take a
religious practice
of
longstanding,
the
pilgrimage
of the
faithful,
and convert it
successfully
into a modern
political
ritual.
Mobilizing
the faithful in
support
of a monument of national
po-
32
According
to the Guide
officiel,
Pius IX told Abbe
Lagarde,
vicaire
general,
"La construc-
tion de la
Basilique
sera bien
longue,
il faudrait
que
la
priere
commenfat avant son achevement."
See
pages
38-39 in the Guide
officiel (Paris, 1892),
in AN F19
2371, Eglise
du Sacre-Coeur de
Montmartre.
s3
The dimensions for the
chapelle provisoire
are from the Cabinet
d'estampes
of the Biblio-
theque nationale, correspondance
et documents divers
provenant
de Paul ABADIE
(s.l.n.d.)
1 boite
pet.
fol. The
figure
on
pilgrims
in the first
year represents
those who
signed
the
register
at the
chapelle provisoire. Inevitably,
the total would be
incomplete.
See Guide
officiel,
40.
34
Figures
on collections at the
chapelle provisoire
are from
AHDP, Basilique
du Sacre-
Coeur,
carton 4
-
Recettes et
depenses
de
l'eglise
du Sacre-Coeur
(1877-1904).
The
chapelle
cost
24,000
francs to
construct,
meaning
that its cost had
easily
been recovered within months of its
completion.
See Bulletin 2
(10 Jan. 1876):
3-4.
who became accustomed to
thinking
of Montmartre as a
place
of
pil-
grimage,
and
pilgrimages began
almost
immediately.
The
chapel
also
provided
a venue for the
offering
of
prayers
of
expiation;
this
according
to one
source,
was
something
even
Pope
Pius IX saw as crucial if the
church of the National Vow itself were to be decades in
preparation.32
Prayer
must
begin immediately,
even if the ex-voto itself would not soon
be
ready.
But
equally important
was the role of the
chapelle provisoire
as a site of
donation, because,
by
the
early 1880s,
the
principal
source of
revenue for the Oeuvre would not come from the
gifts
of
wealthy
bene-
factors
directly
to the committee or to the
archbishop
of Paris but from
pilgrims
to Montmartre and the
chapelle provisoire.
The
chapelle
was
blessed in a
ceremony
on the third of March
1876,
less than a
year
after
the
laying
of the first stone for the basilica itself. It was
designed
to ac-
commodate as
many
as 730
persons
at a
time;
by
the end of the
year
over
114,760 pilgrims
had made their
way
to the site.33 In
1877,
the first full
year
of collections at the
chapelle provisoire, pilgrims dropped
over two
hundred and
forty
thousand francs into Montmartre collection
boxes,
a
figure
which doubled the
following year.34
For the next
thirty years,
pilgrims
to the
chapelle
would donate five hundred to six hundred
thousand francs
per year-representing
from 50 to 60
percent
of all an-
nual donations to the basilica.
The ideal of the cult of the Sacre-Coeur had demonstrated its
ability
not
only
to mobilize
Catholics,
but to
persuade
them to contribute. As
such,
and
given
the
politico-religious
nature of the
cult,
it
represents
a
significant step
in the
adaptation
of the Catholic Church to the
demands of modern mass
organization. By making
the Sacre-Coeur a
place
of
pilgrimage,
in addition to a
place
of
symbolic importance,
the
church showed that it could take a
religious practice
of
longstanding,
the
pilgrimage
of the
faithful,
and convert it
successfully
into a modern
political
ritual.
Mobilizing
the faithful in
support
of a monument of national
po-
32
According
to the Guide
officiel,
Pius IX told Abbe
Lagarde,
vicaire
general,
"La construc-
tion de la
Basilique
sera bien
longue,
il faudrait
que
la
priere
commenfat avant son achevement."
See
pages
38-39 in the Guide
officiel (Paris, 1892),
in AN F19
2371, Eglise
du Sacre-Coeur de
Montmartre.
s3
The dimensions for the
chapelle provisoire
are from the Cabinet
d'estampes
of the Biblio-
theque nationale, correspondance
et documents divers
provenant
de Paul ABADIE
(s.l.n.d.)
1 boite
pet.
fol. The
figure
on
pilgrims
in the first
year represents
those who
signed
the
register
at the
chapelle provisoire. Inevitably,
the total would be
incomplete.
See Guide
officiel,
40.
