France and the Cult of the Sacred Heart: An Epic Tale for Modern Times (review)

The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus atop Montmartre is considered a must-see site for tourists in Paris—if not for the gaudy edifice, certainly for its panoramic view. Very few who visit it, however, are familiar with the story behind the basilica or the devotion to which it is consecrated, and even many historians fail to understand why during the early years of the Third Republic the Sacred Heart was central to a cultural and political struggle over French national identity. In a masterful narrative that takes the reader to a number of integral episodes involving this Catholic devotion, Raymond Jonas illustrates how the Sacred Heart cult was closely bound to the fortunes of France between the apex of absolutism and the emergence of the belle époque.

Jonas begins his survey of the Sacred Heart with Marguerite-Marie Alacoque, a Visitationist nun who did not initiate the devotion but nonetheless expedited it through revelation of her visions of Jesus in the 1670s. From there the author takes us to Marseille in 1720, when the plague returned to devastate Provence. Monseigneur de Belsunce, the bishop of Marseille and no stranger to Marguerite-Marie’s message, consecrated his diocese to the Sacred Heart in an effort to appease an angry God. The entreaty worked; Marseille was spared and the consecration set a critical precedent. The devotion’s next notable appearance came during the French Revolution, as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and oath crisis divided both Church and nation in two. The pantheonization of Voltaire, Jonas tells us, confirmed to refractory priests and their supporters that the Revolution was of impious origin. From there it was only a short jump to the Sacred Heart becoming the symbol of Counterrevolution among peasants of the west fighting in the War of Vendée and royalist emigrés quick to sacralize the martyred Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. As often was the case with all that was revolution (and counterrevolution), the devotion did not die. Indeed, the Sacred Heart gained the favor of Ultras during the Restoration, in spite of the government’s advocacy of historical amnesia.

Jonas shows that perhaps the most crucial locus for devotion to the Sacred Heart was the année terrible of 1870–71, during which not only France was invaded by Prussia and then internally afflicted by the Paris Commune, but also Italian unification was achieved at the expense of Pius IX’s temporal power and the blood of French papal zouaves. The devotion was invoked in several instances for disparate purposes: to save the nation by way of expiation after the humiliating defeat at Sedan, to contextualize French volunteers fighting for the papacy with their Vendéen ancestors who had battled for the monarchy, to rally beleaguered French soldiers making a suicide attack against Prussian forces at Loigny. Shortly after the année terrible conservative Catholic notables—many of whom sought the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy—proposed building a church to the Sacred Heart. National legislation helped acquire Montmartre and Paul Abadie’s Romano-Byzantine design was selected in the subsequent architectural competition. The basilica’s patrons led a fund raising campaign that guaranteed completion of the church, albeit over decades. Jonas concludes his tour of the Sacred Heart’s history by revealing the meaning of the mosaics adorning the dome of the basilica and describing the changing political and cultural climate in which the structure was completed. The laicization of public schools, the failure of the ralliement, and passage of the Separation Law of 1905 (by which the basilica became municipal property), reinstated the counterrevolutionary character of the Sacred Heart cult, but this, combined with the death of the comte de Chambord, the last Bourbon heir, reflected the growing marginalization of French Catholicism.

Two aspects of this book make it a remarkable read. The first is the author’s ability...