L'Abbé Fauchet and the French Revolution

While the French Revolution is commonly remembered as a profoundly anti-clerical historical moment, it counted several priests among its instigators and leaders. This project culminated in the intellectual biography of one such cleric, Abbé Claude Fauchet, a devout Catholic priest and Girondist leader. Both a prolific writer and politician, Fauchet presents an interesting yet little studied life. Prior to 1789, he had steadily climbed the ranks of the church, eventually becoming preacher to the king. However, upon the outbreak of the Revolution, Fauchet found himself in the center of France’s political maelstrom: he helped lead the attack on the Bastille, and was later elected to the Paris Commune and National Convention, all while preserving a deep sense of faith. By looking backwards at the books and ideas that would have marked Fauchet’s formative years, and then tracking Fauchet’s career as a writer through archived copies of his essays, this biography explains what ideas and aspirations defined this revolutionary priest. Ultimately, this thesis hopes to meditate on the broader relationship on Church and Republic, questioning whether these two bodies exist in simple dialectic.