Monuments and Memory in French Nationalism
Author(s): Avner Ben-Amos
Source: History and Memory , Fall - Winter, 1993, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Fall - Winter, 1993),
pp. 50-81
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25618652
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Avner Ben-Amos
Monuments and Memory in French Nationalism*
Writing about four Parisian monuments - the Pantheon, the
Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe and Notre-Dame Cathedral Charles
Peguy described them as "the four cardinal points of the
glory of Paris" which exemplified "French monumental memory."
They were "monarchical monuments and at the same time
profoundly popular monuments; old monuments and perpetually
new; monarchical monuments and perpetually democratic, and
today properly republican and tomorrow anything that one would
like, because ... they will never die ... they are eternally
monumental, always imbued with an interior sense of eternity,
eternally manifested by the value of the stone."1
Peguy - a poet, publicist and publisher - wrote Our Fatherland, in
which these lines appeared, in 1905, as a response to the
menacing declarations made in Tangier by the German Emperor
Wilhelm II. The publication of this short novel-cum-essay marked
the beginning of his transformation from a socialist and a militant
Dreyfusard into a fervent Catholic and no less militant nationalist.
He himself was, then, a sort of French monument, embodying
different political and cultural traditions and, as an astute observer
of the contemporary scene, well placed to note the complex play
of meaning that characterized the four major monuments of the
French capital. Yet, beyond their different meanings, Peguy
believed that they all shared a more profound quality - their
Frenchness. They were the "four cardinal points of all the glory of
France,"2 in other words, national monuments that represented
the eternal fatherland.
It is the aim of this article to trace the route by which these four
monuments that were built in different periods, under different
circumstances and for different purposes, came to be by Peguy's
time such prominent markers of the national identity. This identity
was far from simple; it was composed of various political and
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Monuments and Memory
cultural currents which at times competed with and at other times
complemented each other. The monuments corresponded to these
various currents and together constituted a complex system, whose
components were interrelated. However, this system and the
meaning of each monument separately were never stable.
A monument, usually made of durable materials such as stone
and iron, gives an impression of permanence and can serve,
therefore, as an ideal "site of memory.,,3 This would seem
especially true when a monument is legible, i.e. its form clearly
denotes a particular meaning, as in the case of the value system of
medieval Catholicism which was * 'inscribed'' in the Gothic
cathedrals. Yet, as I intend to show, the form of a monument is
only one of the factors determining its meaning. Another and no
less important factor is the symbolic usage of the monument,
especially during a ceremony. The ceremony has its own meaning,
which is conveyed through speech, music, movement, decoration
and the manipulation of objects, and it can be distinct from that
of the monument. Moreover, the duration of the ceremony
constitutes a special, high-intensity time, different from the regular
existence of the monument in everyday life.4 The ceremony,
therefore, at least while it lasts, has the power to charge the
monument with a special meaning. Certainly, this is not an
unlimited power, and the form of the monument sets boundaries
to the meaning of the ceremony. Nevertheless, within these limits,
the monument can acquire many different connotations, some of
which were never imagined by its builder. The overall meaning
that emerges during the ceremony is, then, the result of a
negotiation between the time (of the ceremony) and the space (of
the monument) in which the former usually carries more weight
because of the intensity of the performance.
While the four national monuments stood isolated in different
parts of the city,5 they were at times connected by solemn
processions. These processions were made up of different
segments such as army units, state officials, church dignitaries,
popular societies and carriers of patriotic signs, all of whom
together created a complex text to be read by the crowd of
spectators.6 However, in the context of the present study, the
movement of the procession from one monument to another is
more important than its various segments. By symbolically linking
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Avner Ben-Amos
52
several monuments, this movement helped to create a
monumental system. At dmes such a system could also be created
by decorating the monuments to highlight the connection between
them and distinguish them from other, non-decorated
monuments. In this system each monument retained its own
particular meaning, while their interrelationship added an
overriding national significance. This latter aspect emerged only
in Peguy's time.
The route our four Parisian monuments have taken toward their
prominent national status will, therefore, be traced by studying the
way they were given different meanings through their ceremonial
usage. In addition, I will pay attention to the formal modifications
the monuments underwent, usually after a change of political
regime. Nevertheless, this is not an attempt to write an
architectural history; rather I would like to construct a
"ceremonial'' history of these monuments. I will limit myself, for
lack of space, to the study of the official usage of these
monuments from the rise of nationalism during the French
Revolution to the period of the Third Republic, when the
monuments Peguy wrote about formed a coherent system (1789
1940). The picture that will eventually emerge will be, of course,
one-sided, since the meaning of a ceremony may itself be a subject
of contention between the government and the opposition. In
addition, by concentrating on these monuments, I neglect the
extreme, exclusive nationalism that emerged in the late nineteenth
century and created its own monumental system.7 However, this
nationalism, despite its importance, remained a minority
phenomenon, whereas the nationalism expressed by the four
monuments was by then dominant.
Although the focus of this study will be the four monuments
mentioned by Peguy, other monuments, such as the July Column,
will have to be considered too, as they also "competed" for the
status of national monument. Yet Peguy's choice was not arbitrary.
The city of Paris had always played a central role in French
nationalism. Not only did France grow gradually, by successive
acquisitions, out of the royal domains on the He de France, but
the unified country was always governed from this center. In
addition, Paris has been, since the early modern period, the social
and cultural capital of the kingdom, the place where local
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Monuments and Memory
traditions gave way to a national outlook, making it the only site
in France that could truly claim to be national.
Among the important Parisian monuments, only the above four
achieved the highest status as representatives of the national
identity for a long enough period. How can this be explained? An
obvious answer would be that they were the only monuments that
uninterruptedly served as settings for major national ceremonies,
that is remained ''active" throughout the period under study. But
this is still to beg the question, since what has to be explained is
the reason for their choice by successive regimes. Part of the
answer seems to lie in their complex architectural form, which
rendered them open to different interpretations and made them
adaptable to various usages. However, other complex monuments
such as the Church of the Madeleine never achieved such a
prominent status. An additional factor, then, is the fit, at a certain
historical moment, between a monument and the political and
cultural suppositions of a regime, which makes the former a
preferable vehicle for expressing the ideology of the latter. The
Madeleine, for example, which could have fulfilled the role of the
revolutionary Pantheon in 1790, had not been completed by then,
and the Church of Sainte-Genevieve was chosen instead. However,
although the four monuments constituted a system, they
maintained among them an inner hierarchy, which made only one
of them the main national symbol at a certain period, in
accordance with the regime's view of the nation.
Finally, the relationship between these monuments and French
nationalism should be regarded as exceeding mere reflection. As
Colette Beaune observed in her book about the birth of French
nationalism, "[the] representations of power are themselves
powerful."8 Since "the nation" is a cultural and political construct,
its symbolic representation in ceremonies, monuments and images
makes it a palpable object, comprehensible to a population that
has to imagine itself as a unified community.9 Symbolic
representations of the nation, such as monuments, have, therefore,
a creative power as well: they give substance to abstract concepts
and enable the spectators to identify themselves with this large and
remote entity. Moreover, each particular representation is also a
statement about the nature of the nation. Hence quarrels about
symbolic representations are actually quarrels about the "correct"
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Avner Ben-Amos
54
identity of the nation, and the winner is in a position to impose
his views concerning this identity.
*
My point of departure for the "cerem
national monuments is the French Revolu
mistake to claim that nationalist sentimen
prior to the Revolution. Such sentiments
part of the Old Regime, but they wer
different connotations than in the r
revolutionary period.
