Abstract
The pantheonization of Abbé Grégoire in 1989, alongside Monge and Condorcet, sparked off unexpected debates that focused not only on his activities as a priest who rallied to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, but also on his role in the emancipation of the Jews. Until then, Grégoire had remained in the collective memory as a great promoter of emancipation, notably with his Essai sur la régénération physique, morale et politique des Juifs, published on the eve of the Revolution. It was for this reason, in particular, that Robert Badinter, after having prefaced a reprint of the Essay in 1988, strongly supported Grégoire's entry into the Pantheon. However, others pointed out that Grégoire's text was ambiguous, to say the least, and that certain passages reiterated the worst anti-Jewish stereotypes.
To avoid any anachronism, we need to return to the context of 1780 and the competition organized by the Académie de Metz. The edition of all the competition texts, recently published by Pierre Birnbaum (Seuil, 2017), makes it possible to approach the question in all its complexity. Gregory's text contains passages of virulent anti-Judaism that should not be ignored. Yet the whole is a denunciation of the persecution Jews have endured for centuries, and a call for tolerance. The whole " paradox of regeneration " (Alyssa Sepinwall) is here : Gregory insists on the supposed defects and vices of the Jews, the better to show the deplorable state into which, he says, persecution has reduced them. It is therefore possible, he asserts, to " regenerate " them, to completely transform their mores and customs and integrate them into society. A mixture of injustice and tolerance, of deplorable commonplaces and philanthropic generosity, Grégoire's text is geared towards the emancipation of the Jews, but with a view to their assimilation, or even conversion.
In autumn 1789, Grégoire once again pleads the cause of the Jews, but the tone has changed. It was no longer a question of coercive conditions for regeneration, but of the rights of man and citizen, to be enjoyed by all. Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre went even further, in a speech he gave onDecember 23 1789, from which we generally retain the phrase : " The Jews must be denied everything as a nation, and granted everything as individuals ", and turned it into the motto of an assimilationist policy, which is a misinterpretation. As several historians have shown, most recently Maurice Samuels, who developed this point in Le Droit à la différence. L'universalisme français et les Juifs (La Découverte, 2022), the access of Jews to full citizenship, finally acquired onSeptember 27 1791, did not imply any linguistic, cultural or religious renunciation.
From this point on, it's possible to tie up a few loose threads from previous sessions. Revolutionary universalism is not a block, nor a dogma set in stone, but a polemical and political field in perpetual mutation. It is plural, derived from the competing languages of the universal developed by the philosophers of the Enlightenment. Whether we're talking about foreigners, slaves, women or Jews, the issues are different, but the problems are in part the same : each time, we find the same tensions between the ideal of unlimited extension of rights and the principle of enclosure of the political community, between the ideal of uniformity that underpins the national project and the acceptance of differences in the name of religious and cultural pluralism. Since 1789, and throughout the two centuries that followed, it has been the subject of interpretations and reinterpretations, debates and conflicts, which we have inherited today.