34
Figures
on collections at the
chapelle provisoire
are from
AHDP, Basilique
du Sacre-
Coeur,
carton 4
-
Recettes et
depenses
de
l'eglise
du Sacre-Coeur
(1877-1904).
The
chapelle
cost
24,000
francs to
construct,
meaning
that its cost had
easily
been recovered within months of its
completion.
See Bulletin 2
(10 Jan. 1876):
3-4.
495 495
litical and
religious significance
became one of the
outstanding
features
of the Sacre-Coeur
phenomenon.
And in an effort to draw the
support
of Catholic workers and
peasants,
the committee broke new
ground
in
its
fund-raising
efforts. The first
step
was to create an investment vehicle
in which even the smallest contribution had its
place.
The carte du
Sacre-Coeur was a
response
to
just
this demand. It consisted of a
heavy
paper
card on which over a thousand
squares
were
printed
in rows. The
cards were distributed to
donors,
who crossed out a
square
each time
they
set aside 10 centimes for the Oeuvre.
Participants
were
encouraged
to share cards
among
friends or within a
family
as a
way
of
hastening
the
completion
of the card and also as a
way
of
associating
ever
greater
numbers with the effort to build the church.35 The carte du Sacre-Coeur
reflected an
entrepreneurial genius
of those
leading
the
Oeuvre, worthy
of the Credit Mobilier and other efforts aimed at
mobilizing
small in-
vestors. There were also more conventional
enterprises
to raise
money.
In the fall of
1883,
supporters
of the Oeuvre
disposed
of hundreds of
"contributions in
kind"-layettes, images
of
Marie-Antoinette,
hand-
knit wool
stockings.
The
archbishop
allowed the
ground
floor of the
archdiocesan office to be used for the
sale;
this archdiocesan
"rummage
sale" netted over
thirty
thousand francs.36
Catholicism and the
Spirit
of
Capitalism
Fundraisers know that donors will contribute
larger
sums when
they
derive some incidental benefit from their
contribution,
a token of their
effort and their
sacrifice,
or when
they
can see their contributions take
tangible
form and be
unambiguously
associated with the donor's
generosity.
In order to
keep
the ultimate
goal clearly
before the
pro-
ject's
backers and to show the
progress
made to
date,
the
supporters
of
the Oeuvre
reported visually
on its
progress.
A favorite
technique
of the
editors of the
monthly
Bulletin was to
place
a
drawing
of the Sacre-
Coeur beside a scale
drawing
of some familiar monument. One such
illustration showed the
profile
of the church next to the
profile
of one
of Paris's other domed
monuments,
the Pantheon. The
comparison
was not
entirely
a
flattering
one,
the
graceful
lines of Saint-Genevieve
only
underlined Sacre-Coeur's
squat profile
and its
oddly elongated
35
See Guide
officiel, 80-81,
and Bulletin, lleannee,9, (10Feb. 1884):
126. There is no
way
to
estimate the
background
of these
pilgrims
and donors,
and
although
some of them must have
been
persons
of modest
means,
the costs of
participation
in a
pilgrimage
must have
prevented
many peasants
and workers in the
provinces
from
participating. Pilgrims
from
beyond
the Paris
basin, then,
were more
likely
to be from well-to-do-classes.
36
See Bulletin 9
(10
Feb.
1884):
107-12.
litical and
religious significance
became one of the
outstanding
features
of the Sacre-Coeur
phenomenon.
And in an effort to draw the
support
of Catholic workers and
peasants,
the committee broke new
ground
in
its
fund-raising
efforts. The first
step
was to create an investment vehicle
in which even the smallest contribution had its
place.
The carte du
Sacre-Coeur was a
response
to
just
this demand. It consisted of a
heavy
paper
card on which over a thousand
squares
were
printed
in rows. The
cards were distributed to
donors,
who crossed out a
square
each time
they
set aside 10 centimes for the Oeuvre.
Participants
were
encouraged
to share cards
among
friends or within a
family
as a
way
of
hastening
the
completion
of the card and also as a
way
of
associating
ever
greater
numbers with the effort to build the church.35 The carte du Sacre-Coeur
reflected an
entrepreneurial genius
of those
leading
the
Oeuvre, worthy
of the Credit Mobilier and other efforts aimed at
mobilizing
small in-
vestors. There were also more conventional
enterprises
to raise
money.
In the fall of
1883,
supporters
of the Oeuvre
disposed
of hundreds of
"contributions in
kind"-layettes, images
of
Marie-Antoinette,
hand-
knit wool
stockings.