The nationalist explosion during the Fre
outcome of the confluence of two conc
subversive connotation during the eig
fatherland (la patrie) and the nation (la
meaning was not univocal and they co
monarchist colorings as well.
La patrie - the land of the fathers - orig
of birth, to which one was attached in a
Christian connotation of the fatherland, w
piece of land a measure of sacredness and
who died defending it would go directiy
during the Crusades, when it was applied
then transferred to the French territory
with the sacred, mystical body of the
became also identified with the religious
Patriotic, Christian and monarchist senti
hand in hand, since France was also dis
countries by being "very Christian." Dur
however, the philosophes accentuated the
fatherland, where one could live happily
fellow citizens, contrasting it with the fo
kingdom (royaume) where the monarch r
Likewise, the concept of the nation - der
to be born - had Christian associations, s
believed to have created different groups
existing within the same religious frame
century this concept acquired a more p
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Monuments and Memory
meaning, relating it to the question of sovereignty. Whereas the
absolutist kings claimed that the nation resided entirely in their
persons, giving them absolute power, the aristocratic parlements
regarded themselves as representing the nation against
monarchical arbitrariness. On the eve of the Revolution "the
nation" enlarged its contours in a radical way. Sieves defined it
succinctly in his celebrated pamphlet What Is the Third Estate?, in
which he wrote that the nation was the origin of all laws, adding
that "what is not part of the Third Estate is not part of the
nation," thus excluding from sovereignty the king, the higher
clergy and the aristocracy.11
Nationalist sentiments were known, then, in prerevolutionary
France, but they were shared mainly by limited circles within the
elite and were subordinated to the higher value system of the
Church and the monarchy. It was the Revolution that transformed
them into a powerful, popular force which cut itself loose from the
tenets of the Old Regime and based itself upon a new set of
principles. The political and legal "nation" came into being when
the Estates General was replaced by the National Assembly; the
egalitarian, emotive fatherland became a cause to fight for when
the Prussians and the Austrians invaded France in 1792 and the
volunteers marched to the frontier singing of "amour sacre de la
patrie."12 The nation and the fatherland thus merged to produce
the Republic, which was the felicitous combination of a political
regime and the people's pride in their country. Being patriotewas
the same as being republicain, and defending la patrie meant
defending the achievements of the Revolution against its enemies
from within and without.
The prerevolutionary verbal attacks against the sacred personality
of the king and the Christian principles from which he derived his
legitimacy were followed in the Revolution by more extreme acts.
Among these one can count the decapitation of Louis XVI in
January 1793 and the de-Christianization wave of the years 1793
1794, which included the closure of churches and various acts of
iconoclasm. Yet this was not mere destructiveness. The king was
executed not because of any particular crime he had committed,
but for usurping the power of the nation, and an integral part of
the de-Christianization wave were the new cults of Reason and of
the Martyrs of Liberty.13 The desacralization of the Old Regime did
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Avner Ben-Amos
56
not leave behind a void; instead there was a transfer of the sacred
to new revolutionary values.14
If we assume that the sacred, as a cultural category, exceeds the
religious, it would be easier to understand the transformation that
occurred during the Revolution. As Moore and Myerhoff claim in
a neo-Durkheimian spirit, "an essential quality of the sacred is its
unquestionability.,,15 Thus, the sacred tenets of the Old Regime
were replaced during the Revolution by the no less sacred ones of
the Republic, which included the combined values of the nation
and the fatherland. Since both ceremonies and monuments have
an aura of eternity and authority - and hence seem
unquestionable - it is often by means of them that a sense of the
sacred is communicated. However, as Lynn Hunt reminds us, one
should not regard the sacred as a stable, homogenizing category
that automatically creates a consensus.16 During the Revolution the
new definition of the sacred was itself an arena of fierce
contention, not only between the revolutionaries and the
supporters of the Old Regime, but also among various groups of
revolutionaries. What Hunt fails to mention is that the old sacred
and the new were not necessarily mutually exclusive. Even during
the Revolution, when the conflict between them was at its height,
one could discern elements of continuity which were even more
apparent during later, more harmonious periods.
*
Of the four Parisian monuments that
important role in French nationalism, th
prior to the Revolution: the Pantheon
Church of Sainte-Genevieve), the Roya
Notre-Dame Cathedral. These mon
"implicated," each in its own way, in the
Regime. Nevertheless, they had also ac
patriotic connotations that made them
eventual inclusion in the new republican
The central revolutionary monument,
life in a patriotic context in 1744, during
Succession, in the course of which Louis
The king prayed to St. Genevieve for rec
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Monuments and Memory
his health promised the canons of the Abbey of Sainte-Genevieve
to rebuild their old and ruined church that stood on a hill on the
left bank of Paris. St. Genevieve was an apt patroness for the king's
prayers as she was an early version of Jeanne d'Arc: a simple
shepherdess who lived in the mid-fifth century and averted by her
prayers the imminent attack of Attila the Hun on Paris. She
became the patron saint of Paris, representing the devotion of the
common people to the fatherland and to the Church.
The grandiose ceremony of laying the cornerstone of the new
church, in which the king played a dominant role, took place in
1764. The choice of the date was not accidental: a year after the
French defeat in the Seven Years' War, the king attempted to
ameliorate his image which was tarnished by military failure and
the constant criticism of his reign. He had already embarked on
an ambitious building program in Paris and the provinces, and the
new and imposing edifice was to be its summit. It was designed by
Jacques-Germain Soufflot, one of the advanced architects of the
period, who planned a gigantic basilica in the shape of a Greek
cross, an immense dome in the manner of Saint Peter's Cathedral
in Rome, and a vast crypt for the burial of the canons. However,
faithful to the neoclassical style of the eighteenth century, it would
also have Corinthian columns supporting a large portico with a
triangular fronton - all of which made it resemble a Greek temple.
It was to become a monument proclaiming the perpetuity of the
Christian religion while simultaneously celebrating the French
monarchy, the protector of the fatherland. Because of its
impressive size, its shape and its location, it was referred to as a
Temple of the Nation already before the Revolution.17
The Royal House of Invalides, built by Louis XIV between 1671
and 1676, was also conceived as a patriotic monument. The
decision to build an army hospital and a place of retirement for
old soldiers was made in 1668, between the two Dutch campaigns,
and its location was related to the king's ambitious urbanization
plans that aimed to develop the west side of Paris on the left bank
of the Seine. However, being a hospital, the institution was also
under the auspices of the Church. Moreover, the Church of Saint
Louis, known also as the soldiers' church, which was built as an
integral part of the Invalides and to which was added later a
magnificent Royal Chapel, accentuated its religious character.
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Avner Ben-Amos
58
The vast edifice, capable of lodging several thousand soldiers, was
built in a baroque style with large inner courtyards and a tall and
ornamented chapel dome that dominated its neighborhood. The
Invalides, then, had its own function, but was also an impressive
setting for ceremonial occasions. Before the Revolution such
occasions were visits of the king and foreign sovereigns, like Peter
the Great (1716) and Joseph II (1777), or military funerals.
Although important army commanders such as Henri Turenne
were buried in the Cathedral of Saint-Denis, the royal necropolis,
lesser figures were buried in the crypt under the soldiers' church.
However, these were rare occasions, and during the eighteenth
century the Invalides did not receive much attention from the
monarchy. After the death of Louis XIV it received only two royal
visits - by Louis XV in 1718 and Louis XVI in 1788 - and the
growing presence of Freemasonic ideas among its residents was
detrimental to the influence of the Church.18 Yet during this
period the Invalides continued to receive new veterans, thus
keeping its patriotic dimension even though its royal and Christian
image was fading.
