Republican Calendar Research Articles

Unfulfilled Dreams? The Financial Situation of Workers in Paris and the Department of Loir-et-Cher between 1789 and 1795

The convening of the Estates General in France in 1789 raised high hopes in French society for change. The economic demands written down in the ledgers of complaints, such as the abolition of the guild system, the unification of taxes and their more equitable distribution, the abolition of customs duties and fees within the kingdom, can be categorized as inclusive economic institutions. Their introduction in France during the Revolution was expected to translate into an improvement in the financial conditions of the population. The purpose of this article is to present the changing financial situation of workers in Paris and the department of Loir-et-Cher between 1789 and 1795 in the context of the aforementioned institutions. Data from a survey of prices and wages conducted at the behest of the Committee of Public Safety, Paris police reports of 1795 and depreciation tables were used to show the change in the financial position of working families during the French Revolution. Demands from the ledgers of complaints against the Estates General of 1789 were used to determine the title workers' "dreams." Assessing the change in the financial situation of workers required calculations that took into account, among other things, the size of the average working family's demand for foodstuffs or the change in France regarding the number of working days per year after the elimination of the old holidays and the introduction of the republican calendar. During the period under review, the financial situation of workers in the Loir-et-Cher department worsened due to high inflation – turning at times into hyperinflation – despite the implementation of most of the demands of the ledgers of complaints by the revolutionary authorities. In the case of Paris, the assessment is not so clear-cut. Thanks to the rationing of bread and meat in the capital, and their sale at a discounted price by the authorities, the living conditions of working families in 1795 were better or comparable to those at the beginning of the revolution. The article sheds new light on the changing financial situation of workers in Paris and the department of Loir-et-Cher in the context of the implementation of workers' demands recorded during the revolution in the ledgers of complaints to the Estates General of 1789, thus filling a gap in historiography.

Nominacja elementów chronologicznych w kalendarzu republikańskim

The republican calendar created during the French Revolution is the most radical reform project of the Gregorian calendar of the modern era. The process of its creation and the structure of its components was based on the French reforms of measures and weights based on the metric decimal system introduced at that time. The number ten forms the basis for dividing the year into months and weeks. The new names of the months and all the days of the year are related to the French agrarian culture and natural phenomena occurring throughout the year in central France.

Analisa Pergeseran Kalender Gregorian Menjadi Kalender Dunia

The Julius calendar or also known as the Old Style calendar is a calendar pioneered by Julius Caesar as a reform of the Roman republican calendar. The Julian calendar was formed at the time of knowing a difference of about 3 months in the calendar that was in effect at that time, namely the Ancient Roman Calendar which had been replaced long ago. The Ancient Roman calendar set the length of a year at only 365 days, ignoring the remaining days of the actual solar year. This is known when the day of the harvest season coincided with a holiday among the Romans which actually fell in summer but occurred in winter, where the number of days in the Roman year was shorter than the number of days in the solar year. Therefore, Julius Caesar and assisted by a Greek astronomer named Sosigenes corrected the error of the Roman calendar system at that time by making one year 365 days. Then the Gregorian calendar was born. This calender is the Gregorian calender or it can also be called the New Style Calender reformed from the Julius calender. The Gregorian calender is the most widely used calender in the western world and is the standard for calculating international days today although initially rejected by some countries.Keywords: Julius calender, Gregorian calender, Gregorian calender rejection.

Spilling Ink and Cleaning Oil

Spilling Ink and Cleaning Oil

Bononia, the Roman Bologna: Archaeoastronomy and Chronology

In an article written by Giulio Magli on the orientation of the Roman towns, Bononia, the Roman Bologna, is given as a specific example to support Magli’s thesis on the existence of preferred solar alignments of the urban layout. Assuming that the Roman towns had been oriented to the sunrise on a given day of the year, Magli suggested possible preferred alignments according to Roman festivals, in particular the festival of Terminalia. Of Bononia, we know the date of foundation as Roman colony in 189 BC, given by Livy. We will show that, according to Roman chronology and Republican calendar, it is impossible that Bononia had been oriented to the sunrise on the day given by Livy. The discrepancy is huge. Moreover, the direction of the decumanus cannot match the dates of Terminalia for 189 BC. However, if we consider that the layout that we see today is that of a recolonization under Octavian, we can have a certain agreement between the direction of the decumanus and the sunrise on the day of Terminalia (within three days), and a perfect agreement with the day of the festival of Armilustrium. In the proposed discussion, we will stress in particular the problem of the discrepancy between the historical dates of Roman chronology and the Julian dates, those that we can find according to an astronomical analysis. This problem is general and must be properly considered in any archaeoastronomical analysis of Roman towns.

