Procurateur of Judaea

Procurateur of Judaea is a news of Anatole France, published in the Case of mother-of-pearl , putting in scene a old Pontius Pilate and Antisémite.

History

Discussing with his/her old friend Lamia, Pontius Pilate with bitterness its functions in Judaea and does a strong resentment with regard to the Juif S. nourishes remembers But remember Jesus?

Anatole France tries, in this history, to reconstitute the Roman Psychologie, which implies in particular to expose remarks without making there enter the judgments of the modern man. The Roman anti-semitism directly exposed, though is thus moderated there by the remarks of Lamia. Other ancient features, generally held today for shocking, are described same manner in other similar accounts of France, like the Prostitution of the children in the second part of On the white stone .

The design that France is made Histoire does not exclude this kind of literary exercise of scholarship, since if he is ironical about the scientificity of this discipline, he regards it nevertheless as a mixture of art and scholarship.

The character of Pontius Pilate

Anatole France depicts, under the features of historical Pontius Pilate, the character of the modern Antisémite: justifying its hatred by charges of religious Fanatisme and plot, Pontius Pilate expresses the idea that the Juif people will have to be exterminated for the safety of Rome:

“not being able to control them, it will have to be destroyed. Does not doubt it: always unsubdued, brooding the revolt in their overheated heart, they will make burst one day against us a fury near which the anger of Numides and the threats of Parthes are only whims of child. They nourish in the shade of the foolish hopes and contemplate our ruin madly. In can it be differently, as long as they wait, on the faith of an oracle, the prince of their blood which must reign on the world? One will not come to end from these people. It is necessary that it is not any more.”

Whereas Pilate holds, in the account Of France, of the remarks skeptics and tolerant with regard to the beliefs, that of which the word “What the truth? ” is the historical expression, it is however his/her discharged friend, Lamia, which recalls it to more human feelings with regard to the Jews:

“Pontius, says it, I am explained without sorrow and your old resentments and your sinister presentiments. Admittedly, which you knew of the character of the Jews is not with their advantage. But me, which lived in Jerusalem, of curious, and which mixed me with the people, I could discover at these men of the obscure virtues, which you were hidden. I knew Jews full with softness, whose simple manners and the faithful heart pointed out to me what our poets said of the old man of Ébalie. And yourself, Pontius, you saw expiring under the stick of your legionaries of the simple men who, without saying their name, died for a cause that they believed just. Such men do not deserve our contempts. ”

Like Galleon, in On the white stone (“II. Galleon”), the character of France is not able to see the historical importance of a man (here Jesus), and the evaluation which it makes of the Jews summarizes with an anti-semitism whose genocidary remarks are for France natural with the men. The irony of this tale is that Pontius Pilate is blind with the religious and social innovation, not because of a narrow spirit, but on the contrary, in addition to its resentment, because of its tolerant Roman culture with regard to the beliefs. The case is the same one for Gallion.

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