Notre-Dame Cathedral, the oldest of the four monuments, was
also the most important from a religious point of view. Built
between 1163 and 1345, during the golden age of the great
French Gothic cathedrals, it became the main Christian edifice of
Paris and the seat of the city's archbishop. Although the French
kings were traditionally crowned in the Cathedral of Reims, Notre
Dame played a major role in religious ceremonies related to the
monarchy, notably the royal funerals.19 Royal funerary processions
usually stopped there on their way to Saint-Denis in order to
perform the central part of the ceremony, and the cathedral would
keep and subsequendy display the rich ornaments and objects
which were specially created for the ceremony. The cathedral also
played a central role in the ceremony of the royal entry, by which
the city officially received the new king, showing him deference in
exchange for his benevolence.20 Notre-Dame, then, was not only a
religious but also a royal monument that displayed the might of
the Church and the monarchy, each enhancing the power of the
other.
It seems more than coincidence that these monuments share an
association with the dead. Bishops and archbishops were buried in
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Monuments and Memory
the crypt of Notre-Dame, and funerary monuments of church
dignitaries were placed in the deambulatory area; the crypt of the
Invalides' Church of Saint-Louis contained the governors' graves,
and the crypt of the new Church of Sainte-Genevieve was destined
to receive the bodies of its deceased canons. All this was in
accordance with old Church custom. Bodies of Christian saints and
martyrs, which were regarded as intermediaries between heaven
and earth, had been precious cult objects since the early days of
the Church.21 These bodies rendered the churches in which they
were buried especially valuable and turned them into preferred
places of burial for believers. As the custom spread, even churches
that had no relics became burial grounds for the powerful and the
rich, and the communities' cemeteries were built adjacent to them.
However, during the eighteenth century, the connection between
churches and cemeteries was severed. In France, among the elite,
the process of de-Christianization brought about a change of
attitude toward death and the dead body: the emphasis on the
physical body and the afterlife was replaced by a growing attention
to the survival of the memory of the dead person among the living
community.22 In addition, new hygienic notions made the bodies
of the dead appear as dangerous to public health, hence as objects
that should be removed from residential areas. The consequences
of these developments were the closing down of old churchyard
cemeteries, a diminution in the number of burials in churches,
and a general "exile" of the dead to new cemeteries built outside
the city limits. In Paris, for example, four cemeteries were closed
in 1780-1782, to be replaced by the cemeteries of Montmartre,
Montparnasse and Pere-Lachaise, which at this period were
situated outside the city.23
Yet the four Parisian monuments under study moved in the
opposite direction. After the French Revolution they became burial
places of national heroes, and Notre-Dame - the only monument
that did not receive the body of a national hero - was the setting
for several magnificent state funerals. Indeed, what turned them
into national monuments was, among other factors, the bodies of
heroes that were buried in them. They thus combined the
Christian practice of burying the body of the saint inside a sacred
monument with the new Enlightenment sensibility that underlined
the need to preserve the individual's memory among the living.
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Avner Ben-Amos
60
However, the figure of the saint was replaced by a new kind of
hero: the Great Man.
This emblematic figure was promoted by the philosophes as a
counter-model to the king and the nobility. Unlike the latter
pillars of the Old Regime, great men did not inherit their titles,
nor were they given them by God; they merited them on the basis
of their talents, which were employed in the service of humanity.
Great men were, usually, "intellectuals" - scientists, philosophers
and writers - although legislators or orators could also join their
ranks, providing that their acts contributed to the progress of
mankind.24 Upon his death, the great man crossed the threshold
to immortality - not that of Christian afterlife, but the memory of
future generations. This notion of a non-transcendental eternity
was developed by Diderot, who postulated a sacred posterity that
would replace "the other world of religious men" and whose task
would be to judge the merit of the citizen and to decide whether
- and how - to commemorate him.25 During the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries the characteristics of the great man were
modified so that military men and politicians were also admitted
to that illustrious company, while posterity became better defined.
It was represented by the Nation, which regarded itself as eternal
and hence capable of keeping the memory of the great man.26
Like a ceremony, a body itself of a great man was capable of
transforming the meaning of the monument. The relationship
between these two factors should be considered as complementary:
a ceremony was a unique, intense event, limited in time, but
capable, through the participation of a large crowd and the
accounts of the various media, of making a forceful impact upon
the popular imagination; the burial of a hero's body on the
premises of a monument created, on the other hand, a more
subdued yet continuous presence that had a long-term effect. At
times a grave became a place of pilgrimage, like that of the
Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe, but even if it did
not attract many visitors, its powerful presence put its stamp on the
public image of the monument. For example, the presence of
Emile Zola's body in the Pantheon marked it as a "leftist"
monument, belonging to the winning side in the Dreyfus affair.
However, the transfer of his body to the monument in 1908 had
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Monuments and Memory
its own significance, for it was done in an impressive state
ceremony that served as a victory celebration for the Dreyfusards.
How do we explain the importance of the presence of the
remains of a hero within the monument and its impact upon the
cult of the nation? The national hero was, first, a pedagogical
figure by means of which nationalistic values could be inculcated
in the population. His heroic acts and way of life became exempla
which everyone was supposed to follow. However, the emphasis on
the physical presence of the dead body and on the monument that
"wrapped" it indicated that the function of the hero's corpse was
more than pedagogical. Since the Nation was an abstract notion,
the dead hero could serve as its embodiment together with the
monument with which he was identified. French nationalism did
not in this case develop an elaborate ideology, like that of the
king's two bodies - the one real, flesh and blood, the other
mystical, standing for the sacred monarchy.27 However, the manner
in which the hero's body was presented in the ceremony and the
attitude of the crowd both during and after the event indicated
that the body stood not only for the historical person but also for
the entire nation, whose being transcended that of a short-lived
individual. Thus the body, the monument and the nation merged
and became one and indivisible, as was the French monarchy and
the French republic that replaced it.
*
The monumental system typical of the Third R
Peguy referred, was created gradually by the
regimes following the French Revolution. It d
being in a linear, cumulative process: not all the
the same importance to the same monuments an
them attempted to link several monuments
coherent system. However, a political regime
considered an adequate unit of analysis. At time
of certain monuments changed during the sp
because that regime underwent inner changes
will have to take cognizance of these transform
The first major change in the meaning of t
occurred during the French Revolution, with th
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Avner Ben-Amos
62
value system of the Old Regime. Of the three existing monuments,
the Church of Sainte-Genevieve was the first to be "adopted" by
the Revolution, since its neoclassical form and previous national
image accorded with the revolutionary spirit.28 After the death of
Mirabeau, the famous revolutionary tribune, in April 1791, the
church became the Temple of the Great Men - a pedagogical
monument and a burial place for the great men of the nation,
known afterwards as the Pantheon. The fronton of the monument
was covered with an allegorical relief showing the Fatherland
surrounded by Virtue, Liberty and Genius, above an inscription
"To the Great Men the Fatherland is Grateful." Christian imagery
disappeared from the interior, which became more somber and
serene after the abolition of the large lower windows with their
colorful stained glass. But more important for the new identity of
the monument were the funerary ceremonies held in it, during
which bodies of "great men" were transferred to its crypt.
