“Sacrilege!” », the exhibition which questions the return of faith | EUROtoday
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Ln August 12, 1268, Pope Clement IV despatched Louis IX a bull encouraging him to mood his punitive ardor. While the long run Saint-Louis burned the lips of blasphemers with a scorching iron, Rome known as on the king to point out better moderation; a heavy effective or a pillory, a number of lashes at most, will suffice. When it involves the repression of sacrilege, temporal energy seems extra ferocious than non secular authority… A effective train, in any case, of instrumentalization of the sacred by the holder of monarchical energy.
Better than every other king, Louis IX embodies, on the finish of the Middle Ages, the shift from the offense dedicated towards God in the direction of royal “lèse-majesté”, to the purpose that the 2 crimes will find yourself merging. His canonization, twenty-seven years after his loss of life in 1297, will contribute to additional strengthening the authority of the French dynasty. Philippe le Bel, who reigned on the time, was now not simply king of France however grandson of a… saint, whose halo he appropriated.
The kings of France received the battle for the sacred. The problem to the ability of the monarch turns into simply as sacrilegious as iconoclasm and the desecration of hosts. To offend God is to offend the greatness of the king. And vice versa. The faith is now not solely Catholic, additionally it is “royal”.
Presented in darkness and an virtually non secular ambiance, the bull of Clement IV is likely one of the centerpieces of the exhibition that the National Archives museum is dedicating to “Sacrilege”, till 1er July 2024, on the Hôtel de Soubise, in Paris. His intention goals to query the relationships that temporal energy, allow us to say political energy, maintains by means of the ages with the sacred. “All power is nourished by a sacred dimension,” observes Amable Sablon du Corail, head of the “Middle Ages and Ancient Regime” division of the National Archives, commissioner, with the professor of authorized historical past Jacques de Saint-Victor, of this fascinating exhibition with an evocative subtitle: “The State, religions and the sacred”. The robust comeback of faith, which started fifty years in the past, and the more and more harsh blows towards secularism in the present day are additionally questioned on the finish of the journey – maybe too timidly, we are going to come again to this.
A scorching matter
Difficult to discover a hotter topic 9 years after the lethal assault in Charlie Hebdo4 years after the assassination of Professor Samuel Paty and at a time when the principal of a public highschool, threatened with loss of life for having requested a pupil of Muslim religion to take away her veil, most well-liked to carry ahead the decision for retirement to protect your security…
The exhibition “Sacrilege!” » locations these tragic occasions in the long run of historical past. A historical past “as long as that of religion and politics”, comment its curators, who take up the definition that Durkheim gave to sacrilege – most well-liked to blasphemy, confined to outrage to the divinity –: within the sociological sense of time period, “sacrilege encompasses all attacks on what a society considers sacred, at a specific period”.
Can we think about an authority stripped of any sacred dimension? Can a State claiming to be “secular” free itself from all types of sacredness? Is a “common sacred” nonetheless attainable, at a time when faith resurfaces with a bang, placing the Republic below stress? To handle these dizzying questions, Amable Sablon du Corail and Jacques de Saint-Victor delve right into a story that begins with the trial of Socrates (- 399), accused of corrupting youth and of not believing within the divinities of town, and ends with the Republican march of January 11, 2015, this Sunday of Republican communion the place all of France, or virtually, needed to be “Charlie”.READ ALSO Blasphemy, the return of an imaginary crime
The sacralization of political energy reached its peak below the monarchy, to which the exhibition logically reserves a big house. The transformation, below Louis IX, of the sin of blasphemy into against the law punished by the monarch will subsequently have largely contributed to investing the royal energy with a non secular aura, already evident throughout the coronation ceremony and the anointing with holy oil. But quickly, the Protestant reform threatened the regime and repression intensified; the prosecutions launched towards blasphemers gave solution to heresy trials, whereas dogma and monarchical absolutism have been known as into query. For the primary time in French History, two kings have been assassinated: Henri III (1589), then Henri IV (1610). The Edict of Nantes, which established a sure tolerance, was revoked (1685) by Louis XIV.
The assault dedicated by Damiens towards Louis for the event – and a interval “procedure bag” containing the trial paperwork. Another spotlight of the exhibition: the Typus religionis; commissioned by the Jesuits, seized in 1762 within the previous school of Billom (Puy-de-Dôme) to function proof within the trial introduced towards the Society of Jesus, this monumental and baroque work unfolds magnificently.
Voltaire and the Knight of La Barre
The monarchy could be overthrown a number of years later, Louis XVI guillotined (1793) however earlier than that, “Sacrilege!” » nonetheless focuses on a capital occasion: the trial of François Lefebvre, alias the Chevalier de La Barre, condemned by the Parliament of Paris – whose authentic judgment is uncovered – to have his hand minimize off, his tongue torn out and to be burned slowly for refusing to uncover as a procession of capuchins handed by. Voltaire is indignant, mobilizes his buddies. “Foreign nations judge France by the shows, by the novels, by the pretty verses, by the opera girls who have very gentle morals […]. They do not know that deep down there is no nation more cruel than the French,” he wrote in his Portable philosophical dictionaryoffered in a interval version.
