Arnaud de l'Ariege (1819 - 1878)
Michel Begon October 2007
Let's try for a small test Ariège geography of religion, not claim at all originality. Historians have long noted the extraordinary sensitivity initial conditions: areas where Roman Catholicism prevails today are still provinces that contained in the fifth century the Western Roman Empire, and conversely the Protestant Reformation moved out rather old borders of the Empire namely Switzerland, North Germany, Scandinavia or the United Kingdom. However, this discrepancy seems recognizable to details, at least in our department of Ariege. Thus the Comminges, who was the great metropolis of the Roman Novempopulania, with the city of "Convenarum Lugdunum" (Saint-Bertrand de Comminges), the vast Imperial Palace of "Chiragan (Martres Tolosane) and the Bishopric of St. Lizier his castrum, Catholics remained faithful to Rome, however, that the County of Foix, unceasingly rebel Romanization in its reliefs cut, vowed tower to turn the Cathars, the valdismo, the Reformation of Calvin, then the Republican anticlericalism. This duality reflects the religious paradox of great men between the two parts of the department: east, philosophers and historians Protestants, which Bayle and Peyrat, and Lakanal Vadier or Delcasse, contemptuous of religion, but to west a great Catholic thinker, Frederick Arnaud. Let's talk about it, because nobody talks about much.
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Frederick Arnaud was born April 8, 1819 in Saint-Girons, Ariège West, and was educated in his hometown and in Toulouse. But under the July Monarchy, the economic attraction of big cities prevails decidedly rural exodus and starts to depopulate the countryside. Like so many others after him, the young couserans went to Paris to make his legal training. It was at that time a handsome man with broad black beard. At the Paris Bar, he is soon to enjoy his culture, his shrewdness, his oratorical skill and his generous enthusiasm.
In Paris, the fashion then prevalent triumph of romanticism, with one side anticlerical Liberals, like Stendhal, Michelet, Auguste Comte or Saint-Simon and the other liberal Catholics, like Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Lamennais or Buchez. Our Frederick Arnaud hates egocentric dandy of "Boheme" in Paris, its fantastic, its libertine and opium smokers, the image of the couple pest: George Sand and Alfred de Musset. It remains faithful to the ideal of a Church open to all.
"Let them keep to themselves this doubt and this disdain that chill the soul and desolate, they keep this bad passion and impiety that stir so many. Rather hundred times the complete failure of intelligence that a talent that is abused ... Fools! God has given them a warm heart and noble, and soon the intoxicating pride and vanity persuades them that these gifts belong to them, that all these faculties were due to them ... "(Diary, 22 October 1840)
of the most pious man, he was attracted by the messianic office of Catholic liberals, Lamennais, Lacordaire and Montalembert, who write in" The Future " to disassociate the faith of Christian conservative agenda Legitimists and other large landowners. These ardent prophets seem to him to announce the regeneration of bourgeois society by the revival of Christianity, even if they incur the condemnation of the pope's encyclical "Your Mirari" of 1832.
"The old society, then declare Lacordaire died because God had been expelled and the new god is unwell because there is not enough input.
These times are feverish industrialization and major social changes mean revolutions come. Arnaud politically committed to its ideas of solidarity triumphs. By contacting the disciples of Fourier, phalansteries theorist, he published in 1846 a strong article titled the "social movement", suggesting that Catholics adhere to new ideas and participate in political life without sacrificing or the principles of the Church or Christian morality. His project is to establish and develop the cooperative movement on the basis of the Catholic faith. Unfortunately his convictions are a minority and upset some self-righteous. Justice matters entrusted to him would feel. Soon reduced to the fate of counsel without cause, he returned to St. Girons to found, December 27, 1847, the Conference of St. Vincent de Paul, in which he will deploy his zeal for the underprivileged.
suddenly erupts at the Paris revolution of 1848. The Second Republic was proclaimed. Lamartine is part of the Provisional Government and George Sand animates the interior ministry, which she wrote the text. In the elections of the Constituent Assembly, the department of Ariege, being populated at the time of 270,000 souls, means seven members, to which he belongs as a "Catholic Republican." The ballot results list are :
Clement Anglade, Les Cabannes, 43,971 votes
Darnaud Firmin, Roquefixade, 33,201 votes
Xavier Durrieu de Castillon, 32,201 votes
Frederick Arnaud, Saint-Girons, 29,515 votes
Antoine Casse, Lavelanet, 22,289 votes
Theodore Vignes Pamiers, 21,313 votes
Galy-Cazalat, Saint-Girons, 15,907 votes.