The
archbishop
allowed the
ground
floor of the
archdiocesan office to be used for the
sale;
this archdiocesan
"rummage
sale" netted over
thirty
thousand francs.36
Catholicism and the
Spirit
of
Capitalism
Fundraisers know that donors will contribute
larger
sums when
they
derive some incidental benefit from their
contribution,
a token of their
effort and their
sacrifice,
or when
they
can see their contributions take
tangible
form and be
unambiguously
associated with the donor's
generosity.
In order to
keep
the ultimate
goal clearly
before the
pro-
ject's
backers and to show the
progress
made to
date,
the
supporters
of
the Oeuvre
reported visually
on its
progress.
A favorite
technique
of the
editors of the
monthly
Bulletin was to
place
a
drawing
of the Sacre-
Coeur beside a scale
drawing
of some familiar monument. One such
illustration showed the
profile
of the church next to the
profile
of one
of Paris's other domed
monuments,
the Pantheon. The
comparison
was not
entirely
a
flattering
one,
the
graceful
lines of Saint-Genevieve
only
underlined Sacre-Coeur's
squat profile
and its
oddly elongated
35
See Guide
officiel, 80-81,
and Bulletin, lleannee,9, (10Feb. 1884):
126. There is no
way
to
estimate the
background
of these
pilgrims
and donors,
and
although
some of them must have
been
persons
of modest
means,
the costs of
participation
in a
pilgrimage
must have
prevented
many peasants
and workers in the
provinces
from
participating. Pilgrims
from
beyond
the Paris
basin, then,
were more
likely
to be from well-to-do-classes.
36
See Bulletin 9
(10
Feb.
1884):
107-12.
496 496
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I
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' t d t u f t
i:-v&f i:-v&f
t-
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t-
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It
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I It
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MU MU
THE CARTE DU SACR.-COEUR. Bulletin 9
(10 February 1884):
126. Photo: author. THE CARTE DU SACR.-COEUR. Bulletin 9
(10 February 1884):
126. Photo: author.
ISj^4
i I4 I11
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-U-~- ~i*__Cj
ISj^4
i I4 I11
-
-U-~- ~i*__Cj
c'rnrbllplr4ila N.,rrr**;ir*l?rrrr;w::
*;sx'i:-"'-"""'; nr,-*)r:\? mp,:n? *n*J***
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*;sx'i:-"'-"""'; nr,-*)r:\? mp,:n? *n*J***
tI tI
I l l I l l I I I I .f I I .f
t i t i
X4 X4
XX
I I I I
I If
I I If
I
IL IL
I I
I I
,I' : ,I' :
11- 11-
domes-hardly
the conventional lines la France
profonde might
like to
see and
support
with hard-earned centimes. The Sacre-Coeur was also
shorter than the Pantheon. But the
caption
reminded the reader that
"the soil on which our
sanctuary reposes
is at the level of the
top
of the
Pantheon's dome."37 In other
words,
the Sacre-Coeur
begins
where the
Pantheon ends. This remark
suggests
how much the
project's sponsors
saw their national
shrine,
the
Sacre-Coeur,
as
standing
in a
competi-
tive
relationship
to the aims embodied
by
the
Pantheon,
the national
temple
in the cult of
republican spirituality.38
An
equally
effective
technique
was to show the Sacre-Coeur
church in outline as a kind of vessel. As construction went forward and
as donations came
in,
the artists could show the Sacre-Coeur
"filling
up."
This
image,
much more than annual
reports
of
donations,
gave
contributors a clear sense of how much church their
money
had
bought,
and how much remained to be redeemed. This kind of direct
and concrete contact with the Oeuvre was
enormously helpful
to its
supporters.
So was the
technique
of
allowing
contributors, individually
or
collectively,
to
"buy" pieces
of the
church,
which the contributors
could have
personalized.
Their connection with the Sacre-Coeur and its
message
was thus rendered concrete. Each donor contributed in a tan-
gible way
to the work of atonement.
Portions of the church available for
"purchase"
included
pillars,
decorative
columns,
and
simple
stones. Each had its
price,
and each
afforded
varying degrees
of
prominence
to the name of the donor. The
personalization
of a small decorative column
required
a donation of
anywhere
between one thousand and five thousand francs. Load-bear-
ing pillars
started at five thousand and could cost as much as one
hundred thousand
francs, especially
if
they
were to
display
an
inscrip-
tion or coat of arms. For donors of more modest means there was also the
possibility
of
purchasing
a stone which
might
bear one's initials. Here
the
price ranged
from three hundred to five hundred
francs, according
to
the
placement
of the stone and the
visibility
of the donor's initials or
coat of arms. For those whose wishes could not be
expressed by
a
simple
motto,
the committee would see to it that a
prayer
or intention was in-
scribed on a small
parchment
scroll. After workers lowered the stone
37
Bulletin 12
(10 Apr. 1887):
245.