Besides Mirabeau's funeral, which was a traditional, modest
religious ceremony, all the other pantheonizations of the
revolutionary decade (1789-1799) were grandiose civic
celebrations of the great man and, through him, of the
revolutionary values and the sovereign people to which he
belonged. Not all the ceremonies had the same atmosphere. While
those celebrating the philosophesVoltsire (July 1791) and Rousseau
(October 1794) were calm and sober, those of the "Martyrs of
Liberty" Michel Lepelletier (January 1793) and Jean-Paul Marat
(July 1793) were excited and provocative.29 Yet, beyond the
differences, these ceremonies identified the Pantheon with the
political "nation" in the sense of Sieves' pamphlet. Nevertheless,
its success was rather limited, since the decision to immortalize
contemporary revolutionary leaders in addition to the venerated
philosophes backfired: the bodies of Mirabeau and Marat were
removed from the Pantheon after the period of the Terror, and
the pedagogical value of the monument was considerably
depreciated. However, it remained an important revolutionary
symbol, as proven by its tumultuous history during the nineteenth
century.
Notre-Dame also played a role - albeit a brief one - in the new
revolutionary cult.30 During the period of the constitutional
monarchy it was used as a cathedral for marking major national
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Monuments and Memory
events, such as the celebration of 13 July 1792, the day preceding
the anniversary of Bastille Day, by a solemn TeDeum. However, the
traditional association with the monarchy and Christianity left the
cathedral on the margins of the revolutionary imagery. This
changed with the extreme anti-clerical and anti-monarchist wave
of 1793-1794, during which many churches, including Notre
Dame, became the targets of iconoclasts. The cathedral was then
closed to Catholic practice and rededicated to the new cult of
Reason, which marked its debut with a sumptuous Festival of
Reason and Liberty (November 1793) that featured a live allegory
of the Goddess of Reason and a huge choir singing the "Hymn to
Reason" with the members of the Convention. Other revolutionary
events, such as the abolition of slavery, were celebrated in the new
Temple of Reason (18 February 1794), until the cult of Reason was
officially replaced by the cult of the Supreme Being (May 1794),
to which the old cathedral was yet again rededicated. But not for
long: after the fall of Robespierre, the Directory returned Notre
Dame to the constitutional clergy (August 1795). Henceforth the
ceremonies celebrated there would have a national and religious
character. The Parisian cathedral remained a Christian building
and none of the succeeding regimes attempted to change its
identity again.
Although the Invalides played a minor role in the revolutionary
cults, it did not escape the fate of other monuments associated
with the Old Regime. Its name was changed in July 1792 from the
Royal House of Invalides to the National House of Invalides, while
the Royal Chapel became the Temple of Victory and later the
Temple of Mars. Yet no major revolutionary ceremony took place
in the monument, which continued to function as a military
hospital and a home for retired soldiers.
During the revolutionary period, then, two of the three
monuments - the Pantheon and Notre-Dame - were identified
with the political-national aspect of the Revolution, while the third
- the Invalides - became a patriotic monument associated with the
war against the foreign enemy. Although these two aspects were
both part of the revolutionary discourse, the monuments were not
linked in any symbolic way. The frequent political and military
upheavals of this chaotic decade prevented the establishment of
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the kind of long-standing coordination that was needed for the
creation of a monumental system.
The coming to power of Napoleon Bonaparte did not
significantly modify the meaning of the monuments, but their
relative importance was changed. As a result of the conciliatory
policy toward the Church, the Pantheon was returned to the clergy
in February 1806, and its "republican" fronton was covered, but
it continued to serve as a burial place for those whom the
Emperor held in high esteem.31 However, these were no longer the
"great men" of the Enlightenment, but state dignitaries and useful
servants of the Empire such as senators, ministers and cardinals.
The "inflation" of interments - 49 during the First Empire - and
the choice of the Cathedral of Saint-Denis, the old royal
necropolis, as the future burial place for Napoleon and his family,
reduced the Pantheon to secondary status. Moreover, it no longer
represented the national principle, and only the civil servants of
the regime were buried there in compensation for their loyalty to
the Emperor.
Notre-Dame Cathedral was a better place to mark the new
alliance between the regime and the Church. Indeed, the
promulgation of the Concordat that was signed with Pope Pius VII
was celebrated there in April 1802 in a grand religious ceremony
with the participation of Napoleon and the highest officials of the
regime. Notre-Dame was also the site of the Emperor's magnificent
coronation ceremony in December 1804, a site which he preferred
to the customary Cathedral of Reims. Thus Napoleon could, at the
same time, underline the continuity of his regime with the
religious tradition of the French monarchy and mark a new
beginning by choosing Paris, the symbol of the people whom he
had claimed to represent.
Yet, the aspect of the regime that was most accentuated through
the symbolic use of monuments was neither the civil nor the
religious, but the military. The importance of the Invalides grew
steadily: this was where the ceremonies celebrating the victory in
the Battle of Marengo (July 1800) and awarding the medals of the
newly created Order of the Legion of Honor were held, both in
the presence of Napoleon. In addition, the Invalides became a
necropolis for the military heroes of France: the body of Henri
Turenne, the famous seventeenth-century commander, was
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Monuments and Memory
solemnly transferred there (September 1800), as well as the heart
of Vauban, the military engineer of Louis XIV (1808), and the
bodies of military commanders who fell in Napoleon's European
campaigns.
Napoleon also desired a new military monument to celebrate his
own unprecedented achievements on the batdefield. Three
months after his great victory at Austerlitz he ordered the
construction of an arch of triumph that would commemorate the
glory of the French army (February 1806). At first, he envisaged
building the arch in the empty Place de la Bastille, a revolutionary
site and also the route traditionally taken by the armies returning
from the east. However, he finally opted for the hill of the Etoile
in the western outskirts of the city, away from the densely
populated quarters of eastern Paris, which offered a large empty
space for impressive army parades.32 The monument's neoclassical
form was in tune with the aesthetics of the Revolution, but
Napoleon, no doubt, wanted to resuscitate the tradition of the
Roman Empire and not the Roman Republic. The huge Arc de
Triomphe, which was to include allegorical reliefs depicting the
heroism of the French army and inscriptions commemorating
victorious batdes and commanders, was not completed during the
First Empire. Nevertheless, it was used in April 1810 for the entry
of the new Empress Marie-Louise, whose procession passed
through a provisional structure built upon the foundations of the
arch.
The other military monument built by Napoleon also
commemorated the victory at Austerlitz: the Austerlitz Column
(known today as the Vendome Column) was built in 1810 on Place
Vendome in the western part of Paris, replacing the equestrian
statue of Louis XIV that had been destroyed during the
Revolution. A statue of the Emperor was placed on top of the tall
column, which was covered with battle scenes engraved in bronze
taken from the cannons captured at Austerlitz. The choice of Place
Vendome testified to Napoleon's tendency to use the western,
upper-class part of the city around his Tuileries Palace for erecting
ostentatious symbols of his power, instead of the popular eastern
part. Since his legitimacy largely rested on his military success, the
monuments that he either upgraded or created were related to the
patriotic side of French identity. His monumental system would
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have included the Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, the Austerlitz
Column and Notre-Dame. However, his fall in 1814 prevented this
system from coming into being.
The Bourbon Restoration of Louis XVIII and Charles X, the
most reactionary regime of the post-revolutionary period, adopted
a monumental policy that countered that of both the Revolution
and the First Empire. The Pantheon was totally restituted to the
Church, and on 21 January 1822 - the anniversary of the
execution of Louis XVI - it was given to the Order of the French
Missionaries. The revolutionary relief and the inscription on the
fronton were removed, and the custom of burying a "great man"
or a dignitary in the crypt was abandoned. Notre-Dame, in
contrast, became the most important monument of the restored
monarchy, which derived its legitimacy from its alliance with the
Church. All the major ceremonies of the regime - except for the
coronation of Charles X in Reims - took place in the Parisian
cathedral. They included, for example, the expiation ceremony for
Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette (May 1814), the marriage of the
Due de Berry (June 1816), the baptism of the Due de Bordeaux
(May 1821) and the funerals of the Prince de Conde (May 1818)
and Louis XVIII (October 1824). Most of these ceremonies were
also religious rites so that the Christian and the royal aspects of
the regime reinforced each other.
