Pierre Gaspard Chaumette
Encyclopedia
Pierre Gaspard Chaumette (24 May 1763 - 13 April 1794) was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 politician of the Revolutionary
period
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

.

Early activities

Born in Nevers
Nevers
Nevers is a commune in – and the administrative capital of – the Nièvre department in the Bourgogne region in central France...

 France, 24 May 1763, his main interest was botany
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...

 and science. Chaumette studied medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....

 at the University of Paris in 1790, but gave up his career in medicine at the start of the Revolution. Chaumette began his political career as member of the Jacobin Club editing the progressive Revolutions de Paris journal from 1790. His oratory skills proved him a valuable spokesperson of the Cordelier Club, and more importantly, the sans-culotte movement in the Parisian neighbourhood Sections
Revolutionary sections of Paris
The revolutionary sections of Paris were subdivisions of Paris during the French Revolution. They first arose in 1790 and were suppressed in 1795.-History:At the time of the Revolution, Paris measured 3440 hectares, compared to the 7800 hectares of today...

. In August of 1792 Chaumette became the Chief Procurator of the Commune of Paris
Paris Commune (French Revolution)
The Paris Commune during the French Revolution was the government of Paris from 1789 until 1795. Established in the Hôtel de Ville just after the storming of the Bastille, the Commune became insurrectionary in the summer of 1792, essentially refusing to take orders from the central French...

; on 31 October 1792 he was elected President of the Commune and was re-elected in the Municipal on 2 December of that same year. As member of the Paris Commune during the insurrection of 10 August
10th of August (French Revolution)
On 10 August 1792, during the French Revolution, revolutionary Fédéré militias — with the backing of a new municipal government of Paris that came to be known as the "insurrectionary" Paris Commune and ultimately supported by the National Guard — besieged the Tuileries palace. King Louis XVI and...

 1792, he was delegated to visit the prisons, with full power to arrest suspects. He was accused later of having taken part in the September Massacres
September Massacres
The September Massacres were a wave of mob violence which overtook Paris in late summer 1792, during the French Revolution. By the time it had subsided, half the prison population of Paris had been executed: some 1,200 trapped prisoners, including many women and young boys...

, but proved that at that time he had been sent by the provisional executive council to Normandy
Normandy
Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...

 to oversee a requisition of 60,000 men. Returning from this mission, he spoke eloquently in favour of the French Republic.

Presidency of the Commune

His conduct, oratorical talent, and the fact that his private life was considered beyond reproach, all made him influential, and he was elected president of the Commune, defending the municipality at the bar of the National Convention
National Convention
During the French Revolution, the National Convention or Convention, in France, comprised the constitutional and legislative assembly which sat from 20 September 1792 to 26 October 1795 . It held executive power in France during the first years of the French First Republic...

 on 31 October 1792. Re-elected in the municipal elections of 2 December 1792, he was soon given the functions of procureur
Syndic
Syndic , a term applied in certain countries to an officer of government with varying powers, and secondly to a representative or delegate of a university, institution or other corporation, entrusted with special functions or powers.The meaning which underlies both applications is that of...

of the Commune, and contributed with success to the enrollments of volunteers in the army by his appeals to the population of Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. Chaumette was one of the instigators of the attacks of 31 May and of 2 June 1793 on the Girondist
Girondist
The Girondists were a political faction in France within the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention during the French Revolution...

s, carrying out a virulent and intransigent attack.
Further, Chaumette held a strong opinion about the fate of Louis XVI after his fall. He was greatly outspoken in his demand for the king's blood. Chaumette’s thesis was that as long as Louis XVI went unpunished prices would remain high, and shortages and the profiteering that created them, which he assumed to be the work of the royalists, would go unchecked. Chaumette ultimately was one of the men to vote in favor of the former king's execution.

Chaumette is considered one of the ultra-radical enragés
Enragés
Les Enragés were a loose amalgam of radicals active during the French Revolution. Politically they stood to the left of the Jacobins. Represented by Jacques Roux, Théophile Leclerc, Jean Varlet and others, they believed that liberty for all meant more than mere constitutional rights...

of the French Revolution. He demanded the formation of a Revolutionary Army
French Revolutionary Army
The French Revolutionary Army is the term used to refer to the military of France during the period between the fall of the ancien regime under Louis XVI in 1792 and the formation of the First French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804. These armies were characterised by their revolutionary...

 which was to "force avarice and greed to yield up the riches of the earth” in order to redistribute wealth, and feed troops and the urban populations. He is associated much more with his views on the de-Christianization movement, however. Chaumette was an ardent critic of Christianity, which he believed to consist of "ridiculous ideas" that "have been very helpful to [legitimize] despotism.” In his ultra-radical views, he was heavily influenced by atheist and materialist writers Paul d'Holbach, Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent person during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....

 and Jean Meslier
Jean Meslier
Jean Meslier was a French Catholic priest who was discovered, upon his death, to have written a book-length philosophical essay promoting atheism. Described by the author as his "testament" to his parishioners, the text denounces all religion.-Life:Jean Meslier was born in Mazerny in the Ardennes...

. Chaumette believed religion to be a relic of superstitious eras that did not reflect the intellectual achievements of his enlightened age. Indeed, for Chaumette "church and counterrevolution were one and the same." Thus, he proceeded to pressure several priests and bishops into abjuring their positions. Chaumette organized a Festival of Reason on 10 November 1793, which boasted a Goddess of Reason
Goddess of Reason
During the French Revolution, on 10 November 1793, a Goddess of Reason was proclaimed by the French Convention at the suggestion of Chaumette. As personification for the goddess, Sophie Momoro, wife of the printer Antoine-François Momoro, was chosen...