38
On the Pantheon as a
temple
in the tradition of
republican spirituality,
see Mona
Ozouf,
"Le Pantheon: L'Ecole normale des morts,"
in Les Lieux de memoire,
ed. Pierre
Nora,
vol.
1,
La
Republique (Paris, 1984),
1:139-66. On the
competitive juxtaposition
of the Pantheon and the
Sacre-Coeur,
see Emmet
Kennedy,
A Cultural
History of
(New
Haven,
1989),
392.
domes-hardly
the conventional lines la France
profonde might
like to
see and
support
with hard-earned centimes. The Sacre-Coeur was also
shorter than the Pantheon. But the
caption
reminded the reader that
"the soil on which our
sanctuary reposes
is at the level of the
top
of the
Pantheon's dome."37 In other
words,
the Sacre-Coeur
begins
where the
Pantheon ends. This remark
suggests
how much the
project's sponsors
saw their national
shrine,
the
Sacre-Coeur,
as
standing
in a
competi-
tive
relationship
to the aims embodied
by
the
Pantheon,
the national
temple
in the cult of
republican spirituality.38
An
equally
effective
technique
was to show the Sacre-Coeur
church in outline as a kind of vessel. As construction went forward and
as donations came
in,
the artists could show the Sacre-Coeur
"filling
up."
This
image,
much more than annual
reports
of
donations,
gave
contributors a clear sense of how much church their
money
had
bought,
and how much remained to be redeemed. This kind of direct
and concrete contact with the Oeuvre was
enormously helpful
to its
supporters.
So was the
technique
of
allowing
contributors, individually
or
collectively,
to
"buy" pieces
of the
church,
which the contributors
could have
personalized.
Their connection with the Sacre-Coeur and its
message
was thus rendered concrete. Each donor contributed in a tan-
gible way
to the work of atonement.
Portions of the church available for
"purchase"
included
pillars,
decorative
columns,
and
simple
stones. Each had its
price,
and each
afforded
varying degrees
of
prominence
to the name of the donor. The
personalization
of a small decorative column
required
a donation of
anywhere
between one thousand and five thousand francs. Load-bear-
ing pillars
started at five thousand and could cost as much as one
hundred thousand
francs, especially
if
they
were to
display
an
inscrip-
tion or coat of arms. For donors of more modest means there was also the
possibility
of
purchasing
a stone which
might
bear one's initials. Here
the
price ranged
from three hundred to five hundred
francs, according
to
the
placement
of the stone and the
visibility
of the donor's initials or
coat of arms. For those whose wishes could not be
expressed by
a
simple
motto,
the committee would see to it that a
prayer
or intention was in-
scribed on a small
parchment
scroll. After workers lowered the stone
37
Bulletin 12
(10 Apr. 1887):
245.
38
On the Pantheon as a
temple
in the tradition of
republican spirituality,
see Mona
Ozouf,
"Le Pantheon: L'Ecole normale des morts,"
in Les Lieux de memoire,
ed. Pierre
Nora,
vol.
1,
La
Republique (Paris, 1984),
1:139-66. On the
competitive juxtaposition
of the Pantheon and the
Sacre-Coeur,
see Emmet
Kennedy,
A Cultural
History of
(New
Haven,
1989),
392.
498 498
THE PANTHEON COMPARED TO THE SACRT-COEUR. Bulletin 12
(10 April 1887):
245. Photo: author. THE PANTHEON COMPARED TO THE SACRT-COEUR. Bulletin 12
(10 April 1887):
245. Photo: author.
into
place, they
would
place
the
scroll,
bearing
the donor's wishes and
sentiments,
in a niche cut into the
top
of the stone. Mortar and the next
row of stones sealed the scroll in
place
in
perpetuity.39
Donors had the
satisfaction of
knowing
that their
prayerful
intentions had been
placed
within the Sacre-Coeur-a
prayer
within a
prayer.
