It took “quite a lot of nerve” at the National Archives to tackle the question of sacrilege! While some still take the notion of blasphemy literally – two teachers recently paid for it with their lives – an exhibition on the Parisian Archives site puts the relationship between power and the sacred into perspective. Alternately distant, then significant, reinvented after the law of separation between Church and State, they raise the question of the sacred and blasphemy in the era of a secular State. The recent comeback of religion has not been avoided, even if, after discussions, the scientific committee chose not to reproduce the caricatures of Mohammed. We preferred a photo of the Genius of War, a statue disfigured at the time of the ransacking of the Arc de Triomphe by “yellow vests” in December 2018.
Or, a photo of two environmental activists from the Just Stop Oil group dousing a Van Gogh painting with soup at the National Gallery in London. The two images provide an overview of objects or causes invested with sacredness in contemporary times. Today, the sacred does not necessarily relate to religion. The first part of the exhibition, scholarly but not so complicated to approach for the visitor as the theme is current, analyzes the notion of sacrilege, the meaning of which varies according to the place attributed to the sacred, in each era. In France, it was not until the Middle Ages, and in particular the advent of Saint Louis and the Crusades, that the fight against blasphemers intensified. “To offend God is to offend the king, who gets his power from God,” explained curator Amable Sablon du Corail, co-curator of the exhibition with historian Jacques de Saint Victor.
Over time, a shift will take place from the offense committed against God towards the crime of lèse-majesté: this allows kings to take a certain autonomy vis-à-vis the Church and the pope, and to develop a “true royal religion”. The commissioners focused on the atrocious torture of Damiens, who had attacked Louis Parliament of Paris, exhibited in a room, sends shivers down the spine – the 20-year-old knight is criticized for not kneeling during a procession. François de la Barre will have his tongue cut out, be decapitated and burned. Voltaire mobilized his friends afterwards, giving this affair considerable political resonance.
Also read: “By banning the burning of the Koran, Denmark reestablishes the “crime of sacrilege””
The Revolution was replaced by the religion of the Nation. Other gods, same vocabulary as under the Ancien Régime: we are witnessing the rise of the cult of Reason or the Supreme Being, desired by Robespierre. The period even has its own martyrs, including Marat. An entire room is then devoted to the law of separation between Church and State – a moment when the State conducts an incredible inventory of the church’s property, in a stormy climate. Therefore, the notion of sacredness and blasphemous fact must be reinvented. Do we just remember that an offense of insulting the head of state was active in France between 1881 and 2013?
Little used in practice, outside of the period of the Vichy regime, it was nevertheless activated several times by General de Gaulle, during the Algerian War. It took a man refusing to shake hands with Nicolas Sarkozy at the Agricultural Show in 2008, being told “then get out of it, you poor bastard”, for the offense to be abolished by the European Court human rights. Today, the law makes a distinction between ideas, deemed free, and people, to whom we owe respect. “We can criticize beliefs, we cannot criticize believers,” summarizes Amable Sablon du Corail. This precarious balance sometimes comes up against the rise of communitarianism, and this is what the exhibition also wants to talk about.
“Sacrilege! The State, religions and the sacred” Until July 1, 2024. 60, rue des Francs-Bourgeois (Paris 4e).