, in the guise of an actress, on an elevated platform in the Notre Dame Cathedral. Chaumette was so passionately involved in the de-Christianization process that he even publicly changed his name from Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette to Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae in Asia Minor, Anaxagoras was the first philosopher to bring philosophy from Ionia to Athens. He attempted to give a scientific account of eclipses, meteors, rainbows, and the sun, which he described as a fiery mass larger than...

 Chaumette. He stated his reason for changing his name that, “I was formerly called Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette because my god-father
Godparent
A godparent, in many denominations of Christianity, is someone who sponsors a child's baptism. A male godparent is a godfather, and a female godparent is a godmother...

 believed in the saints. Since the revolution I have taken the name of a saint who was hanged for his republican principles.”

The Cult of Reason
Cult of Reason
The Cult of Reason was an atheistic belief system established in France and intended as a replacement for Christianity during the French Revolution.-Origins:...

, of which Chaumette was an avid follower alongside Jacques Hébert
Jacques Hébert
Jacques René Hébert was a French journalist, and the founder and editor of the extreme radical newspaper Le Père Duchesne during the French Revolution...

, emphasized so called natural facts. Chaumette's adherence to this ideology becomes lucid in his views toward the suffragist movement at the time. He has been recorded to answer “Since when is it permitted to give up one's sex? […] Is it to men that nature confided domestic cares? Has she given us breasts to feed our children?” to a group of women demanding equal treatment in October of 1793. He evidently believed nature to have clearly defined the political scene as man's domain, and the domestic realm as woman's. He reminded a different group of suffragists of Olympe de Gouges
Olympe de Gouges
Olympe de Gouges , born Marie Gouze, was a French playwright and political activist whose feminist and abolitionist writings reached a large audience....

' fate whose "forgetfulness of the virtues of her sex led her to the scaffold.”

Downfall

His ultra-radical ideas were soon regarded as affront to the National Conventions' policies, and as the public and official opinion began to turn against the likewise minded Hébertists
Hébertists
The Hébertists were an ultra-revolutionary political faction associated with the populist journalist Jacques Hébert. They came to power during the Reign of Terror and played a significant role in the French Revolution....

 in the early spring of 1794, Chaumette increasingly became target of
counterrevolutionary allegations. Maximilien Robespierre
Maximilien Robespierre
Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre is one of the best-known and most influential figures of the French Revolution. He largely dominated the Committee of Public Safety and was instrumental in the period of the Revolution commonly known as the Reign of Terror, which ended with his...

 - as promoter of the Cult of the Supreme Being
Cult of the Supreme Being
The Cult of the Supreme Being was a form of deism established in France by Maximilien Robespierre during the French Revolution. It was intended to become the state religion of the new French Republic.- Origins :...

 that was in direct
opposition to Chaumette's Cult of Reason - had him accused with the Hébertists as being part of a conspiracy to starve Paris and subsequently overthrow the Convention. He was sentenced to death on the morning of April 13 and guillotined that same afternoon.

Radical Philosophy

Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette's legacy mainly consists of his ultra-radical philosophies that were regarded excessive even by his contemporary
colleagues. Especially his convictions on the uselessness of religion were frowned upon by deist Robespierre
and most other "moderate" Montagnards and they ultimately led to his execution. In a time in which Catholicism was still deeply embedded
in France, Chaumette's views can safely be regarded as shared by a very small minority only. Yet, they are emblematic of the ideological
progression to evermore radical ideas that was prevalent in Revolutionary France. Furthermore, his emphasis on reason and natural facts
are the high point of the French Enlightenment thinking as they are the logical heir of Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...

, Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...

, and the atheist philosophers mentioned above.

Reviewing Saint-Martin

In 1790 Chaumette reviewed the work of Saint-Martin
Louis Claude de Saint-Martin
Louis Claude de Saint-Martin was a French philosopher, known as le philosophe inconnu, the name under which his works were published.-Life:He was born, at Amboise, into a poor but noble family....

, a French Catholic philosopher wishing for a theocratic society in which the most devout people would commission and guide the rest of the population. The review provides a substantiated outline of Chaumette's philosophies. He criticizes Saint-Martin's ideal due to its similarity to France's feudal order before the Revolution in which the rule of the monarch was legitimized by the Divine right of kings
Divine Right of Kings
The divine right of kings or divine-right theory of kingship is a political and religious doctrine of royal and political legitimacy. It asserts that a monarch is subject to no earthly authority, deriving his right to rule directly from the will of God...

. The review soon develops into a much broader affront towards religion, though. Chaumette calls all Christians "enemies of reason", and calls their ideas "ridiculous." He wonders “over whom to get more embarrassed; him who believes he can deceive humans in the eighteenth century with such farces or him who has the weakness to let himself be deceived.” He moves on to criticize the very notion of free will as construct that authorizes Christianity to proscribe certain "unmoral" actions.

His criticism is reminiscent of Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...

 who would denounce Christianity on many of the same grounds eighty years later. Just like Nietzsche, Chaumette emphasizes a greater reliance on our instincts and a greater embracing of the apparent world, instead of Christianity's concern with the afterlife. In his philosophy, he is rather critical of human beings stating that "everyone knows that humans are nothing more than what education makes of them; [...and thus] if one wants them just, one must furnish them with notions of fairness, not ideas from seventh heaven [...] because the sources of all of human’s grief are ignorance and superstition.". Chaumette valued education as key for producing virtuous republican Frenchman who would no longer "fall for" Christianity's unreasonable teachings.

Besides this review, Chaumette left some printed speeches and fragments, and memoirs published in the Amateur d'autographes. His
memoirs on the events of 10 August were published by François Victor Alphonse Aulard
François Victor Alphonse Aulard
François Victor Alphonse Aulard was the first professional French historian of the French Revolution and of Napoleon.He was born at Montbron in Charente...

, preceded by a biographical study.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK