This campaign was initiated in the Nièvre where Fouché was Commissioner of the Republic. In September Fouché had had a visit from Pierre Chaumette, a former medical student born at Nevers, a young man of a rather strait-laced disposition and homosexual inclinations who had been one of the most eloquent speakers at the Cordeliers Club and an outspoken opponent of the Girondins. Inspired or encouraged by Chaumette, Fouché immediately instituted a programme of de-Christianization in the district for which he was held responsible. On 22 September in the church of Saint-Cyr at Nevers he preached a sermon attacking ‘religious sophistry’ and unveiled a bust of Brutus. Later, in his avowed determination to substitute the ‘cult of the Republic’ for ‘the superstition and hypocrisy’ of Christianity, he had ecclesiastical vestments burned, crucifixes and crosses destroyed, church ornaments and vessels confiscated and notices posted outside cemeteries to the effect that, ‘Death is an eternal sleep.’ Denouncing the celibacy of priests, he ordered them all either to marry, to adopt a child or look after an elderly person. He eventually succeeded in obtaining the resignation of the Bishop of Allier and some thirty of the clergy in his diocese.
On his return to Paris at the end of the month, Chaumette, supported by Hébert, demanded a similar programme of de-Christianization in the capital. His demands, while making a strong appeal to the anti-clericalists in the radical sections, were not at first received with much enthusiasm elsewhere. But the ground had to some extent been prepared for Chaumette’s campaign by the Convention’s resolve to replace the Gregorian calendar with one which would emphasize the Republic’s association with Nature and Reason rather than with traditional Christianity. The dawn of the new era, Year one of the Republic, had already been declared as having begun with the abolition of the monarchy on 22 September 1792. That year, and all subsequent years, were now to be divided into twelve months of thirty days each, with the five days left at the end of the year to be known as sans-culottides and to be celebrated as festivals. The task of compiling the new calendar was entrusted to Philippe Fabre, who called himself Fabre d’Églantine, a former actor and – like so many other revolutionary figures – a not very successful writer who had once been Danton’s secretary. He decided that the months, which were to be divided into three décades of ten days’ each, should be named after the seasons: the first three, as autumnal seasons, were to be known as Vendémiaire, Brumaire and Frimaire; the next three, those of winter, as Nivôse, Pluviôse and Ventôse; the three of spring, as Germinal, Floréal and Prairial; and the three of summer as Messidor, Thermidor and Fructidor. In addition, Fabre suggested the names of saints in the calendar should be replaced by those of fruits, plants and flowers. Since religious holidays were abolished and Sundays were no longer a day of rest, these changes were naturally displeasing to the clergy, many of whom refused to celebrate Mass on the new Sabbath, as well as to the devout members of their flocks. Nor were they universally popular with the workers who now had to make do with a holiday every ten days instead of every seven. Directed by Hébert and Chaumette, and supported outside the Commune by Fabre d’Églantine, whose disdainful manner and affectation of a lorgnette exasperated Robespierre, the de-Christianization campaign nevertheless soon gained momentum in Paris. Religious monuments outside churches were destroyed; various religious ceremonies were suppressed; ecclesiastical plate and other treasures were seized in the name of the people; images of the madonna were replaced by busts of Marat; surplices were cut up to make bandages and soldiers’ shirts; and it was henceforth forbidden to sell in the streets ‘any kinds of superstitious jugglery such as holy napkins, St Veronica’s handkerchiefs, Ecce Homos, crosses, Agnus Deis, rings of St Hubert or any medicinal waters or other adulterated drugs’. Theatres began to offer such plays as L’Inauguration du Temple de ìa Vérité in which a parody of the High Mass was performed.
Jean-Baptiste Gobel, Archbishop of Paris since 1791, a weak, rather absurd figure who had achieved favour with the Hébertists and atheists by adopting the dress of the sans-culottes, expressing anti-clerical opinions and opposing the celibacy of the clergy, was intimidated into coming before the Convention with his mitre in his hand and a red cap on his head, declaring, ‘Born a man of the people, curé of Porentruy, sent by the clergy to the Estates General, then raised to the Archbishopric of Paris, I have never ceased to obey the people. I accepted the functions which the people formerly bestowed on me and now, in obedience to the wishes of the people, I have come here to resign them. I allowed myself to be made a bishop when the people wanted bishops. I cease to be one now when the people no longer want them.’
That same week, a few days before the Commune ordered the closure of all churches in the city, a grand Festival of Reason was celebrated in Nôtre Dame. A young actress was carried into the cathedral by four citizens to represent the Goddess of Reason. Clothed in white drapery with a blue cloak over her shoulders and a red cap of liberty crowning her long hair, she was accompanied by a troupe of girls also dressed in white with roses on their heads. She sat on an ivy-covered chair while speeches were made, songs were sung, and soldiers paraded about the aisles carrying busts of Marat, Lepeletier and other martyrs of the Revolution. Later another young woman, the wife of Momoro, a printer who was a prominent member of the Commune, played the principal part in a similar festival at Saint-Sulpice.
From Paris the de-Christianization movement spread all over France. Not only streets and squares but towns and villages confusingly changed their names. The bestowal on babies of revolutionary first names became more common in certain districts than those of saints. More and more cathedrals and churches were deprived of their ornaments, vessels and plate; some were converted into Temples of Reason, others closed. Many clergy resigned and a number married. One even had himself ritually divorced from his breviary. The rites and processions in which the clergy had played their parts were parodied by local revolutionaries wearing vestments and mitres, employing croziers as drum-majors’ staffs, and making obeisances to the prettiest girl in the community who was paraded for the day as Goddess of Reason. In Paris people ‘danced before the sanctuary, howling the carmagnole,’ according to a contemporary witness, Séastien Mercier. ‘The men wore no breeches; and the necks and breasts of the women were bare. In their wild whirling they imitated those whirlwinds which, foreshadowing tempests, ravage and destroy all within their path. In the darkness of the sacristy they satisfied those abominable desires that had been aroused in them.’