But the Bourbons knew that they could not simply turn back the
clock to the prerevolutionary period and reestablish the Old
Regime. If there was no question of evoking the sovereignty of the
nation, they could make an appeal to the patriotic sentiments of
the people on condition that these sentiments would be associated
with the monarchy. Hence the increasing role of the army, which
took part in all the official ceremonies alongside the clergy. In
addition, the bodies of army commanders continued to be buried
in the Invalides and construction of the Arc de Triomphe was
resumed in 1823 after the victories of the French army in Spain.
The new decoration envisaged for the monument was to highlight
the Spanish campaign and its commander, the Due d'Angouleme,
but the July Revolution of 1830 interrupted the hesitant progress
of the work. The other Bonapartist monument, the Austerlitz
Column, also became a Bourbon monument by the substitution of
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Monuments and Memory
an enormous fleur-de-lys, the royal symbol, for the figure of
Napoleon.
Nonetheless, the regime's military-patriotic aspect as manifested
in the monuments remained a minor one. The return to religion
and to the glorious royal past marked the Bourbon Restoration to
such a degree that of the four monuments only Notre-Dame
continued to play a central role in its symbolic representation.
The July Revolution brought to the throne a citizen-king, Louis
Philippe of Orleans, who owed as much to the French Revolution
and its national/patriotic discourse as to the Old Regime. In
certain respects, therefore, the monumental system that he
attempted to create prefigured that of the Third Republic, which
also combined the two aspects of the Revolution. An anti-clerical
attitude predominated in the first years of the regime, which could
be explained partiy by the revival of the revolutionary viewpoint
and pardy by the reaction to the clericalism of the hated
Bourbons. No wonder that one of the new king's first steps was to
take the Pantheon out of the hands of the Church and convert it,
once more, into a Temple of the Great Men (26 August 1830).
The original, revolutionary inscription was restored, and the
sculptor David d'Angers was commissioned to prepare a new
allegorical relief for the fronton, depicting the Fatherland, History,
Liberty and the figures of great men such as Rousseau, Voltaire
and Mirabeau.
Another means of affirming the new regime's attachment to the
values of the French Revolution was the erection of the July
Column in the Place de la Bastille, the symbol of triumph over the
monarchy. The bodies of the victims of the July Revolution were
buried at its base, while its top was surmounted by a statue
representing the spirit of Liberty.33 The two monuments that
represented the nation as a popular force - the July Column and
the Pantheon - were linked on the first anniversary of the July
Revolution. The ceremony, led by Louis-Philippe, began with
laying the foundation of the column, continued with a procession
that paused at Notre-Dame on its way to the Pantheon, and ended
there with an impressive spectacle, during which a large choir sang
the Marseillaise, and a poem by Victor Hugo, in honor of the
victims of the July Revolution, was recited.
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The two monuments continued to be associated each year, on
the anniversary of the July Revolution, by an official procession,
but their importance rapidly declined. After the crystallization of
a republican opposition, first manifested in Paris in the riots that
took place during the funeral of General Lamarque (June 1832),
the regime became gradually more authoritarian, distancing itself
from the popular symbols of the French Revolution. While the
republicans made several failed attempts to transfer their dead
leaders to the Pantheon, the government closed the crypt to the
public and, despite its initial decision, did not bury any "great
man" there. David d'Anger's relief, which included also the
republican leaders La Fayette and Manuel, was discreetly unveiled
in September 1837, and other ambitious decorative plans were
dropped. The July Column was finally inaugurated on the
anniversary of July 1840, with the reluctant participation of Louis
Philippe, who was afraid to set foot in the popular quarter of
eastern Paris which was the bastion of the opposition.34
Notre-Dame Cathedral, which at first played a minor role in the
Orleanist monumental system, gained in importance as the regime
moved away from its anti-clerical, revolutionary stance. After
Fieschi's failed assassination attempt (28 July 1835), the king
participated in a Te Deum of gratitude in Notre-Dame, and he also
chose it for the baptism of his grandson (1841) and the funeral of
his son (1842). However, the Enlightenment tradition, to which
the regime belonged, did not enable the cathedral to regain the
central place it had occupied during the Restoration.
After the initial, popular phase of the regime, the emphasis
shifted from the eastern to the western part of the city and the
Bonapartist monuments that stood for the military-patriotic
tradition of the nation. At the top of the Austerlitz Column, the
figure of Napoleon again replaced the Bourbon fleur-de-lys, and
the construction of the Arc de Triomphe continued according to
the original decorative plan, which glorified the armies of the
Revolution and the Empire. The arch was solemnly inaugurated in
July 1836 for the anniversary of the July Revolution, and it was
used afterwards for the entry of the king's daughter-in-law to Paris
(1837) and for the passage of his son's funerary procession (1842).
Yet, of the three Bonapartist monuments, it was the Invalides that
became the most important for the regime. Not only did it
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Monuments and Memory
continue to receive the bodies of military commanders, but it also
became the burial site of the victims of Fieschi's assassination
attempt and the body of Napoleon. The latter's funeral ceremony
in December 1840 became a spectacular event that gready
enhanced the cult of the Emperor, who had died in 1821 in his
place of exile in Sainte-Helene.35 But, although the funeral
contributed to the career of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, the future
Emperor Napoleon III, it was meant at the time to help the July
Monarchy recruit for its own benefit the military glory of the late
Emperor. After a long maritime voyage, led by the king's son, the
Prince de Joinville, the body arrived at Courbevoie, to the west of
Paris. On its way to the Invalides, where the king awaited it, the
imposing funeral procession passed through the Arc de Triomphe
and the decorated Champs Elysees, before a huge crowd estimated
at a million people. The ceremony could have been longer and
more elaborate, but the regime was apprehensive of the subversive
potential of the expected crowd and shortened the route and the
duration of the procession. With the coffin of Napoleon in its
midst, the Invalides soon eclipsed the Austerlitz Column as the
center of the Bonapartist cult and reinforced its position as a
monument identified with the French military-patriotic tradition.
During the July Monarchy, then, two monumental systems,
representing the two aspects of French nationalism, emerged one
after the other: first that of eastern Paris (Pantheon-July Column)
and then that of western Paris (Austerlitz Column-Arc de
Triomphe-Invalides), with Notre-Dame taking part occasionally in
each. The two systems remained separated, and the fact that the
regime could maintain only one of them at a time demonstrated
its inner contradictions: although it had been established as a
result of a popular revolution, it still remained a monarchy, albeit
underplaying its religious foundations. Its main recourse for
obtaining legitimacy was, therefore, the patriotic tradition, but
even that was perceived as a potential threat to its stability, as
shown in the case of the return of Napoleon's remains.
