„Auf Erden kein anderes Reich als deines anerkennen“

Abstract

“On Earth Recognise no Other Kingdom but Yours”. Social Hierarchy as Divine Order in the “Egalitarian” Society of Revolutionary France In research, the French Revolution is often described as a rupture with the societal order of the Ancien Régime, in which the hierarchy of the three estates was replaced by a society based on equality. Scholars have often seen revolutionary festivals as attempts to enact this societal change on a symbolic level. Accordingly, they interpreted these festivals as instruments that the revolutionary elites used to rally French people to their cause. However, this approach fails to acknowledge the genuinely religious elements of the festivals because it views them as merely instrumental to broader political goals. This article pursues two aims by engaging in an analysis of the symbolic language of the Festival of the Supreme Being held across France on 8 June 1794. First, it shows that the revolutionary society as represented in the parades on the occasion of this festival was by no means egalitarian, nor did it strive to be. The article shows how the revolutionaries attempted to delegitimise the Ancien Régime societal order by introducing the concept of a natural order. The revolutionaries re-enacted and celebrated this supposedly natural order they structured through hierarchical elements and correspondent honours – rulers and subjects, different occupations, ages and men and women. Second, the article demonstrates that revolutionaries did not dismiss the Ancien Régime notion of a God that intervenes in human societies, but fully adopted it. The Festival of the Supreme Being clearly staged God not only as the creator of the natural order, but also as its active enactor. Ultimately, the argument challenges the dichotomy usually posited between politics and religion in the French Revolution, and demonstrates some continuity between the Christian and revolutionary notions of God. This suggests that “theopolitics” is the most fitting approach to understand how the revolutionaries used political instruments to enforce religious ideas, and challenge the hitherto prevalent view that religion was instrumental to politics.