The Eclipses in Livy's Ab Urbe Condita

Titus Livius (Livy) is mentioning some eclipses in his monumental history of Rome, entitled Ab Urbe Condita Libri. For two of these eclipses, Livy is also reporting the dates. One occurred during the Ludi Apollinares, in the year of the consulship of Lucius Cornelius. Livy dated the eclipse 11 Quintilis. Astronomy dated it 14 March 190 BC (Julian date). The other eclipse is that at the time of the Pydna battle and it is the lunar eclipse of 21 June 168 BC (Julian date). Livy tells that it occurred during the night between 3 and 4 September. The differences between astronomical and historical dates are due to the manner the lunisolar Roman republican calendar was managed in that period by the college of Roman pontifices. Here we discuss the eclipses reported by Livy to point out the problems of the Roman chronology, when it is involving the republican calendar.

De la botanique des députés révolutionnaires aux noms botaniques donnés aux nouveau-nés / From the botany of revolutionary deputies to the botanical name given to the newborn children

Our parliamentary during the French Revolution reformed the weight and measure system and the calendar. The «republican calendar», voted in 1793, no longer contained the names of saints : they were replaced by names of agricultural or botanical importance. 261 phytonyms were inserted : cereals, about fifty vegetables, about thirty fruit, numerous officinal plants, flowers, etc. Many of these names have been used as first names for newborn babies, especially those suggesting pleasant and smiling ideas, such as beautiful flowers.

The event of absolute freedom

It is argued that the critique of the French Revolution that Hegel develops in the Phenomenology of Spirit can be fruitfully understood as exposing the problematic relationship that the revolution had to its own character as an historical event. Hegel’s critique of the revolution’s operative commitment to an abstract, ahistorical rationality is explored by way of a study of the significance of the revolutionaries’ attempt to institute a radical new calendar system: it is argued that the Republican Calendar provides an exemplary case for understanding the particular nature of the tension Hegel identifies between the domain of historical particularity and eventfulness, on the one hand, and the universal, timeless character of abstract reason, on the other.

Matthew Shaw, Time and the French Revolution: The Republican Calendar, 1789–Year XIV; Sanja Perovic, The Calendar in Revolutionary France: Perceptions of Time in Literature, Culture, Politics

Matthew Shaw, <i>Time and the French Revolution: The Republican Calendar, 1789–Year XIV</i>; Sanja Perovic, <i>The Calendar in Revolutionary France: Perceptions of Time in Literature, Culture, Politics</i>

If Only the French Republicans Had Known This: The Week as a Social Fact

During the French Revolution and inspired by the Enlightenment, an attempt was made to replace the Gregorian calendar (which was based on ‘irrational’ overlapping cycles linked to religious celebrations) by the Republican calendar (which was based on ‘rational’ clearly nested cycles in accordance with the metric system). Although the starting point was an ideological and aesthetic expression of rationalism, this calendar also had to fulfill a coordinating and integrating function. Thus the calendric reform faced a tremendous challenge: re-creating a socio-temporal order. One of the crucial socio-temporal frameworks that guide daily behavior in Western societies is the 7-day cycle of the week. In the new calendar, the week was to be replaced by the 10-day cycle or the décade, which turned out the greatest stumbling block for calendar-reformation. Theoretically this is explained by the social nature of time and the ‘second nature’ of time reckoning, but the unawareness of a socially established weekly rhythm in our daily behavior is hard to illustrate. Today, however, society is full of traces of so-called ‘big data’ that humans leave behind. This paper uses ‘big data’ on re-charges of electronic keys to show that even though a 10-day re-charging cycle is proposed, a 7-day re-charging cycle will surface.