The Second Republic, born of the February 1848 Revolution, did
not survive long enough to create a coherent policy concerning
the use of the main national monuments. However, as in the
period immediately following the July 1830 Revolution, it placed
emphasis on the two popular monuments of eastern Paris.36 The
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70
Pantheon was to remain a republican monument, but it acquired
a broader, supra-national significance: it was renamed the Temple
of Humanity, and the painter Paul Chevanard was commissioned
to prepare a series of murals that would depict the history of the
human race from Biblical times to Napoleon, including episodes
from the history of the major religions (a plan that was never
executed) ,37
The July Column, located in the heart of the popular quarters of
Paris and linking the revolutions of 1789 and 1830, played a more
active role both in the revolutionary events themselves and in the
official ceremonies of the new regime. It was the meeting place for
anti-government demonstrators at the end of February, and the
destination of their march from the Pantheon on 23 June 1848
during the insurrection against the bourgeois regime of the
Second Republic. It was also the terminus of solemn processions,
such as the one celebrating the provisional government (27
February) and those of the funerals of republican leader Armand
Carrel (2 March) and the victims of the February fighting (4
March). However, the Column was not utilized after this initial
radical phase of the Revolution. The turning point came on 6 July,
when the funeral procession of the June Days' victims, which had
been intended to terminate at the Column, stopped at the Church
of the Madeleine in the western part of Paris because the
organizers did not dare venture into the eastern part of the city.
The revolutionaries, in contrast to their predecessors of 1789 and
1830, were not hostile to religion and did not attempt to change
the identity of Notre-Dame or the Invalides. Nonetheless, they
refrained from using these monuments in any of the regime's
major ceremonies. The Arc de Triomphe retained its patriotic
identity and was the setting for the official Festival of Fraternity on
20 April 1848 that celebrated the alliance between the army and
the young Republic. However, it was not the only site in western
Paris to be used by the Republic. The Place de la Concorde, with
its Egyptian obelisk, was the point of departure for the funerals of
4 March and 6 July and also the setting for the official
proclamation of the new regime on 23 April. The Festival of
Harmony took place on 21 May on the Champ de Mars, the empty
space often used for celebrations during the French Revolution
and where the Eiffel Tower was later erected.
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Monuments and Memory
The Second Republic thus accentuated the division between the
monuments in the eastern and western parts of Paris and only
rarely linked them, as in the case of the 4 March funeral which
began in the Place de la Concorde and ended at the July Column.
The Republic was thus either popular and insurrectional or
serene, bourgeois and patriotic. However, as in the French
Revolution, the rapid political changes that took place between
1848 and 1851 prevented the establishment of a stable
monumental policy even within these categories.
Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, the first president of the Republic,
was also its liquidator. The regime that he founded resembled, at
least in the way it presented itself to the public, that of his glorious
uncle. It had the same authoritarian, clerical and patriotic
characteristics of the First Empire, and the four main national
monuments were all enlisted in its service.
The Pantheon, which until then had been associated with the
popular-national tradition, underwent the most radical
transformation. Four days after the coup d'etat of 2 December
1851, which practically abolished the Republic, it was given back
to the Church, and the cult of Sainte-Genevieve replaced that of
the great men. During the consecration ceremony of the
repossessed church on 3 January 1853 the reliquary of the
patroness of Paris was deposited there, and in 1857 a sculpture
representing her overcoming Attila and saving the city by her
prayers was placed in the entry to the nave. Thus, as in the times
of Louis XV, the Church of Sainte-Genevieve again marked the
alliance between patriotism and Catholicism. Yet this act did not
signal a mere return to the Old Regime; the cult of the saint was
now more accentuated, for since then patriotism had become a
popular force, capable of mobilizing the masses.
The other religious monument, Notre-Dame, was of even greater
significance for the Second Empire as it linked the regime both
with the French monarchical tradition and with Napoleon I who
had been crowned there. The disintegrating cathedral was finally
restored by the architect Viollet-le-Duc38 and was associated with
the regime by a series of ceremonies: the celebration of the
plebiscite of 21 November 1851 which ratified the constitution of
the Second Empire (1 January 1853); the marriage of Napoleon
III (30 January 1853); the celebration of the victory of Sebastopol
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(17 September 1855); and the baptism of the imperial prince (14
June 1856). All these ceremonies were attended by representatives
of the clergy and the army, as well as state officials, thus uniting
the forces that constituted the foundation of the regime.
However, the regime's symbolic center of gravity lay in western
Paris, especially in the two monuments that were by then closely
associated with Napoleon I: the Arc de Triomphe and the
Invalides. For the declaration of the Second Empire on 2
December 1852, Napoleon III made his solemn entry into Paris
through the arch, which was afterwards used as the gate of entry
for visits by foreign sovereigns. The fact that Napoleon's body was
buried in the Invalides made it the regime's most important
monument, especially after a special open crypt was built to
contain an impressive porphyry sarcophagus in which the body was
placed (inaugurated in April 1861 in the presence of Napoleon
III). The Invalides also became the burial place for other members
of the Bonaparte family, as well as for high-ranking army officers
who served the regime, with each of the funerals celebrated as a
military-religious ceremony. The monument thus combined the
functions of Saint-Denis and the Pantheon: it became a familial
and military necropolis that was to begin a new tradition and
legitimize the regime.
Each of the four national monuments represented, to various
degrees, the patriotic-religious nature of the Second Empire.
However, they remained isolated, and connections were not
formed between them during processions or decorations. It was
perhaps their very similarity that made such linking unnecessary,
for any one of them sufficed to express the basic values of the
regime.
The Third Republic, which replaced the Second Empire after the
defeat in the batde against Germany at Sedan on 2 September
1870, was more heterogeneous in its outlook. It was the only
regime since the French Revolution that succeeded in combining
both aspects of French identity: the popular-national emphasis on
the sovereignty of the people, and the military-patriotic eagerness
to defend the fatherland. The regime accordingly developed a
complex monumental system, which endured, with modifications
(notably after World War I), until its fall in 1940.
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Monuments and Memory
The national monuments' change of identity from Bonapartist to
republican did not, however, occur immediately. The republican
regime established itself securely only in 1879, and even though it
claimed to be the heir to the ideals of the French Revolution, it
did not advocate social revolution and was apprehensive of any
rapid change. Moreover, despite its anti-clericalism, it was at times
ready to accommodate the Church and did not wish to upset
Catholic public opinion by provocative symbolic action. Lasdy,
although the regime was driven by the patriotic desire to recover
Alsace and Lorraine, the territories that had been lost to Germany
in the 1870/71 war, it refrained from any steps that could have
been interpreted as bellicose. In sum, although it reversed in many
respects the tendencies of the Second Empire, it was a moderate
regime that did not repudiate entire parts of the French past, as
the French Revolution had done with the Old Regime, and the
Bourbon Restoration with the revolutionary period. Like the July
Monarchy, it regarded as its own both the pre- and post
revolutionary periods, emphasizing the features that fitted its own
view of French identity. But whereas the Orleanists had turned
consecutively to different periods of the French past, the
republicans managed to evoke all of them simultaneously.
It was the death in 1885 of Victor Hugo, the epitome of the
republican "great man," that gave the republicans the opportunity
to begin transforming the identity of the monuments.39 His
"natural" burial place was the Pantheon, the revolutionary Temple
of Great Men, but since he had demanded in his will a secular
funeral, the monument had to be desacralized. Hugo was also
associated with the cult of Napoleon I, whom he had admired, and
with the Arc de Triomphe, about which he had written in his
poetry. Hugo's body lay in state under the magnificendy decorated
arch, from where the funeral procession departed to the Pantheon
whose Christian emblems had been hastily removed. The
Bonapartist arch was then "rehabilitated" as a republican
monument, while the Pantheon was again taken out of the hands
of the Church, despite the latter's protests, and returned to the
Republic. The ceremony, attended by an enormous crowd of over
a million people, symbolically linked the two aspects of French
identity embodied in the Republic. This was the first step in the
construction of the monumental system.
