Henri Gregoire

Biography

The country priest

Wire of craftsman (his father is a modest tailor of clothes), it was born with Vého, close to Lunéville in 1750. He studies in a college Jesuit with Nancy then becomes the priest of Emberménil. He sticks in his ministry to the instruction of his parishioners, creates a library accessible to all and containing many works from Agronomie. He helps the farmers to rationalize their production and to increase it. He travels also much and meets the members of other religions. He has, in particular, of the contacts with protesting Pasteur and, in 1787, makes a speech of welcome during the inauguration of the synagog of Lunéville. He takes part in the intellectual life of his province and becomes corresponding several academies. In 1783, it is crowned by the academy of Nancy for its " Praise of poetry " , and in 1788, by that of Metz for its " Test on the physical and moral regeneration of the Jewish " , which will be translated into England as of the following year. In this remarkable work it defended with heat the cause of this population put so a long time at the variation and claimed for it the civil equality.

The priest citizen

Elected official appointed first order (Clergy) in 1789 by the clergy of the Bailliage of Nancy to the General states, Henri Gregoire was quickly made know while making an effort, as of the first sessions of the Parliament, to train in the camp of the reformists his ecclesiastical colleagues and to lead them to link itself with the Tiers state.

Named one of the secretaries of the Parliament, it was one of the first members of the Clergé to join the Tiers state, and united constantly with the most democratic part of this body. It chaired the session which lasted 62 hours while the people took the Bastille in 1789, and held with this occasion a vehement speech against the enemies of the Nation.

It contributed to the drafting of the civil Constitution of the clergy and arrived, for its example and its writings, to involve a great number of hesitant ecclesiastics. He was thus regarded as the chief of the constitutional Church of France. With the Constituent Assembly, the Gregoire abbot claimed the total abolition of the Privilège S, proposed the first formal motion to abolish the Droit of seniority, and fought the taxable quota of the money marc, requiring the introduction of the Vote for all. He pled cordially the cause of the Juifs and of the coloured men, multiplied the writings favorable to the Blacks and contributed to the vote leading to the first Abolition of the slavery, (which will be restored by Napoleon Bonaparte on request express of Joséphine), then abolished again by the decree of April 27th, 1848 of Victor Schoelcher. It is one of the principal craftsmen of the recognition of the Civic right and policies granted to the Jews (decree of the September 27th 1791).

After the escape of Louis XVI and his arrest with Varennes, in the debate on the question of the inviolability of the person of the king who followed, Gregoire decided highly against the monarch, and asked that he was judged by a Convention.

For the period of the legislative Parliament, of which it could not form part, since the members of the constituent Assembly had been declared ineligible, it gave all its care to its diocese of Blois.

First priest to have lent oath to the civil Constitution of the Clergy, it was elected constitutional bishop by two departments at the same time the the Sarthe and the Loir-et-Cher (1791). He chose this last and managed this diosèse during ten years with an exemplary zeal. The Département of Loir-et-Cher also elected it appointed with the national Convention. As of the first meeting, the September 21st 1792, faithful to its former standpoint, it went up to the platform to defend with strength motion on the abolition of the Royauté proposed by Collot d' Herbois, and contributed to its adoption. It is in this speech that one finds this memorable sentence: “ the kings are in the moral order what the monsters are in the natural order. ”

Elected official chair Convention, the Gregoire abbot chaired it in episcopal behavior. He did not take part in the vote on the death of Louis XVI, being then on mission at the time of the meeting of the Savoy in France. He wrote on this occasion a letter to ask the judgment of the king, but by not putting the “dead” word at it. He dealt with the reorganization of the State education while being one of the most active members of the Committee of the State education. Within the framework of this committee, he undertook a great investigation into the “Patois” to support the use of French. He was the creator, in 1794, of the Conservatoire National of Arts and Métiers (CNAM, which always exists). He was also the inventor of the Bureau of longitudes, of which the objective was to improve the maritime transport by a better knowledge of the distances.