Time and the French Revolution: The Republican Calendar, 1789-Year XIV

Time and the French Revolution: The Republican Calendar, 1789-Year XIV

Time and the French Revolution: The Republican Calendar, 1789–Year XIV by Matthew Shaw

Time and the French Revolution: The Republican Calendar, 1789–Year XIV by Matthew Shaw

Le rayonnement de Bayle ed. by Philippe de Robert, et al

half of the twentieth century is serious and solid. The work is well illustrated, with 26 colored plates and eleven images. Despite its high cost, this is a good read for anyone interested in French and Belgian colonial history or in the history of the well-respected ninth art. Indiana University-Purdue University, Rosalie A. Vermette Indianapolis, emerita ROBERT, PHILIPPE DE, CLAUDINE PAILHÈS, et HUBERT BOST, éd. Le rayonnement de Bayle. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2010. ISBN 978-0-7294-0995-7. Pp. ix + 319. $115. Pierre Bayle is not widely known by American students of French nowadays , and more is the pity. Even the few pages of the Dictionnaire historique et critique that previous generations usually read could remind the budding scholar of how topical this laborious and erudite writer was, with his love of justice, pleas for toleration, ideals of community, and his irony. Bayle is also a direct link between the late seventeenth-century current of freethinkers and the eighteenthcentury philosophes, with most of the latter acknowledging him as a major source of their new way of thinking, and with the editors of the Encyclopédie beholden to him as the model for an ingenious way of concealing bold ideas in footnotes . But the rayonnement of the title is not specifically concerned with such cases of immediate literary influence. Rather, approximately half of the essays in this collection give evidence of a longer-distance radiance, that of Bayle’s thought on modern scholars. The other half concentrate on biographical and historical contexts that elucidate the formation of that thought. It should be stressed, however , that all the essays consider both aspects to some degree. On Bayle’s thought, Pierre Joxe and Jean Baubérot credit him with preparing the way for modern secular culture, the former by presenting Bayle’s objective stance towards Islam, the latter in an intriguing comparison between the overt violence of the seventeenth century and the covert violence present in our own consumer society. Olivier Abel examines Bayle’s attempts to reconcile Hobbes’s insistence on the supremacy of political power with Milton’s on religious belief. Marianne Carbonnier-Burkard studies accounts of dying in the Dictionnaire. The relation to the Other and its consequences in societies composed of idolators or atheists is examined by Isabelle Delpla. The stances of one Other, Bayle’s adversary Jurieu, are discussed by Patrick Cabanel, who makes the standard negative portrait of Jurieu more nuanced. While many of the essays in the collection touch in some way on religious toleration, two offer specific analyses. Ghislain Waterlot approaches the notion of general toleration from the perspective of the individual conscience, and Jean-Michel Gros recounts two particular cases of Protestant non-toleration. On the biographical and historical contexts of Bayle’s thought, several contributors turn to his correspondence for insights. Antony McKenna and Annie Leroux explain the database Arcane and use it to construct networks of the young Bayle’s relations. Relations with a friend of Bayle, Du Rondel, and with his brothers, are the subjects of the pieces by Edward James and Hubert Bost; Ruth Whelan offers an analysis of friendship in general in Bayle’s work. The significance of place is studied in Luc Daireaux’s account of Bayle’s stay in Normandy 406 FRENCH REVIEW 86.2 in 1674–75 and in Hans Bots’s examination of Bayle’s mixed feelings about Holland, where he lived in exile. Feelings were not mixed about his much-loved native region (Foix), whose culture, society, and economy are described in illuminating detail in Claudine Pailhès’s article. On a broader scale, Bayle’s reaction to major political events on the European scene and his vision of a cosmopolitan Protestant civilization are treated in the pieces by Philippe Joutard and Myriam Yardeni. Finally, Robert gives an explication of the deathbed message in which Bayle states that he dies “en philosophe chrétien.” This volume includes a bibliography of publications on Bayle from 2010 back through 1900. It is of great interest to libraries supporting a graduate program. Georgia State University Kathleen Hardesty Doig SHAW, MATTHEW. Time and the French Revolution: The Republican Calendar, 1789–Year XIV. Rochester, NY...