Did sacrilege disappear throughout the Revolution? Nay! The offense of blasphemy is conspicuous by its absence within the first Penal Code (1791) however the sacred takes one other kind, passing from the king to the Nation, then to the Republic, “in other words from a person to an abstraction”, underlines Amable Coral Sand. The revolutionaries rush to search out substitutes for the “royal religion”. The Terror gave the brand new “blasphemers”, these “vicious Girondins” and different “declared enemies of the Republic” a tough time – a ferocious repression which made Condorcet say that “Robespierre has all the characteristics of a leader of sect.”
The making of the sacred
The successive regimes within the nineteenth centurye century shall be eager to remake the sacred. After Napoleon established the Concordat, Louis de Serre, Minister of Justice to Louis XVIII, reintroduced throughout the Restoration the offense of “insulting public and religious morality”. Under Charles
The regulation of July 29, 1881 on freedom of the press, legislative totem of the triumphant Republic, can not assist however reintroduce the crime of lèse-majesté, reformed into the offense of “offense against the head of state”; the jurists of the time might properly deny it, it’s certainly a query of resacralizing the presidential perform. Little used, besides below Vichy, this offense, too “vague” to not be “arbitrary”, within the phrases of Clemenceau, skilled a growth after the Algerian warfare. As proven by sure “white notes” of common intelligence, General de Gaulle made excessive use of it (greater than 100 prosecutions between 1959 and 1969).
The one who, as Nicolas Sarkozy handed by, held up an indication “Get out, you poor idiot” in 2012, would be the final to be judged – and convicted – for this crime of insulting the president, earlier than seeing his enchantment prosper. earlier than the European Court of Human Rights. In a 2013 determination, the Strasbourg judges condemned France on the idea of Article 10 (proper to freedom of expression), signing the loss of life warrant for this offense with the scents of the previous regime. Repealed in 2013, the assault on the top of state disappears from the Penal Code.READ ALSO Richard Malka: “To stay in peace, you must not give up on anything”
Since 1905 and the regulation “on the separation of Churches and State”, the Republic “does not recognize, employ or subsidize any religion”. However, the resurgence of faith in public debate, say after May 1968, exerted rising stress on the free criticism of dogmas and religions. In principle, it’s at all times attainable to mock beliefs – it’s forbidden to assault believers – however in apply, it’s one other story. Established in 1972 (Pléven regulation), the offense of discriminating towards folks “because of their supposed race or their religion” is in the present day exploited by those that wish to name into query the appropriate to blaspheme; this “right to piss off God” claimed by lawyer Richard Malka, the voice of Charlie Hebdo – and Mila –, throughout the trial for the 2015 assaults.
Basically, the whole lot occurs as if the appropriate to “blasphemy”, inseparable from secularism and consubstantial with freedom of expression, was requested to bow to new calls for: the appropriate to not be “hurt” or ” offended” in his “intimate convictions”; right not to be “hindered” in the ostentatious display and noisy practice of one’s religion, including in public spaces.
While the poster of The nunthe film by Jacques Rivette (1966) censored under De Gaulle, the exhibition at the Musée des Archives ignores the caricatures of Mohammed, the publication of which earned the team of Charlie Hebdo to be decimated by a terrorist commando, before a professor, who had used it to illustrate a course on religious criticism, was in turn beheaded by an Islamist fanatic. After debates, the scientific committee of the exhibition “Sacrilege! » decided not to show them, citing “security” reasons. We will be careful not to blame this choice, while allowing ourselves to regret the absence of a more marked position in favor of the right to blasphemy, this sacrilege in the name of which so many crimes were committed throughout the centuries – such as the exhibition shows this very well – and the questioning of which threatens freedom of expression.
Put back to back Karl Marx (“criticism of religion is the first condition of all criticism”) and Edgar Morin (“freedom of expression cannot exclude all foresight of misunderstandings, incomprehensions, violent or criminal consequences that it can provoke”) is a bit quick. “We needed to make an exhibition that was each scholarly and academic, exhibiting this very explicit manner that France has at all times had, in its manner of coping with the query of the sacred. Undeniably, freedom of expression, notably in non secular issues, is being known as into query in the present day and it appears to me that we’re exhibiting it,” argues Jacques de Saint-Victor.
READ ALSO Offense of blasphemy: how France resists the ECHRAt the top of the tour, the exhibition provides voice, in an archive of the Antenne 2 information, to Lionel Jospin's “call for tolerance”, within the midst of the Creil scarf affair. Speaking on October 25, 1989 earlier than the nationwide illustration, the socialist Minister of Education, pushed by a number of deputies from his camp, inspired faculty administrators to dissuade veiled youngsters from coming into class… whereas asking them to welcome them anyway “in case of blockage”.
Thirty-five years later, we will see the disastrous results of the coverage of lukewarm water and “at the same time”, when our freedoms are at stake.
*“Sacrilege!” The State, religions and the sacred”, till 1er July on the National Archives Museum in Paris.
https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/sacrilege-l-exposition-qui-interroge-le-retour-du-fait-religieux-01-04-2024-2556455_23.php