Ariège elect Republican candidates against the Legitimists and also against the monarchist bourgeoisie. From the first truly universal suffrage election in our history, it is one of the departments most left France, but with a Catholic alternative to the west and east variant anticlerical. Arnaud tops, out of 45 candidates in the cantons of Saint-Girons and Volvestre.
To stand in the way of the time, our couserans is now called Arnaud de l'Ariege. It was soon recognized as a powerful parliamentary speaker and warm. His voice is authoritative in the room.
In the revolutionary year of 1848, liberal Catholicism became for a time the dominant ideology. Its principal tenors, the Lamennais, Lacordaire, Montalembert Arnaud and sit in the Constituent Assembly and popularize their generous ideas. Yet the popularity of cooperative associations leads to a disaster. The "national workshops" that creates the assembly mobilize tens of thousands of unemployed, that there can be nothing else to do but to resolve the Champ de Mars with picks and shovels and then, when the assembly wants to dissolve these battalions unnecessary workers, they protest and street battles have left thousands dead. These are the bloody days of June 1848, Gustave Flaubert described in his "Sentimental Education." Arnaud but persists in his utopia and generous defending before the National Assembly, it is true without success, the principle of "right to work". This principle would later be enshrined in the preamble of the Constitution of 1946 and thus keeps us still constitutional, but without much practical application. At least this is the fervent reminder of the generosity humanist.
The foreign matter most sensitive of the time was that of Italian unity, which seems to go in the direction of European nationalism, but is hampered by the existence of a papal principality, founded by former Charlemagne, between Rome and Bologna. Should we help the monarchy of Piedmont-Sardinia to expel the Austrians from Milan, but at the risk injure Rome Papal States? Should we sacrifice the rights of territorial Vatican Risorgimento of Italy? In these crucial years of 1848 and 1849, the eyes of the politicians have turned to Frederick Arnaud, she knows both Catholic and Republican. However, it takes positions avant-garde, foreshadowing future options the Third Republic. It calls for the separation of church and state and against the Concordat Napoleonic bureaucratization that the priests of the three recognized religions and submit the appointment of bishops in political choice. It fits well in 1849 against the dispatch Rome of a contingent of troops to defend the Papal States.
For the elections of May 1849, Arnaud address universal suffrage in a vibrant political agenda, where it already provides the concept, known to fortune, "Christian Democracy".
"The new system just to sit down and consolidate itself because any religious law has been shaken to the masses. How do we respect human sovereignty when we do not fear God? I know only two ways to strengthen in France the principle of authority is to reduce the temporal sovereignty loyally to its true source: the people, the heart is to make the religious sentiment which demands respect for the law and inspires love of justice .... Democracy, the daughter of Christianity, as defeat him, but she overcomes that by him ".
front of the legislature, Arnaud battle in 1849 a bill that would have made compulsory Sunday rest on pain of criminal sanctions, but in 1850 he voted Falloux law which abolished the monopoly of state education and authorizes the denominational education. However, the election in December 1848 of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte as President of the Republic by the peasantry, including Ariege, which sees him as the defender of small property, made him dread the return of Caesarism, militarism and warmongering. At the session of the Assembly dated June 12, 1851, and to the dismay of the majority of deputies, he took his most ardent speeches against the rule of "passive obedience of soldiers to disobedience and active case infringement of the constitutional and moral principles. What he asserts far ahead of its time!
"If a government that commands me to act is a violation of the law, or National Guard soldier, I disobey ... I do not owe obedience to the law within the limits of justice. "
The military coup of 2 December 1851 is up. He had not sensed that too! With Victor Schoelcher, the proponent of the abolition of slavery, and Alphonse Baudin, who was killed on a barricade, he organized armed resistance in Paris. He even tries to involve the Archbishop of Paris, Monseigneur of Sibur, to stop the army. In his "History of a Crime," Victor Hugo long magnify his courage and tenacity. But Republicans are decimated by bullets and arrests. Arnaud owes its salvation to the priests who, one after the other hide. As all members of the left or center, he must flee the capital. He fled to Brussels for a few months with his wife before returning quietly Ariège.
Besides, our department is also resistant to the abolition of the Republic. A Pamiers, several hundred people trying to take the town hall, before being dispersed by the army. Twenty leaders are incarcerated. The attorney Jean Rouaix, head of the Socialists from Saint-Girons, died in deportation in Bone, Algeria.