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The other two monuments, previously identified with non
republican traditions, were eventually also "appropriated" by the
Republic. Unlike the Church of Sainte-Genevieve, Notre-Dame
could not be desacralized; not only would such an act have
outraged Catholic public opinion, but the republicans regarded
themselves as heirs to the French monarchy as well, particularly to
its patriotic dimension. They preferred, therefore, to perform in
Notre-Dame the religious part of some of their important state
funerals, such as those of the scientist Louis Pasteur (October
1895) and the President of the Republic Felix Faure (February
1899). At President Carnot's state funeral in July 1894 the funeral
procession that departed from the Elysee Palace to the burial in
the Pantheon paused for a religious service in the cathedral, which
was decorated with black crepe and tricolor flags. The clergy did
not accompany the President's body to the Pantheon, but the
funeral nonetheless linked France's most highly regarded religious
and secular monuments, thereby demonstrating the Republic's
integrative capability.
The Invalides continued to be dedicated to the cult of the army
and to be the site of state funerals of important commanders such
as Marshals MacMahon, the ex-President of the Republic (October
1893), and Canrobert (February 1895). Its Bonapartist dimension
was subsumed under a more general military identity and it was
also associated with the achievements of the French Revolution.
One of the historical processions that crossed the city from west to
east on the centenary of the First Republic (September 1892)
departed from the Invalides toward Austerlitz Bridge, while the
heart of the revolutionary commander La Tour d'Auvergne was
deposited in the monument in 1904. On the first Bastille Day of
World War I (14 July 1915), the body of Captain Rouget de Lisle,
the author of the revolutionary hymn La Marseillaise, was reburied
there in a ceremony intended to uplift the country's morale. The
funeral procession, led by President Raymond Poincare, began at
the Arc de Triomphe, thus linking the two monuments of French
military glory.
The most prominent of the four Parisian monuments
constituting the system was the Pantheon, for it represented the
popular-national aspect of the Republic which, after the defeat by
Germany, could take more pride in its great men than in its
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Monuments and Memory
soldiers. It accordingly played the central role in the centenary of
the French Revolution40 and also served as the burial ground for
several eminent personalities: President Sadi Carnot (1894), the
scientist Mercelin Berthelot (1907) and the writer Emile Zola
(1908), who was reburied there after the acquittal of Captain
Alfred Dreyfus.
The French victory in World War I, won at the cost of a high toll
in human life, changed the inner hierarchy among the
monuments. Pride in the recovery of Alsace and Lorraine was
mingled with mourning for the fallen soldiers,41 and both led to
the predominance of the military-patriotic aspect of the Republic
in the interwar years. Moreover, France was ruled during most of
this period by center-Right governments that were less concerned
with the popular-national aspect than the prewar governments.
Consequently, the monuments that were associated with the army
became more prominent, notably the Arc de Triomphe.
The first sign of this change was the impressive victory parade of
14 July 1919 that departed from the arch. But the event that
determined the new status of the monument was the burial there
of the body of the Unknown Soldier. The question whether to
bury this symbol of French heroism in the Pantheon or under the
Arc de Triomphe was hody debated in the Chamber of Deputies,
and the latter was chosen both because of its military-patriotic
associations and because the former, with the Dreyfusard Zola in
its crypt, was perceived as a leftist and hence a divisive
monument.42 In a single moving ceremony on 11 November 1920
the body of the Unknown Soldier was transferred to the arch, and
the heart of the founding father of the regime, Leon Gambetta, to
the Pantheon, for the same event marked both Armistice Day and
the 50th anniversary of the Third Republic.
Thus, as in the case of Hugo's funeral, the Arc de Triomphe and
the Pantheon were associated in the same ceremony. However, in
the ensuing period the former became the main symbol of the
proud but grief-stricken country that emerged out of World War
I. It became a popular as well as an official place of pilgrimage
and the site of the annual ceremony marking Armistice Day, in
which the highest dignitaries of the state participated. Moreover,
in March 1929 the body of Marshal Foch, one of the heroes of
World War I, lay there in state, a rare tribute that demonstrated
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Avner Ben-Amos
76
the importance of the arch. The status of the Invalides, which
received his body, was also enhanced, since many of the funerals
of war commanders took place in its church, notably that of
Marshal Joffre in January 1931.
In this monumental system of the interwar years Notre-Dame
became a kind of middle point that lay, both geographically and
symbolically, between the military monuments of the west and the
Pantheon in the east of Paris. It was used both in military state
funerals, such as those of Foch and Joffre, as a stopping place
between the Arc de Triomphe and the Invalides, and in civilian
state funerals, such as that of ex-President Poincare, which began
at the Pantheon (October 1934). Meanwhile, the popular
nationalist image of the Temple of the Great Men was enhanced
when in November 1924 a short-lived left-wing coalition
government transferred to it the body of Jean Jaures, the socialist
leader assassinated on the eve of World War I. Despite the changes
in the interwar period, the stability of the monumental system of
the Third Republic testified to its success in maintaining a long
term equilibrium between the two dimensions of French identity.
This success was one of the factors that contributed to the regime's
outstanding longevity compared with the other regimes since the
French Revolution.
*
The "ceremonial history" of these four P
from their birth to the point in time whe
coherent system, demonstrates that in ord
relevant to French society they had to be tr
again, by their ritualistic usage.43 Their origin
in stone, was not effaced, but it became par
that resulted from the encounter between t
and the space of the monument. Monuments
setting for public ceremonies, such as th
continued to be part of the Parisian landscap
tourist attractions. They no longer participa
history of France and were contemplated, bo
foreigners, on an individual basis. Thus, o
collective act, conferred upon a monument a
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Monuments and Memory
be relevant to a new generation. Hence also the importance of the
encounter between the ceremony and the monument for
constructing a collective memory.44 Even though the participants
in the ceremony were not always familiar with the monument's
role in the nation's history, in their memory they integrated the
ceremonial action and the monumental space. The monument
thus became a site of memory, not only of French history, but also
of the stately ceremony that had taken place.
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Avner Ben-Amos
78
Notes
* I would like to thank the German-Israeli Foundadon for Scientific
Research and Development for its financial help that enabled me to
carry out the research on which this article is based.
1 Charles Peguy, Oeuvres en prose, 1898-1908 (Paris, 1959), 1:813.
2 Ibid.
3 See Pierre Nora, "Entre Memoire et Histoire: La problematique des
lieux," in idem, ed., Les lieux de memoire, vol. 1, La Republique (Paris,
1984), xvi-xlii. For the relationship between space and collective
memory, see Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory (New York,
1980), 128-57.
4 See Sally Moore and Barbara Myerhoff, "Secular Ritual: Forms and
Meanings," in idem, eds., Secular Ritual (Assen, 1977), 3-24.
5 For the significance of the location of the four monuments, see Avner
Ben-Amos, "The Sacred Center of Power: Paris and the State Funerals
of the French Third Republic," TheJournal of Interdisciplinary History 22,
no. 1 (Summer 1991): 27-48.
6 For the notion of the procession as a text, see Mary Ryan, "The
American Parade: Representations of the Nineteenth-Century Social
Order," in Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History (Berkeley, 1989),
131-53.
7 For a recent discussion of the distinction between this kind of
nationalism and the older, "open" nationalism, see Zeev Sternhell,
"The Political Culture of Nationalism," in Robert Tombs, ed.,
Nationhood and Nationalism in France from Boulangism to the Great War,
1889-1918 (London, 1991), 22-38.
