2005, Vol., No.12

Korean Review of French History 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.67

pISSN : 1229-702X
https://journal.kci.go.kr/krfh

This study intends to confirm the religious essence of the modern state in France which was characterized by the secularization, even dramatical during the French Revolution, by the means of verification of religious role in making of the modern state. Our hypothesis is that the secularization of the state was not exactly the desacralization, and that the making of the modern state was carried with the religious essence by nature. We would follow the way transferring the sacrality from the absolute monarchy personified by the king to the impersonal modern state. The discourse of divine right standed at the peak in 17th century by the absolute monarchy. The king who was the lieutenant of God and the image of Christ in the mediaeval age has been transformed as the god himself. By the means of this divinization of the king, the state could be personified and identified by the person of king. However the kings’s absolute power had left the state and the bureaucracy to develop. The result was the administrative monarchy, and it was, ironically, accompanied by the impersonalization of state and the desacralization of king. What the Revolution has destroyed? It had destroyed not the sacred essence of the power of state, but the monarchic order. In this sense, the Revolution has continued by heritage the transfer of the sacrality and completed it.

Even though, in the 17th century, the Essais were in the Index and his pyrrhonism was considered as a veil of the atheism, Montaigne’s religion was catholic. He was born catholic, remains catholic, and died catholic. He tried to convert those around him. The pyrrhonism was, for him, a tool which was used to accuse the protestantism of the presumption. Based on the pyrrhonism and the agnosticism, he attached more importance to the means than to the aim, to the result than to the intention. He rejected the means and the result which accompanied with the violence. He thought that the religious War was no other than the violence caused by the presumption. The Huguenots were the first responsible for this tragedy, but the catholic Sainte Ligue was not immune. The reason why he criticized the Sainte Ligue was that it menaced in the name of religion the French monarchy. As a French, he wanted to safeguard France from Spain, and as a catholic, he practiced the teaching of the church, which was the obedience to the king. In spite of his own religion, he accepted willingly Henri de Navarre who was Huguenot as the protector of the country, and made an effort to convert him to the catholicism, which was crucial to the destiny of himself and the country. Montaigne’s attitude toward the protestantism changed as the religious war intensified. He opposed to the tolerant decree of 1562 in the hope of the religious concord. But the uncontrollable violence made him accept not only the tolerance, but also the liberty of conscience. Such an open mind was uncommon for his time.

The recent debate held in France on the Algerian War is worthwhile to be noted and analysed as a historical phenomenon especially by those who are concerned with the colonial studies. The fervent public debate was motivated certainly by the need to reconstruct the dark side past within the world-wide trend of resurgence of memories from amnesia. Particularly the complicated, absurd and violent situation of the 1990’s Algeria was linked with these reflections. However, considering the French State’s avoidance of responsibilities toward the colonial history, we have a doubt what is the conclusion of such voluminous writings and images presented for years. Even if the Evian Accords could be taken as a final account of both parties, it seems that the Algerian people’s century-long sufferings and sacrifices under the French colonization have a more right to claim than that. Here, my suggestion is that through the debate, the French people came to recognize the simple fact that violence was accompanied constantly to the Algerian war. What is the meaning of this assertion everybody knows? The message is that the colonized people were evidently human beings, not at all things as Aimé Césaire exposed. This thesis sustained already during the Algerian war by the French people themselves should have to wait for several decades to be accepted in general. The victimized man and woman under the colonial violence then have not gone in vain.