Empire is proclaimed December 2, 1852. The imperial symbols are everywhere their recurrence: Eagles and N capital. The Emperor Napoleon III set itself up as arbiter of the arts and holds court at Compiegne. Imperial Power extols the greatness of Napoleon, to engage in the Crimean War, the Italian campaign, the Mexican expedition and finally the disaster of Sedan. Certainly, universal suffrage is maintained, but the system of official candidates, the intervention pressing the prefect, the support of clergy and monitoring of the press to prevent the Republicans long to get elected MPs. Arnaud de Ariège resolves to write a lot. His great work, widely read at the time, is "Italy", dated 1864, by which time he fights the authority of the pope, to better assert its primacy spiritual. It must be said that this time the Italian patriots trying twice to storm the Papal States, to meet in Italy in 1862 and 1867, but they were repulsed by the French contingent of Rome Garibaldi is that he even wounded in the leg by a French bullet. One can imagine the confusion of public opinion!
"Rome, writes Arnaud, lacks both Italy and the civilized world. Temporal seat of the papacy, she made the accomplice of all despotisms. Seat of the papacy disarmed, it will be the guardian of world freedom, without ceasing to be the center of the moral unity of mankind. "
Then in 1869, Arnaud publishes "The Revolution and the Church," calling for the reconciliation of Catholicism with democracy and the rallying of the Church in the Modern Spirit. This will later ideas of Leo XIII and John XXIII.
Designated as their candidate for the Republicans ariégeois for parliamentary elections of 1869, Arnaud was again beaten, as the peasantry still supports the Emperor, but he wins most votes in the Mas d'Azil or 54.4%, with the support of Protestants. Mas is a village so industrial. Whatever this new defeat for him if Caesar is shaken by the forces of the nation! Arnaud draws conclusions from the political weakening of the empire in his new book "The Revolution of 1869." And indeed, to restore its popular foundations, the plan stirs nationalism and rushes headlong into the war against Prussia.
However, the sudden military defeat at Sedan and Metz causes, 4 September 1870, the inglorious fall of Napoleon III, who went to the Germans. The Republic was proclaimed again by the Parisians. Now the Provisional Government proposes to be Arnaud prefect of Ariege, which he refused, thinking to be most useful in Paris. In haste he joined the capital before the Germans laid siege there, to contribute to the organization of national defense. He was appointed mayor of the seventh arrondissement, that is to say the "Faubourg Saint-Germain, residential site of the aristocracy. During the rigors of the siege, Frederick Arnaud is dedicated to creating the fund schools and aid to the poorest, which are reduced by hunger to eat grass and rats.
elections of 8 February 1871, during the war, he was elected deputy of the Seine and joined the Assembly of Bordeaux. In this House Constituent he voted for the downfall of the Emperor, for the prosecution of the war with Prussia and cons of immediate peace proposals. Occurs in March when the Paris Commune, it is far and did not take sides. In 1876, Frederick Arnaud elected Republican senator from Ariège. It was only 57 years.
But it's a broken man who died at Versailles May 30, 1878, during the crisis of "Moral Order", when Marshal MacMahon, President of the Republic since 1873, seeks to restore the monarchy in France, backed by the Church. Admittedly, the Third Republic was passed in 1875 by the Chamber of Deputies, a majority of votes, but the president is a legitimate, which uses the Count of Chambord, the pretender to the throne of the Bourbons. This great political crisis then a hollow ideological divide, which will close over time, between the Catholic right and the Republican Left. Anticlericalism will now serve as a single thought to Republicans, making them despise the social question. Catholicism and as a corollary of a Charles Maurras undemocratic will serve as an ideology to rally the right, until the disaster the Vichy regime. The "centrist" Christian, between these two wheels, is being rolled. The big idea of "Christian Democracy" does not rise again after the Second World War.
In this divorce French, Frederick Arnaud becomes suspect in two camps: the left, because Catholic because the Republican right. Without doubt the apparent contradiction is it, but Arnaud pay the price of a posthumous oblivion and undeserved.
Military honors went to Frederick Arnaud, first at Versailles, then Saint-Girons, where he is buried. Her hometown has dedicated a small boulevard.
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The Christian Democrats dominate Western Europe, especially after 1945 and therefore constitute the ethical foundation of the "European social model" or "French social model" ie is the ideological foundation of our "welfare state" and the whole European construction. What Ariege Arnaud was a good prophet, for we read these lines in his book "The Revolution and the Church. "
"Under the complex web of historical events, we will proceed in tandem, always supportive and never confused the religious movement and the social movement: the religious movement by a continuous and steady development of the society of minds and the social movement, by the action of deep evangelical principles on the life of nations and the law of modern history will be found. "
Elements of bibliography
John Signorelli: Arnaud de l'Ariege (C. Lacour 2001)
Adelin Moulis dictionary biographical and genealogical Ariégeois (C. Lacour 2001)
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