Constructing
a Durable Vision of Moral Order
The basilica of Sacre-Coeur
expressed
a
spirit
that blended
fear,
hope,
and contrition. It
represents
in
stone,
glass,
silver,
paint,
and mosaic a
moment in the
history
of France when
many
French
Catholics,
and
much of Catholic
officialdom,
tried to understand their nation's
past
and its future in
providential
terms.
Reading
the Sacre-Coeur in this
way helps
us to understand how the Catholic
perception
of France's
place
in the nineteenth
century
was so
decidedly
different from that of
the
Republicans,
who,
for their
part,
saw the nineteenth
century
as an
ongoing struggle
of
equally mythical proportions
to institutionalize
39
See the Guide
officiel,
80-81 and Bulletin 9
(10
Feb.
1884):
126. A stone not visible from the
exterior or interior of the church was called a taille cachee. This is what a
person completing
a carte
du Sacre-Coeur could
expect.
into
place, they
would
place
the
scroll,
bearing
the donor's wishes and
sentiments,
in a niche cut into the
top
of the stone. Mortar and the next
row of stones sealed the scroll in
place
in
perpetuity.39
Donors had the
satisfaction of
knowing
that their
prayerful
intentions had been
placed
within the Sacre-Coeur-a
prayer
within a
prayer.
Constructing
a Durable Vision of Moral Order
The basilica of Sacre-Coeur
expressed
a
spirit
that blended
fear,
hope,
and contrition. It
represents
in
stone,
glass,
silver,
paint,
and mosaic a
moment in the
history
of France when
many
French
Catholics,
and
much of Catholic
officialdom,
tried to understand their nation's
past
and its future in
providential
terms.
Reading
the Sacre-Coeur in this
way helps
us to understand how the Catholic
perception
of France's
place
in the nineteenth
century
was so
decidedly
different from that of
the
Republicans,
who,
for their
part,
saw the nineteenth
century
as an
ongoing struggle
of
equally mythical proportions
to institutionalize
39
See the Guide
officiel,
80-81 and Bulletin 9
(10
Feb.
1884):
126. A stone not visible from the
exterior or interior of the church was called a taille cachee. This is what a
person completing
a carte
du Sacre-Coeur could
expect.
499 499
the ideals of a Revolution
perceived
not as the moment of
rupture
but as
the moment of national
regeneration.
The Sacre-Coeur also
helps
to
explain why
some Catholics had
such
difficulty adapting
to the
spirit
of the
Republic.
As the
history
of
the Sacre-Coeur shows, Catholics of the Oeuvre
consistently
under-
stood the affairs of France in terms that were collective and
religious
rather than individual and secular. If France no
longer represented
the
apex
of
power
and
influence,
if France had declined in
stature,
it was
not because of bad
policy,
nor because other nations were now
coming
into their own and France could no
longer expect
to
shape
its world
singlehandedly,
nor because France was
learning painfully
that it must
take its
place alongside
other
great powers
in a multilateral
world;
rather,
it was because a chosen
people,
the nation as a
whole,
had failed
to make
good
on its
covenant,
had lost the
advantage among
nations of
divine
favor,
and was now
suffering
the
consequences
of divine
anger.
And if there were a
remedy
that would lead to national
renewal,
it
would have to be a collective
remedy, expressed through
the cult of the
Sacred Heart. In this
sense,
politics
could never be a
purely
individual
and secular matter. In
fact,
politics,
in
part,
consisted of the
spiritual
work of
converting
the critics of the Oeuvre to a new
understanding
of
France and its
past.40
In this sense the basilica was
part
of an extended
meditation on the moral sources of decadence and decline as well as an
energetic,
even
aggressive, response
to reflections on the Revolution in
France and its
implications
for the foundations of
authority.
The church of Sacre-Coeur
captured
Moral Order's rhetoric of
decadence,
but also its rhetoric of renewal. It
encapsulates
a moment in
the 1870s
when,
in a somber and contrite mood
following
defeat and
humiliation,
the nation was drawn to the
thought
that
only
massive
and collective moral failure could
explain
its fall. As Pie
put
it,
moral
renewal was the
only possible remedy:
"The hour
approaches
when
Je-
sus Christ will return . . . to the
institutions,
the social
life,
and the
public
life of
peoples."
The status of France
depended
on
nothing
less
than national
atonement,
expiation,
contrition-in
short,
the future of
France
hinged upon
public
life. Did the rhe-
40
Catholic officialdom
consistently
conflated the
religious
and the
political
in the
present
and in its reconstruction of the
past.
