François Jean Lefebvre de La Barre
On 1 July 1766, the 19 year-old François Jean Lefebvre de La Barre (12 September 1745 – 1 July 1766) was executed in Abbeville (Picardy, http://about-france.com/regions/picardy.htm) having been charged by the Court of Abbeville, 28 February 1765, for various blasphemies[1] and sacrilege, and then condemned by the Grand Chamber of the Parliament of Paris (4 June 1766) to be beheaded and then burned, “after being subjected to the ordinary and extraordinary question.”[2]
La Barre and two others (his friend, Bertrand Gaillard d’Étallonde [23 October 1743 – 22 August 1800] and Moisnel, a youth aged 15) were rumored of having defaced a wooden crucifix situated on the Pont Neuf in Abbeville. There were no eye witnesses to this act, but after incessant “appels à témoins” (“calls for witnesses”) led by the bishop of Amiens[3], churchgoers (fearing excommunication if no one spoke) alleged that three youths had not removed their hats and had not kneeled before a Holy Sacrament procession. Once the charges of such anticlerical actions and sacrilege were issued by the courts, d’Étallonde took refuge in Ferney and then in Prussia (thanks to Voltaire), and Moisnel, because of his age, was simply fined. La Barre was arrested and he unswervingly denied any participation in the mutilation of the crucifix. When a search of his home revealed three forbidden books (placed on the Index), including Voltaire's Dictionnaire Philosophique Portatif [4] the courts and the church had their “proof”.
Voltaire, then aged 72, was haunted for the rest of his life by the barbaric torture and execution of La Barre which took place on 1st July 1766: his legs broken by violent blows; his right hand severed; his beheading and his body burned with, on the same pyre, Voltaire’s Dictionnaire philosophique Portatif. In addition, such a condemnation denied a grave for the accused.
As of June 1766 Voltaire corresponded with many of his friends (Damilaville, d’Alembert, d’Argental) and, on the days following the execution, he shared in many of his letters his strong emotional distress: “le cœur navré” (“heart-broken”, D13404); “déchiré” (my heart ripped apart, D13441); he is “saisi d’horreur” (overwhelmed with horror, D13410) and “incapable de prendre aucun plaisir” (incapable of enjoying anything, D13405); “cette barbarie m’occupe nuit et jour (this barbarism preoccupies me night and day, D13441); and, in a touching moment of self-reflection, he notes to Charles and Jeanne d’Alembert: “Je suis honteux d’être si sensible et si vif à mon âge. […] Je pleure les gens dont on arrache la langue” (I am ashamed for being so sensitive and for feeling so raw at my age. [...] I grieve for those whose tongue is ripped off” (D13460)[5]).
Voltaire conducted an extensive investigation that unraveled a series of lies and false accusations. His works, Le Cri du sang innocent (1775), and the Relation de la mort du chevalier de la Barre (1766) are entirely devoted to the La Barre affair.
Through a multitude of letters and the publication of his two books Voltaire mobilized public opinion (in Paris, at the royal court, in the salons and the cafés, as well as among European philosophers), and he succeeded in revealing that La Barre was a victim of unscrupulous individuals. Voltaire did not live to witness the rehabilitation of La Barre which was demanded in 1789 by the Paris nobility and then granted by the Convention on 15 November 1793 (25 brumaire an II).
A monument in memory of La Barre was erected in 1907 in Abbeville https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_La_Barre . As recently as 2001, a statue was erected in memory of La Barre in Paris near the Sacré-Cœur (Monmartre; 24 February 2001) http://atheisme.org/statue.html). This statue was financed by the Association Le Chevalier de La Barre https://www.laicite1905.com/apropos.htm.[6]
Two hundred and fifty years after La Barre’s execution, the Voltaire Foundation organized its annual Journées Voltaire with the theme “Autour de l’affaire La Barre” (17-18 June 2016, Université Paris IV – Sorbonne).
http://voltaire.lire.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article628[7]
“Over the two days of the conference, attendees followed the gradual process that transformed La Barre from the victim of a dubious trial into a symbol of anti-clericalism, and the affair that ensued from a mere historical event into a revolutionary event in the Kantian sense.
The conference opened with a marvellously clear exposition of the trial’s proceedings by Eric Wenzel (Université d’Avignon). Eric Wenzel argued strongly that, if we except the fact that the question préalable was used in order to extort a confession, La Barre’s trial was actually conducted in accordance with the laws of Ancien Régime France. This begged the important question of what is right and what is – instead – legal.”
Danielle Mihram, August 2017
Sources:Goulemot, Jean. “La Barre, Jean François Le Febvre, chevalier de.” Inventaire Voltaire, edited by Jean Goulemot, André Magnan, and Didier Masseau, Paris, Gallimard, 1995, pp. 783-786.
Trousson, R. “La Barre.” Dictionnaire Voltaire, edited by Raymond Trousson, Jeroom Vercruysse, and Jacques Lemaire, Paris, Hachette, 1994, pp. 116-117.
Voltaire. Relation de la Mort du Chevalier de La Barre. Critical edition by Robert Granderoute, OCV 63B, 2008, pp. 491-581.
Voltaire. Le Cri du Sang. Critical edition by Robert Granderoute, OCV 77A, 2014, pp. 217-335.
[1] Including: mutilating a crucifix affixed to the town’s bridge, the failure to doff his cap in the presence of a religious procession, and for “having given marks of respect and adoration to the vile and impure books [livres infâmes et impurs] that were placed on a shelf in his room”.
http://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/news/blog/attention-livre-dangereux-0
http://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/news/blog/attention-livre-dangereux-0
[2] About the use of torture authorized for investigating crime in European legal systems from medieval times until well into the eighteenth century see: Torture and the Law of Proof – Europe and England in the Ancien Régime by John H. Langbein, University of Chicago Press, 2006.
[3] Louis-François-Gabriel d'Orléans de La Motte (13 January 1683 – 10 June 1774). He was bishop of Amiens from 1733 to 1774.
[4] Voltaire’s Dictionnaire Philosophique Portatif was published anonymously by Grasset in Geneva in 1764. Later publications of this title appeared in 1767, then in 1769 (with the title La Raison par alphabet), and, starting with 1770, with the title, Dictionnaire Philosophique.
[5] See Robert Granderoute’s “Introduction” to Voltaire’s Relation de la Mort du Chevalier de La Barre (OCV 63B) p. 502.
[6] See also: “Voies et places à la mémoire du Chevalier de La Barre” (“Streets and Squares in memory of the Chevalier de La Barre”) https://www.laicite1905.com/voies.htm
[7] See also: “Attention: Livre dangereux.” Voltaire Foundation Blog post by Claire Trévien (20 September 2016). https://voltairefoundation.wordpress.com/2016/09/
[8] “Voltaire and the La Barre Affair.” Voltaire Foundation Blog post by Ruggero Sciuto (30 June 2016).
François Jean Lefebvre de La Barre appears in the following letters.
François Jean Lefebvre de La Barre appears in the following indexes.
