Celebration of the Revolutionary Festivals under the Directory

A Failure of Sacrality

Bibliographic Data

ID3363073
AuthorsJoseph F Byrnes (Oklahoma State University, corresponding author)
Year1994
Volume63
Issue2
Pages201-220
Publication date1994-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueChurch History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0009-6407 • E-ISSN: 1755-2613
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3168588
OpenAlexW2049328203
LanguageEN
References cited20

The French Revolutionary festivals were planned as ritualized celebrations (speeches, tableaux, parades/processions, and music) of a revolutionary myth (new nation, elect community, pantheon of political heroes) with strong resemblance tothe traditional myth and ritual celebrating creation and redemption. This myth and ritual in the case of theweekly festivalswas then placed on a day set aside in the same fashion as previously Sunday had been set aside, mythologized, and ritualized. Under the Directory government, however, the festival celebrations went into steep decline, and only the Commemorationof 14 July survived the revolutionary decade. Even so, almost twenty years ago, in a brilliant and all-encompassing essay that has become the reigning paradigm, Mona Ozouf argued that the experience of the sacred central to the Old-Regime Catholic feasts was transferred to the revolutionary festivals, and from the revolutionary festivals to the revolutionary (and post-revolutionary) government. In a chapter entitled "Popular Life and the Revolutionary Festival" she presented evidence that popular religious sentiment (love of bells, crucifixes, Maypoles, and so on) remained alive and well; and in a chapter entitled "The Revolutionary Festival: A Transfer of Sacrality," evidence that fundamental humanconcerns (biological, social, and civic) once alive in a religious context lived on in a political context

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Aside · Context (archaeology) · Directory · Government (linguistics) · Literature · Mythology · Political science · Politics · Classics · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies