page_title: Godefroy Calès
section_title: A republican «fourtyeighter» deputy of the Mountain
hierarchical_section_title: Godefroy Calès / Biography / A republican «fourtyeighter» deputy of the Mountain
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Buffet. Lithographe.- Portrait collectif de 16 Représentants à leurs bancs de l'Assemblée sur 2 rangs. Estampe in revue "La Montagne", Léotaud, Éditeur, quai Saint-Michel, 11,
context_page_description: Jean Marie Noël Godefroy Calès was a French physician and politician. He was born on March 21, 1799 in Saint-Denis and died on July 25, 1868 in Villefranche-de-Lauragais.
context_section_description: Godefroy Calès was a very popular and advanced Republican militant in his département, and was elected on 23 April 1848, representative of Haute-Garonne at the Constituent National Assembly of the new Republic (Second Republic) declared after the Revolution of February 1848 and the overthrow of King Louis Philippe. These elections were the first to be held by universal suffrage since 1792.
  Calès sat first, until May 26, 1849, in the « Committee of the Cults », a parliamentary committee of 42 members established to consider the question of a possible revision of the Concordat concluded with the Catholic Church in 1801, and consider the project of a complete Separation of the Churches and the State. The majority of the members of the committee, like a large part of the French, not wanting to reiterate the excesses of the revolution of 1789 in religious matters, and taking advantage of the climate of concord of the revolution of 1848, believed in the necessity and possibility of an agreement between Rome and the Republic, and wished to see negotiations open between Paris and the Holy See, in order to give the Concordat a new and more liberal foundation. They did not wish to see however the Concordat abrogated unilaterally. They also rejected the idea of a complete separation between the church and the state.
  In the assembly, Calès sat with the extreme-left group of the Mountain (French: La Montagne, whose members sat on the highest benches of the Assembly), like his uncle Jean-Marie Calès half a century before (in 1792) at the National Convention. This group, in 1848, was led and organized by Alexandre Ledru-Rollin and comprising sixty-six deputies such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Pierre Leroux, Victor Schœlcher or Félicité Robert de Lamennais, some of the pioneers of socialism in history. Calès attempted to defend the political achievements and the important social benefits obtained after the Revolution of February 1848 against the attacks of the moderate Republicans and of the party of Order (a political group formed by monarchists and conservatives, led by prominent members including Adolphe Thiers, Francois Guizot, Odilon Barrot, and Alexis de Toqueville), who were the majority in the assembly. Thus, Calès violently opposed the reactionary policy of the Assembly and voted constantly with the montagnarde left and often with the associated independent extreme left (in particular with deputies such as Étienne Arago, Victor Considerant et Edgar Quinet).
  He maintained a relationship of friendship with the latter (famous writer, philosopher, poet, historian, professor at the Collège de France and republican politician), which continued later with his son Jean Jules Godefroy Calès. Edgar Quinet and his wife, Hermione Ghikère Asaky, frequently visited the Calès in the family home of Villefranche-de-Lauragais and maintained an epistolary relationship. Madame Quinet wrote later:
  « It is a family adored in the country, respected by its opponents: since 89, leaders of the Lauragais democracy from father to son. From the Conventional [Jean-Marie Calès], to the representative of the Constituent Assembly [Godefroy Calès], all republicans, men of heart. Jules Calès, our friend, is indeed the worthy son of a worthy father »
  — Madame Edgar Quinet
caption: Collective Portrait of 16 Representatives of "the Mountain" at their banks of the Assembly over 2 ranks. (Buffet. Lithograph. Engraving in revue "La Montagne", Léotaud, Publisher, quai Saint-Michel, 11. From up left to right: Considerant, Lagrange, Proudhon, Lammenais, Bac, Arago, de la Drôme, Bernard. From bottom left to right: Flocon, Ledru Rollin, Sarrut, Mathieu, Barbès, Raspail, Pyat, Leroux)
exif: {}