Paris: Capitale religieuse sous le Second Empire (review)

Abstract

In the famous phrase of Walter Benjamin, Paris was "the capital of the nineteenth century." For Benjamin, and for countless other historians, Paris took on this role because more than any other city it was the representative site for the triumphant bourgeoisie, who celebrated there a secular culture of consumption in a framework of grand boulevards and civic monuments. The central figure in the history of Paris was Baron Haussmann, the prefect of Paris for most of the Second Empire, whose reconstruction of the city in the 1850's and 1860's continues to fascinate scholars and to shape the experience of visitors to the city of light. For Jacques-Olivier Boudon, however, this standard version of the history of Paris neglects its position as a center of religious life, a development that he sees as culminating in the "religious haussmannisation" of the Second Empire.