Anti-Saints: The New Golden Legend by Sylvain Maréchal (review)

Sylvain Maréchal (1750–1803), editor of the radical newspaper Révolutions de Paris and admirer of Blaise Pascal, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is very often associated with skeptic and atheist philosophers of the enlightenment period. Early in his writings, he questions the validity and truth about Christianity, Judaism and Islam, and their important elements, aiming to replace them with a different religion based on Family, Virtue and Reason. Maréchal advocates in a moralizing way the familial structure with the oldest male as patriarchal ruler. After publishing the Honest Man’s Almanac in 1788, he lost his position as an aide-librarian at the College of the Four Nations and was sentenced to four months in prison. From this moment on, he made every effort to remain anonymous in his de-christianization and atheist campaign to avoid further prosecutions.

Sheila Delany translated Nouvelle légende dorée, ou Dictionnaire des saintes by Sylvain Maréchal using the 1790 edition from Stanford University. The French book has two volumes, and Maréchal’s initials appear in a line saying: “Written by S.M. the author of the Honest Man’s Almanac.” Maréchal’s works on this subject also include the Law Project Preventing the Teaching of Reading Skills to Women and the Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Atheists, which show his misogynistic and anti-religious views. All these titles show the inconsistencies that characterized the French Revolution. Religious and anti-religious sentiments were both powerful forces and intellectual options leading or demoralizing the newly formed republic. A lot of jokes played on the idea of melting down gold or silver saints and sending them away to work miracles.

Maréchal chose as a genre a female-legendary with erotic undertones. A common theme of this parody is the description of women who enter the convent for reasons other than faith. Sheila Delany sees Maréchal’s style in the “Translator’s Note” as floridly pompous, casual, and colloquial, meant to express disdain for all things ecclesiastical. This deconstruction of a medieval genre, the hagiography, in all its manifestations, is one of the first destabilizing projects that Maréchal undertakes against religion in general and women in particular. The other main component of this project is to deconstruct religious notions relating to women—such as sanctity, devotion, miracle, vision, canonization, and beatification—thereby separating them from religion, education, reforms, and teaching opportunities. Maréchal says that he attaches himself to the most edifying features of each saint, but sanctity for him remains a pious farce, chimera, or absurdity. The legendary invites overt audience participation and critical reception. Maréchal wants to convince the female reader that one can sometimes be a saint and still do great things. He calls the well-intentioned reader, the daughters of the Lord, and the moaning doves to learn from these examples and not to make rash vows prematurely. In other words, women should be guided by nature, which is just as good, not by faith; and none of them should take the details of this dictionary of saints literally and put them into practice.

Maréchal’s attitude in this legendary veers between anti-women and anti-clergy due to moral and financial abuses from prerevolutionary centuries. Religion heaps up mountains of martyrs, on which it places the foundations of its blood-spattered edifice, and women vow themselves blindly to celibacy, for they believed that there was no other way to please God, who expressly recommended that humanity should multiply. Religion legitimizes everything, even suicide, says Maréchal, since in the legends: Saint Appoline’s teeth were broken; Saint Berenice chose to drown than renounce her faith; Saint Christine had her tongue cut out; and another seven virgins were condemned to be raped and drowned. From the early Christians to sectarian persecutions, from isolated to self-mortified nuns, Maréchal recounts and mocks numerous martyrdoms suffered by women, where violence was used as a...