Baptizing under the French Revolution

Discover the fifth session of the seminar “Regards croisés sur la petite enfance” 2024-2025: Baptizing under the French Revolution

The seminar looks at early childhood as a social, historical and cultural construct. Theories and knowledge relating to the conception, birth and development of children are analyzed in terms of their interactions with their environment and gender norms. Against this backdrop, the seminar will explore the boundaries of this age category and address the question of its temporality according to medical, international, anthropological or historical standards.

Under the Ancien Régime, baptism marked the newborn's entry into the Church, but also, more broadly, into the human world, the local community, the family, and finally the civil community of the Kingdom. The overlap between being a Christian (Catholic) and a subject of the king was almost complete. The French Revolution challenged this combination by introducing the concept of the child of the Nation, the future citizen. While the notion of the Christian citizen dominated the early days of the Revolution, the Pope's condemnation of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy shattered this apparent consensus. This seminar will examine, from a baptismal perspective, the different conceptions of the link between the Christian identity and the national identity of the baby, conceptions that clashed throughout the revolutionary period, leading to a profound questioning of the baptismal gesture. Napoleon's policy of religious pacification and the introduction of the Civil Code confirmed the impossibility of returning to the pre-revolutionary situation and the definitive death of Ancien Régime baptism.

• Vincent Gourdon: director of historical research at the CNRS, member of the Centre Roland Mousnier
• Discussant: Nathalie Sage Pranchere: historian (CNRS)