Religion and the Politics of Time: Holidays in France from Louis XIV through Napoleon (review)

Reviewed by: Religion and the Politics of Time: Holidays in France from Louis XIV through Napoleon James Friguglietti Religion and the Politics of Time: Holidays in France from Louis XIV through Napoleon. By Noah Shusterman. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. 2010. Pp. xviii, 299. $74.95. ISBN 978-0-813-21725-3.) By the end of the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church controlled the calendar just as the liturgical year organized the daily lives of millions of ordinary individuals. In Noah Shusterman's words: "In Old Regime France, people perceived and understood the passage of time through a religious framework" (p. 57). In this richly detailed study, a revised version of his doctoral dissertation completed at the University of California, Berkeley in 2004, the author examines the "politics of time" in the largest Catholic country of Europe over 175 [End Page 819] years. Not only did the liturgical calendar with its fifty-two Sundays require attendance at Mass but also marked these as obligatory days of rest (fêtes chomées). It also mandated observance of various sacred holidays, most notably Easter and Christmas. Days devoted to local saints added to the proliferation of fêtes chomées. According to Shusterman, in the mid-1600s an average of thirty-three weekdays were religious holidays. By the end of the 1700s, however, this number had fallen to only eighteen (p. 38). Such a gradual reduction in holidays was achieved by bishops who recognized that idleness on such days of rest resulted in heavy drinking, debauchery, and even devil worship. In addition, excessive days of religious observance when labor was forbidden deprived poorer Frenchmen of income needed to support their families. Consequently, both religious and economic reasons induced bishops to reduce the number of holidays either by outright suppression or by transferring their celebration to a Sunday (p. 83). But it was the Revolution of 1789, with its brutal assault on the Catholic Church, that instituted state control over the politics of time. During the Terror the republican government sought to replace the Catholic liturgical year with a new, secular calendar that would regenerate France while rationalizing time. This republican calendar, with its twelve equal months composed of three décades each, and a leap year of five or six days, brought the state into sharp conflict with traditional French society. As Shusterman observes, the new decimalized calendar "was the national government's first attempt to regulate time without the aid of the Catholic Church" (p. 138). After the Terror ended in 1794, traditional religious practices regained much of their authority. Although enforcement of the republican calendar declined, it remained official, at least for state purposes. However, after the coup of 18 fructidor year V (September 4, 1797), the government of the Directory moved vigorously to enforce its usage in everyday life. The author devotes considerable space to the period 1797-99, when strict measures were introduced throughout the country mandating that Tenth Day (décadi) and national festivals were obligatory days of rest. Marriages could now only be celebrated on Tenth Day, and fairs and markets were strictly regulated. Enforcement, however, remained difficult. Napoleon's seizure of power in November 1799 led to the undoing of the republican calendar. To improve relations with the Catholic Church, the new master of France relaxed the Directory's strict enforcement policy and, by 1806, completely abandoned the Revolutionary system of time. Simultaneously, thanks to an indult issued by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Caprara, even most traditional religious holidays also were eliminated or relegated to Sunday observance. As Shusterman concludes, "There was a shift in the authority over the holidays from the Catholic Church to the French State" (p. 242). [End Page 820] The author's study rests on extensive research in the French archives. His bibliography alone occupies twenty-two closely printed pages. Shusterman's direct prose enables the reader to follow his argument with little difficulty. In summary, Religion and the Politics of Time is a model of both scholarly thoroughness and skillful analysis. It provides a valuable source for historians of religion and society in France over a wide swath of time. It is an impressive achievement. James Friguglietti...

The French Republican Calendar: Time, History and the Revolutionary Event

AbstractThis paper recovers the power, real and symbolic, that the French revolutionaries associated with calendar time. The Republican calendar was crucial in establishing the French Revolution as an irreversible rupture with the past but never succeeded as a viable time‐frame. Drawing on this double‐sided aspect of revolutionary time, this paper demonstrates some of the difficulties in conflating revolutionary rupture with a ‘modern’ experience of time. It does so by contrasting the Revolution's intentional time‐frame, which was global and cosmological, with the shorter historical time‐frame of revolutionary events, in which the Revolution failed to institute a total rupture with the past.

Religion and the Politics of Time: Holidays in France from Louis XIV through Napoleon

Originating in a doctoral dissertation, Noah Shusterman's Religion and the Politics of Time: Holidays in France from Louis XIV through Napoleon, traces the history of calendar reforms in the ancien régime, the innovations of the republican calendar, the centralisation of religious holidays, and Napoleon's restoration of Gregorian calendar. He draws upon the hints and details hidden in numerous departmental and municipal archives as well as the official recordings of the various governments and ministries. Existing studies on holidays of the pre-industrial period and the period of industrialisation mainly focus on the economic aspect of this issue; Shusterman's presentation of the political perspective is refreshing. By analysing the roots of the transformation in the ancien régime, he convincingly argues that the decline in the number of holidays was not the result of industrialisation, but in many ways prefigured the transition towards industrial society. Through rich local sources, Shusterman points out that during the ancien régime, the decision-maker in each diocese was the local bishop, who decided upon the observation of religious holidays, while taking into consideration any secular regulation. He shows that the centralisation and nationalisation of religious holidays had not happened in pre-industrial French society. When the French Catholic Church sought to reduce the number and to standardise holidays throughout France, given Enlightenment critiques of the church's practice in the area, the power to declare holidays was moved from individual dioceses to the centre, helping to unify and reduce the religious holidays nationwide yet more.

