Cult of the Supreme Being

Origins and establishment

The Revolution's rejection of religion produced the Cult of Reason, advocated by radicals such as Jacques Hébert and Antoine-François Momoro, which distilled largely atheistic and anthropocentric views: no gods were worshipped, and devotion went to the abstract concept of Reason.

Robespierre, no admirer of Catholicism but with a special dislike for atheism, held that belief in a supreme being was important for social order. In late 1793 he denounced the Cult of Reason and its "scandalous scenes" and "wild masquerades", and devised the Cult of the Supreme Being almost entirely himself. He had earlier secured a decree of 6 December 1793 instituting freedom of cults, and the Convention then adopted a calendar of republican festivals on his report from the Committee of Public Safety.

Tenets

The cult rested on two principles: belief in the existence of a god and the immortality of the human soul. These underwrote a civic-minded public virtue attainable only through active fidelity to liberty and democracy. Belief in a living god and a higher moral code were held to be "constant reminders of justice" and therefore essential to a republican society. Robespierre held that reason is only a means to an end, the singular end being virtue. The cult was based on the creed of the Savoy chaplain that Rousseau outlined in Book IV of Emile.

The Convention's decree declared that the French People recognize the existence of the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul, and that the best service of the Supreme Being is the practice of man's duties. Among the most important of these duties it named detestation of bad faith and tyranny, punishing tyrants and traitors, caring for the unfortunate, respecting the weak, defending the oppressed, doing unto others all the good one can, and not being unjust towards anyone. Robespierre dedicated festivals to the Supreme Being along with Truth, Justice, Modesty, Friendship, Frugality, Fidelity, Immortality, Misfortune and others.

Festival of the Supreme Being

Robespierre declared 20 Prairial Year II (8 June 1794, coinciding with the Christian holiday of Pentecost) the first day of national celebration, with future republican holidays to be held on the décadi, the tenth days of the Republican calendar. Every locality was mandated to hold a commemorative event. The Paris event was organized by the artist Jacques-Louis David and François Joseph Talma around a man-made mountain on the Champ de Mars. Robespierre assumed full leadership; witnesses state he beamed with joy, and he delivered two speeches emphasizing his concept of a Supreme Being.

In Paris, participants gathered around the round basin at the east end of the Tuileries garden, where a pyramid representing a monster, Atheism, was surrounded by Ambition, Egoism and false Simplicity; Robespierre set fire to the representations of Atheism and Egoism, which when burned revealed a statue of Wisdom. He wore a sky-blue coat with a tricolour sash, carried a bouquet, and preceded the deputies of the Convention in a procession to the Champ de Mars, accompanied by a Hymn to the Supreme Being written by Théodore Désorgues on music by Gossec. Of Paris's 600,000 inhabitants, roughly 300,000 to 400,000 attended. Despite the impression of popular concord, the cult failed to create moral unity among the revolutionaries and soon provoked a political crisis in the revolutionary government.

Political purpose and assessment

The cult was imposed in the climate of insecurity of the Terror and marked a break with the dechristianization that accompanied the Revolution and with the Hébertists' attempt to impose the Cult of Reason. The deistic Robespierre wanted to end militant atheism and unify the French around a common cult while strengthening the state's hold over religion.

Robespierre used the religious issue to publicly denounce the motives of radicals outside his camp, and it led directly or indirectly to the executions of de-Christianisers like Hébert, Momoro and Anacharsis Cloots. The establishment of the Cult of the Supreme Being began the reversal of the wholesale de-Christianization previously officially favoured, and simultaneously marked the apogee of Robespierre's power: in theory only an equal member of the Committee of Public Safety, he possessed an unrivalled national prominence.

Fall and legacy

The cult and its festival may have contributed to the Thermidorian Reaction and Robespierre's downfall; according to Madame de Staël, it was from that time that he was lost. It generated suspicion among anticlericals and other political factions, who felt he was developing grandiose delusions about his place in French society. Criticism came from Vadier, Fouché, Barère and Courtois of the Committee of General Security, and the Vadier report of 15 June on the Catherine Théot affair made it seem Robespierre was creating a religion with himself as its god.

With Robespierre's death at the guillotine on 28 July 1794, after his overthrow on 9–10 Thermidor (27–28 July 1794), the cult lost all official sanction and disappeared from public view. On 8 April 1802 Napoleon officially banned it, together with the Cult of Reason, with his Law on Cults of 18 Germinal, Year X.

The concept of a Supreme Being itself existed in philosophy since Greek antiquity (Aristotle's Prime Mover in the Metaphysics), and was taken up in the Enlightenment as a natural-religion concept, nourished by Freemasonry's "Great Architect of the Universe". The French term "Être suprême", calqued on the English "Supreme being", appears in Diderot's translation of Shaftesbury's An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit (definitive edition 1733). Théophilanthropy emerged as an emanation of the cult on 26 Nivôse Year V (15 January 1797); one source dates its banning to 1803. The Supreme Being also remains inscribed in the preamble of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.