8 Colette Beaune, Naissance de la nation France (Paris, 1985), 344. For the
relationship between symbols and political power, see also Clifford
Geertz, "Centers, Kings and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of
Power," in idem, Local Knowledge (New York, 1983), 121-46.
9 See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin
and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1991), 1-36.
10 For the concept of the fatherland in French nationalism, see Beaune,
Naissance de la nation France, Alphonse Dupront, "Du Sentiment
National," in Michel Francois, ed., La France et les francais (Paris, 1972),
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Monuments and Memory
1423-72; Ernst Kantorowicz, "Pro Patria Mori in Mediaeval Political
Thought," American Historical Review 56 (1951): 472-92; Philippe
Contamine, "Mourir pour la patrie," in Nora, ed., Les lieux de memoire,
vol. 2, La Nation (Paris, 1986), 3:11-43; Norman Hampson, "La
Patrie," in The French Revolution and the Creation of Modem Political
Culture, vol. 1, The Political Culture of the French Revolution, ed. Colin
Lucas (Oxford, 1988), 125-38.
11 Emmanuel Sieves, Qu'est-ce que le tiers etat? (Paris, 1988), 41. For the
concept of the nation in French nationalism, see Maurice Cranston,
"The Sovereignty of the Nation," in Lucas, ed., The Political Culture of
the French Revolution, 97-104; Nora, "La Nation," in Francois Furet and
Mona Ozouf, eds., A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution
(Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 742-52; Conor Cruise O'Brien,
"Nationalism and the French Revolution," in Geoffrey Best, ed., The
Permanent Revolution: The French Revolution and Its Legacy (London,
1988), 17-48; Jacques Godechot, "The New Concept of the Nation and
Its Diffusion in Europe," in Otto Dann and John Dinwiddy, eds.,
Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution (London, 1988), 13-26.
12 "The sacred love of the fatherland" - thus begins the last stanza of the
Marseillaise.
13 The Martyrs of Liberty were three famous murdered revolutionaries:
Marat, Chalier and Lepelletier. See Antoine de Baecque, "Le corps
meurtri de la Revolution: Le discours politique et les blessures des
martyrs, 1792-1794," Annales Historiques de la Revolution Francaise, no.
267 (Jan.-Mar. 1987): 17-41.
14 For the notion of the revolutionary transfer of the sacred, see Mona
Ozouf, La fete revolutionnaire, 1789-1799 (Paris, 1976), 317-40; Roger
Chartier, Les origines culturelles de la Revolution francaise (Paris, 1990),
133-37.
15 Moore and Myerhoff, "Secular Ritual," 3.
16 Lynn Hunt, "The Sacred and the French Revolution," in Jeffrey
Alexander, ed., Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies (Cambridge,
1990), 25-43.
17 This expression is mentioned in a work on Soufflot published in 1785.
Quoted in Daniel Rabreau, "La Basilique Sainte-Genevieve de
Soufflot," in Le Pantheon, Symbole des Revolutions (Paris, 1989)
(hereafter Le Pantheon), 48.
18 See Les Invalides: Trois siecles d'histoire (Paris, 1974), 227-28.
19 Ralph Giesey, The Royal Funeral Ceremony in Renaissance France (Geneva,
1960), 35-36.
20 Lawrence Bryant, The King and the City in the Parisian Royal Entry
Ceremony: Politics, Ritual and Art in the Renaissance (Geneva, 1986).
79
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Avner Ben-Amos
80
21 Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin
Christianity (Chicago, 1981); Philippe Aries, L'homme devant la mart
(Paris, 1977), 1:37-96.
22 Michel Vovelle, Piete baroque et dechristianisation en Provence au XVIIIe
siecle (Paris, 1978), and La Mart et VOccident de 1300 a nos jours (Paris,
1983), part 5, 367-506.
23 Aries, L'homme devant la mart, 2:204-205.
24 For the figure of the Great Man in 18th-century France, see Mona
Ozouf, "Le Pantheon," in Nora, ed., La Republique, 139-66; Jean
Claude Bonnet, "Naissance du Pantheon," PoetiqueSS (Feb. 1978): 46
65.
25 Quoted in Bonnet, "Les morts illustres, oraison funebre, eloge
academique, necrologie," in Nora, ed., La Nation 3:220.
26 Cf. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 9-12.
27 Ernst Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political
Theology (Princeton, 1957).
28 For the Pantheon during the French Revolution, see Ozouf, "Le
Pantheon"; Mark Deming, "Le Pantheon Revolutionnaire," in Le
Pantheon, 97-150.
29 See Ben-Amos,44 4Aux Grands Hommes, La Patrie Reconnaissante': The
French Revolution and the Emergence of Republican State Funerals,"
Tel Aviver Jahrbuch fur deutsche Geschichte 18 (1989): 305-34; Jacques
Guilhaumou, La Mori de Marat (Paris, 1989).
30 For the history of Notre-Dame, see Alain Erlande-Brandenburg,
"Notre-Dame de Paris," in Nora, ed., Les lieux de memoire, vol. 3, Les
France (Paris, 1992), 3: 359-401.
31 Barry Bergdoll, "Le Pantheon/Sainte-Genevieve au XIXe siecle: La
monumentalite a Tepreuve des revolutions ideologiques," in Le
Pantheon, 175-233.
32 For the east-west division of Paris, see Maurice Agulhon, "Paris," in
Nora, ed., Les France 3:868-909.
33 The allegorical statue was masculine, since a female figure could have
been mistaken for an allegory of the Republic - an association the July
Monarchy preferred not to evoke. The revolutionary attachment had
its limits. See Agulhon, Marianne au Combat: L'Imagerie et la Symbolique
Republicans de 1789 a 1880 (Paris, 1979), 64.
34 See Agulhon, "Paris," 883.
35 For the "Return of the Remains" of Napoleon Bonaparte, see Jean
Tulard, "Le retour des Cendres," in Nora, ed., La Nation 3:81-110;
Jean-Marcel Humbert, ed., Napoleon aux Invalides: 1840, Le Retour des
Cendres (Paris, 1990).
36 For the festivals and ceremonies of the Second Republic, see Agulhon,
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Monuments and Memory
"Fete Spontanee et Fetes Organisees a Paris en 1848," in Jean Ehrard
and Paul Viallaneix, eds., Les Fetes de la Revolution (Paris, 1977), 243-71.
37 See Marie-Antoinette Grunewald, Paul Chevanard et la decoration du
Pantheon de Paris en 1848 (Lyon, 1977).
38 See Bruno Foucart, "Viollet-le-Duc et la restauration," in Nora, ed., La
Nation 2:613-49.
39 For Hugo's state funeral, see Ben-Amos, "Les funerailles de Victor
Hugo," in Nora, ed., La Republique, 473-522.
40 For the centenary of the French Revolution, see Pascal Ory, "Le
Centenaire de la Revolution francaise," in ibid., 523-60.
41 See George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World
Wars (Oxford, 1990), 70-106.
42 For the cult of the Unknown Soldier in France and the role of the Arc
de Triomphe in this cult, see Antoine Prost, Les Anciens Combattants et
la SocieteFranchise, 1914-1939 (Paris, 1977), 3:35-38; and K S. Inglis,
"Entombing Unknown Soldiers: From London and Paris to Baghdad,"
in this issue of History & Memory.
43 Cf. the concept of "ritual-architectural event" in Lindsay Jones, "The
Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture: A Reassessment of the Similitude
Between Tula, Hidalgo and Ghichen Itza - Part I," History of Religions
32, no. 3 (Feb. 1993): 207-32.
44 For the relationship between ceremonial action and collective memory,
see Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge, 1989).
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