“THE MOMENT OF SOCIAL SCIENCE”: THEDECADE PHILOSOPHIQUEAND LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRENCH THOUGHT

The first issue of theDécade philosophiqueappeared on 29 April 1794. In all, fifty-four volumes of the journal were published between that date and 1807, when, on Napoleon's orders, it was forced to merge with theMercure français. TheDécadewas published three times a month (taking its name from its appearance on the tenth day of each month of the French republican calendar) and the periodical soon became one of the intellectual powerhouses of the French republic after Robespierre. But quite what, in this particular setting, an intellectual powerhouse might have been is still an open question. Alongside Immanuel Kant or Jeremy Bentham, and their vast and varied intellectual legacies, the significance of the dozens of writers, including Pierre-Jean-Georges Cabanis, Pierre-Samuel Dupont de Nemours and Jean-Baptiste Say, who contributed to theDécade, is now more difficult to specify. There have, of course, been several fine studies of theDécadeand its contributors, notably by Joanna Kitchen and Marc Régaldo, and more broadly by Sergio Moravia, Martin Staum and Cheryl Welch. But it is still somewhat easier to associate the periodical with a number of keywords, such asidéologieandscience sociale, than with anything comparable to those more comprehensively articulated bodies of thought that came to be labelled “idealism” or “utilitarianism”. “Ideologism” never seems to have existed, and certainly never caught on. But this very indeterminacy may still be an advantage. It may help to open up, both historically and analytically, rather more of the intellectual space once covered by the broad range of subjects and arguments that first helped to shape—and then came to be buried by—idealism and utilitarianism.

Une loi de l'Eglise et de l'Etat: Napoleon and the central administration of religious life, 1800 1815

In 1802 the Napoleonic government removed authority over religious holidays from the Gallican Church. In Old Regime France bishops decided which holidays were observed in their dioceses. The Republican Calendar had eliminated official recognition of Catholic holidays but not their widespread observance. Napoleon reinstated the Gregorian Calendar but not the holidays of the Old Regime. At his request, a papal indult eliminated the weekday observance of all but four Catholic holidays. The reform drew on the legacy of the Enlightenment, especially Montesquieu. The clergy of the Gallican Church oversaw the indult's execution, which was complicated by ambiguous wording. Napoleon attempted to merge religious and political obedience, so the best Christians would also be the best subjects, while making it clear that the government was the dominant power. The Restoration subsequently kept the indult in place, neither adding more holidays nor relinquishing authority over the matter.

O calendário republicano e a festa cívica do descobrimento do Brasil em 1890: versões de história e militância positivista

O texto aborda como os membros da Igreja Positivista do Brasil - IPB -, e alguns políticos aliados, se envolveram na proposição do Decreto 155-B de 14 de janeiro de 1890, que estabeleceu o calendário republicano de feriados oficiais, e como se empenharam para consolidá-lo na cultura política da Primeira República. Exemplifica-se tal movimento por meio da análise da festa de 3 de maio de 1890, decretada como o feriado em celebração do descobrimento do Brasil.

September-ideas of nature.

What is nature ? Three views are presented, each associated with the month of September. The French republican calendar symbolized the break with the past, the new months being named after plants and the seasons. In this case, nature stood for freedom from the ancient regime. The designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh took his inspiration from the natural world, here illustrated by 'The Harvest Moon'. For him, nature (particularly plants) gave an insight into the realm of eternal beauty. The third view of nature is illustrated by research related to fruit ripening. 'Cosuppression', discovered early in studies with transgenic fruit, is now understood as a variety ofRNA silencing. This is a natural mechanism by which plants control levels of gene expression using non-coding DNA. Nothing, apparently, is without function. All is directed to the one driving purpose of biological nature: evolutionary fitness. Freedom, beauty, fitness: three concepts that reflect the preoccupations of the times.