For
example,
in 1872,
the
archbishop
of Paris celebrated the
octave of St-Denis in a
chapel
located at the
presumed place
of Denis's
martyrdom
on Montmartre.
The
ceremony
took
place
on the
anniversary
of the execution of Marie-Antoinette,
16 Oct. 1793.
The
chapel's
address was
9,
rue Marie-Antoinette. In such discreet but unmistakable
ways
the
veneration of
martyrs
of the church blended with
political hagiography.
See La Semaine reli-
gieuse,
16 Nov.
1872, 572. The name of the street was
changed
in
1879,
that
is,
after the fall of the
Government of Moral Order.
the ideals of a Revolution
perceived
not as the moment of
rupture
but as
the moment of national
regeneration.
The Sacre-Coeur also
helps
to
explain why
some Catholics had
such
difficulty adapting
to the
spirit
of the
Republic.
As the
history
of
the Sacre-Coeur shows, Catholics of the Oeuvre
consistently
under-
stood the affairs of France in terms that were collective and
religious
rather than individual and secular. If France no
longer represented
the
apex
of
power
and
influence,
if France had declined in
stature,
it was
not because of bad
policy,
nor because other nations were now
coming
into their own and France could no
longer expect
to
shape
its world
singlehandedly,
nor because France was
learning painfully
that it must
take its
place alongside
other
great powers
in a multilateral
world;
rather,
it was because a chosen
people,
the nation as a
whole,
had failed
to make
good
on its
covenant,
had lost the
advantage among
nations of
divine
favor,
and was now
suffering
the
consequences
of divine
anger.
And if there were a
remedy
that would lead to national
renewal,
it
would have to be a collective
remedy, expressed through
the cult of the
Sacred Heart. In this
sense,
politics
could never be a
purely
individual
and secular matter. In
fact,
politics,
in
part,
consisted of the
spiritual
work of
converting
the critics of the Oeuvre to a new
understanding
of
France and its
past.40
In this sense the basilica was
part
of an extended
meditation on the moral sources of decadence and decline as well as an
energetic,
even
aggressive, response
to reflections on the Revolution in
France and its
implications
for the foundations of
authority.
The church of Sacre-Coeur
captured
Moral Order's rhetoric of
decadence,
but also its rhetoric of renewal. It
encapsulates
a moment in
the 1870s
when,
in a somber and contrite mood
following
defeat and
humiliation,
the nation was drawn to the
thought
that
only
massive
and collective moral failure could
explain
its fall. As Pie
put
it,
moral
renewal was the
only possible remedy:
"The hour
approaches
when
Je-
sus Christ will return . . . to the
institutions,
the social
life,
and the
public
life of
peoples."
The status of France
depended
on
nothing
less
than national
atonement,
expiation,
contrition-in
short,
the future of
France
hinged upon
public
life. Did the rhe-
40
Catholic officialdom
consistently
conflated the
religious
and the
political
in the
present
and in its reconstruction of the
past.
For
example,
in 1872,
the
archbishop
of Paris celebrated the
octave of St-Denis in a
chapel
located at the
presumed place
of Denis's
martyrdom
on Montmartre.
The
ceremony
took
place
on the
anniversary
of the execution of Marie-Antoinette,
16 Oct. 1793.
The
chapel's
address was
9,
rue Marie-Antoinette. In such discreet but unmistakable
ways
the
veneration of
martyrs
of the church blended with
political hagiography.
See La Semaine reli-
gieuse,
16 Nov.
1872, 572. The name of the street was
changed
in
1879,
that
is,
after the fall of the
Government of Moral Order.
500 500
toric that defined France as a chosen
nation,
in turn defined
by
its
Christian
mission,
express
a wish to return to confessional definitions
of nation and citizen that antedated 1791? The
implicit rejection
of
Jewish membership
in the
nation,
when
juxtaposed
with the rhetoric of
covenant modeled after that of the
Jews
of
antiquity,
amounts to a tell-
ing
and
deeply troubling
formulation of Catholic self-recrimination.
This
language paradoxically
both defines and identifies with the
"other."
The crisis of seize mai 1877 announced not
only
the failure of
legiti-
mism but also the closure of the cultural
conjuncture opened by
the de-
feat of
1870-71,
a
conjuncture
favorable to
speculation
on the
spiritual
foundations of national life. The failure of the
project
of Moral Order
left Catholics of the Oeuvre and Catholic officialdom to
struggle
to
complete
a monumental work which
expressed
an archaic
vision,
one
no
longer
in
keeping
with
political
or
spiritual
realities in France.