In spite of the Terror, it never ceased sitting at the Convention and did not hesitate to condemn vigorously the dechristianization of the years 1793 and 1794. Several times, it failed to be stopped. It less did not continue to walk in the streets in episcopal behavior and to celebrate the every day the mass at his place and with the fall of Robespierre, it was the first to ask the reopening of the places of worship.

To universalize the use of the French language

In, 1794 the Gregoire abbot presents to Convention his “Report/ratio on the Need and the Means of destroying the Patois and of universalizing the Use of the French language” , known as Rapport Gregoire, in which he writes: “… one can uniformer the language of a great nation… This company which was fully carried out at no people, is worthy of the French people, which centralize all the branches of the social organization and who must be jealous to devote as soon as possible, in a Republic one and indivisible, the single and invariable use of the language of freedom. ”

Gallicanism

In 1795, it created with the constitutional bishops Saurine and Debertier, like with the laic ones, the Free society of Christian philosophy, the purpose of which was to take again the theological studies stopped because of the Révolution, to fight against the dechristianization and the Théophilanthropie and the Culte of the supreme Reason and Être. The body of this company is the Journal Annales of the religion , newspaper gallican and virulent which was removed by Bonaparte following the Concordat. It also worked with the rehabilitation of Port-Royal-of-Fields while publishing, in 1801 then in 1809, the Ruins of Royal Port of the Fields , which emphasize the virtues of the nuns Jansenists and the Recluses. This writing contributes to the birth of the myth of Port-Royal like intellectual hearth and resistance to the Absolutisme.

Under the Directory, he endeavoured to reorganize the constitutional Church. He organized with the constitutional bishops two Concile S nationals, in 1797 and 1801, to try to set up a true Church gallicane. He published in 1799 a " Project of meeting of the Russian Church with Église latine" . In 1802, it was named senator and tried to be opposed to the signature Concordat. Faithful to his republican convictions, the man with the “iron head” (as the historian Jules Michelet defines it) will always make follow his name of the mention “ constitutional bishop of Blois ”.

The opponent with the modes " aristocratiques"

During the Empire and under the Restoration, he writes many works, in particular a " History of the Sects " in two volumes (1810). It forms part, with the Senate, of the rare irreducible opponents with Napoleon i. It was one of the five senators who opposed the proclamation Empire. He was opposed in the same way to the creation of the new nobility then to the divorce of Napoleon. Excluded from the public office under the Restauration, he is elected Député of the Isere in 1819, which involves the fury of the ultraroyalists who make it drive out House of Commons. In the same way, its election with the French Academy is refused due to republicanism.

He lived consequently in the retirement but, any pension having been removed him, he was constrained to sell his library.

He dies in Paris with the current site of the 44 Boulevard Raspail the May 20th 1831 at the beginning of the reign of Louis-Philippe Ier. The day of its death, the Archevêque of Paris - very the legitimist Monseigneur de Quélen - is opposed so that it receives the last sacraments; it requires of Gregoire a renunciation of the oath of the civil Constitution of the clergy. The old bishop, although at the last end but faithful to his convictions, refuses any Net. The abbot Guillon, in spite of the orders of his hierarchy, agrees to reach without condition the desires of dying. The Roman authority closes the church with its skin, but gathered around Fayette, two thousand people accompany the body by the humanistic bishop and gallican with the cemetery Montparnasse.

Homage of the Fatherland

Its ashes are transferred to the the Pantheon the December 12th 1989, at the time of the festivals of the bicentenary of the French revolution, the same day as Monge and Condorcet in spite of the declared opposition of the cardinal-archbishop of Paris Jean-Marie Lustiger.

In Russia

In 1814 Gregoire was named, among twenty-eight people “distinguished to know to them”, honorary member of the university of Kazan, but this nomination was cancelled in 1821, the council of the university having found that it was " opposite not only with justice but with the simple decency to have in its center a man who had made himself guilty of a crime odieux" (the death of Louis XVI) whereas never Gregoire had not asked for the death of the sovereign as it was known as higher.

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