Their
efforts,
particularly
in
developing
the Sacre-Coeur into a national
enterprise,
one in which all could own a
piece
and share a
stake,
mani-
fest authentic
entrepreneurial genius.
So did other
initiatives,
such as
the revival of the
practice
of
pilgrimage,
thanks to the
technology
of the
railroad,
and the
pathbreaking
efforts on the
part
of Catholic
journalists
to
exploit
new
technologies
in order to transform
print
into a mass
medium.41 These showed how
adaptable
Catholics could be to the
practices
of the modern world.
However,
the ideal of the
Sacre-Coeur,
the ideal of a nation re-
turning
to a
path
from which it had
strayed,
bore little resemblance to
anything remotely
within the realm of the
politically possible. By
the
1880s,
and
especially
after the death of the Bourbon
pretender
Cham-
bord,
the vision embodied
by
the Sacre-Coeur could
easily
be seen for
what it was: a
utopian perspective combining
themes of
eschatology
and
social
palingenesis,
a discourse which aimed to define
public
life and
political
culture in modern France in terms of a Christian
soteriologi-
cal narrative of
transgression,
decadence, atonement,
and
redemption.
But how could such an
expiation
be
efficacious,
even as
expiation by
proxy,
when the
requisite
sentiment of contrition
evaporated,
as the
remorseful mood of the
epoque
of Moral Order
gave way
to the indul-
41
On
pilgrimage
and the
railroad,
see
Jean
Chelini, ed.,
Les Chemins de Dieu: Histoire des
pelerinages (Paris, 1982), especially
Pierre
Pierrard,
"La Renaissance des
pelerinages
au XIXe
siecle," 295-343;
Philippe Boutry
and Michel
Cinquin,
Deux
pelerinages
au XIXe siecle: Ars et
Paray-le-Monial (Paris, 1980);
as well as Zola's evocative Lourdes, 2 vols.
(Paris, 1923).
On inno-
vations in the Catholic
press,
see Claude
Bellanger, ed.,
Histoire
generale
de la
presse franfaise,
esp.
3:334 and 550-51; also,
Pierre
Sorlin,
La
Croix, 26ff.
toric that defined France as a chosen
nation,
in turn defined
by
its
Christian
mission,
express
a wish to return to confessional definitions
of nation and citizen that antedated 1791? The
implicit rejection
of
Jewish membership
in the
nation,
when
juxtaposed
with the rhetoric of
covenant modeled after that of the
Jews
of
antiquity,
amounts to a tell-
ing
and
deeply troubling
formulation of Catholic self-recrimination.
This
language paradoxically
both defines and identifies with the
"other."
The crisis of seize mai 1877 announced not
only
the failure of
legiti-
mism but also the closure of the cultural
conjuncture opened by
the de-
feat of
1870-71,
a
conjuncture
favorable to
speculation
on the
spiritual
foundations of national life. The failure of the
project
of Moral Order
left Catholics of the Oeuvre and Catholic officialdom to
struggle
to
complete
a monumental work which
expressed
an archaic
vision,
one
no
longer
in
keeping
with
political
or
spiritual
realities in France.
Their
efforts,
particularly
in
developing
the Sacre-Coeur into a national
enterprise,
one in which all could own a
piece
and share a
stake,
mani-
fest authentic
entrepreneurial genius.
So did other
initiatives,
such as
the revival of the
practice
of
pilgrimage,
thanks to the
technology
of the
railroad,
and the
pathbreaking
efforts on the
part
of Catholic
journalists
to
exploit
new
technologies
in order to transform
print
into a mass
medium.41 These showed how
adaptable
Catholics could be to the
practices
of the modern world.
However,
the ideal of the
Sacre-Coeur,
the ideal of a nation re-
turning
to a
path
from which it had
strayed,
bore little resemblance to
anything remotely
within the realm of the
politically possible. By
the
1880s,
and
especially
after the death of the Bourbon
pretender
Cham-
bord,
the vision embodied
by
the Sacre-Coeur could
easily
be seen for
what it was: a
utopian perspective combining
themes of
eschatology
and
social
palingenesis,
a discourse which aimed to define
public
life and
political
culture in modern France in terms of a Christian
soteriologi-
cal narrative of
transgression,
decadence, atonement,
and
redemption.
But how could such an
expiation
be
efficacious,
even as
expiation by
proxy,
when the
requisite
sentiment of contrition
evaporated,
as the
remorseful mood of the
epoque
of Moral Order
gave way
to the indul-
41
On
pilgrimage
and the
railroad,
see
Jean
Chelini, ed.,
Les Chemins de Dieu: Histoire des
pelerinages (Paris, 1982), especially
Pierre
Pierrard,
"La Renaissance des
pelerinages
au XIXe
siecle," 295-343;
Philippe Boutry
and Michel
Cinquin,
Deux
pelerinages
au XIXe siecle: Ars et
Paray-le-Monial (Paris, 1980);
as well as Zola's evocative Lourdes, 2 vols.
(Paris, 1923).
On inno-
vations in the Catholic
press,
see Claude
Bellanger, ed.,
Histoire
generale
de la
presse franfaise,
esp.
3:334 and 550-51; also,
Pierre
Sorlin,
La
Croix, 26ff.
501 501
gent spirit
of the Belle
Epoque?42
The absence of
any
chance of success
for the
political
or historical aims of the cult of Sacre-Coeur meant
that the stated
goals
of the
project
had to be toned down. In the after-
math of the First World
War,
French
victory
and the
recovery
of the lost
provinces
were taken as
adequate
fulfillment of the fervent wishes of
the
supporters
of the Oeuvre. The official mood at the basilica's conse-
cration in 1919 was
gratitude
rather than shame and
penitence.
But this
was a rather mediocre
endpoint
to the
grand
historical
trajectory
traced
for France
by
the leaders of the Oeuvre.
Today
the monument of Sacre-
Coeur serves less to remind us of the moral failures of
eighteenth-
and
nineteenth-century
France,
as its builders would have had
it; instead it
stands as a monumental
example
of cultural
decalage-the dogged
persistence
of a
way
of
ordering
the world and of
understanding
France
and its
past,
but one far
beyond
the
power
of its bearers to
impose.
42
One is
justified
in
doubting
the
efficacy
of official
expiations,
because as Mona Ozouf has
remarked of orchestrated acts of
expiation
in another
context, "L'expiation
commandee est restee
une ceremonie
insignifiante;
voire meme
paienne.
... On ne se sauve
qu'en acceptant
de se
perdre,
et le Christ lui-meme a dui, pour
racheter la nature
humain, d'abord s'identifier A elle."
Mona Ozouf, L'Homme
regenere:
francaise (Paris, 1989),
192. On the
Belle
Epoque,
see Charles Rearick,
Pleasures
of
the Belle
Epoque:
Entertainment and
Festivity
in
Turn-of-the-Century
France
(New Haven, 1985).
gent spirit
of the Belle
Epoque?42
The absence of
any
chance of success
for the
political
or historical aims of the cult of Sacre-Coeur meant
that the stated
goals
of the
project
had to be toned down. In the after-
math of the First World
War,
French
victory
and the
recovery
of the lost
provinces
were taken as
adequate
fulfillment of the fervent wishes of
the
supporters
of the Oeuvre. The official mood at the basilica's conse-
cration in 1919 was
gratitude
rather than shame and
penitence.
But this
was a rather mediocre
endpoint
to the
grand
historical
trajectory
traced
for France
by
the leaders of the Oeuvre.
Today
the monument of Sacre-
Coeur serves less to remind us of the moral failures of
eighteenth-
and
nineteenth-century
France,
as its builders would have had
it; instead it
stands as a monumental
example
of cultural
decalage-the dogged
persistence
of a
way
of
ordering
the world and of
understanding
France
and its
past,
but one far
beyond
the
power
of its bearers to
impose.
42
One is
justified
in
doubting
the
efficacy
of official
expiations,
because as Mona Ozouf has
remarked of orchestrated acts of
expiation
in another
context, "L'expiation
commandee est restee
une ceremonie
insignifiante;
voire meme
paienne.
... On ne se sauve
qu'en acceptant
de se
perdre,
et le Christ lui-meme a dui, pour
racheter la nature
humain, d'abord s'identifier A elle."
Mona Ozouf, L'Homme
regenere:
francaise (Paris, 1989),
192. On the
Belle
Epoque,
see Charles Rearick,
Pleasures
of
the Belle
Epoque:
Entertainment and
Festivity
in
Turn-of-the-Century
France
(New Haven, 1985).
502 502

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Monument as Ex-Voto, Monument as Historiosophy: The Basilica of Sacre-Coeur

Author(s): Raymond A. Jonas

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