page_title: François-Jean de la Barre
section_title: Events
hierarchical_section_title: François-Jean de la Barre / Events
caption_attribution_description: Monument élevé par le Prolétariat à l'Émancipation intégrale de la Pensée humaine. En commémoration du Martyre du Chevalier de la Barre supplicié à Abbeville le 1er Juillet 1766, à l'âge de 19 ans, pour avoir omis de saluer une procession. 7 Juillet 1907
context_page_description: François-Jean Lefebvre de la Barre was a young French nobleman. He was tortured and beheaded before his body was burnt on a pyre along with Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary nailed to his torso. La Barre is often said to have been executed for not saluting a Roman Catholic religious procession, though other charges of a similar nature were laid against him.
  In France, Lefebvre de la Barre is widely regarded a symbol of the victims of Christian religious intolerance, along with Jean Calas and Pierre-Paul Sirven, all championed by Voltaire. A second replacement statue to de la Barre stands near the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Paris at the summit of the butte Montmartre, the highest point in Paris and an 18th arrondissement street nearby the Sacré-Cœur is also named after Lefebvre de la Barre.
  Lefebvre de la Barre was a descendant of Antoine Lefèbvre de La Barre, a governor of the French Antilles and then New France.
context_section_description: On 9 August 1765, the wooden crucifix on a bridge in Abbeville was vandalized. Catholicism was then the state religion of France and the religion of the vast majority of the French public, especially in the devout town of Abbeville, where this act caused widespread shock and anger. Voltaire says that the bishop of Amiens roused the furor of the faithful and asked churchgoers to reveal all they could about the case to the civilian judges, under pain of excommunication; however, Chassaigne says that he came (at the town fathers' request) to calm emotions but that the ceremony had the opposite effect. The church was obliged under secular law to make the proclamations looking for witnesses (Voltaire mentions these proclamations, without clarifying that fact). Nobody actually revealed anything about the vandalism itself, but Du Maisniel de Belleval, a local judge who had quarreled with young la Barre, gathered damaging evidence against a group of friends (possibly not realizing his own son was part of the group).
  Among other things, it came out that three young men, Gaillard d'Etallonde, Jean-François de la Barre, and Moisnel had not removed their hats when a Corpus Christi procession went by. This incident is often cited as the main basis for the charges. But numerous other blasphemies were alleged as well, including defecation on another crucifix, singing impious songs and spitting on religious images.
  Soon, Douville de Maillefeu (son of a former mayor) and Belleval's own son Saveuse were also implicated. But these two along with d'Etallonde - also the son of a former mayor - managed to flee, and ultimately only d'Etallonde was named (in absentia) along with la Barre in the sentence. (Though no culprit was identified in the specific attack, Moisnel testified that he had seen d'Etallonde strike the statue with his cane on previous occasions. D'Etallonde appears in much of the testimony as the leader and instigator of the group of friends.) The only two who ended up in custody - Moisnel and la Barre - were both orphans and from outside Abbeville.
  During the inquiry, la Barre's bedroom was searched and among his mainly pornographic prohibited books, Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary was found - providing a pretext to blame the Philosophes for the young men's misbehavior.
  On 20 February 1766, Duval de Soicourt and two other local judges handed down the sentence:
  Regarding Jean-Francois Lefebvre, chevalier de La Barre, we declare him convicted of having taught to sing and sung impious, execrable and blasphemous songs against God; of having profaned the sign of the cross in making blessings accompanied by foul words which modesty does not permit repeating; of having knowingly refused the signs of respect to the Holy Sacrament carried in procession by the priory of Saint-Pierre; of having shown these signs of adoration to foul and abominable books that he had in his room; of having profaned the mystery of the consecration of wine, having mocked it, in pronouncing the impure terms mentioned in the trial record over a glass of wine which he held in his hand and then drunken the wine; of having finally proposed to Petignat, who was serving mass with him, to bless the cruets while pronouncing the impure words mentioned in the trial record.
  In reparation of which, we condemn him to make honorable amend, in smock, head bare and a rope around his neck, holding in his hands a burning candle of two pounds before the principal door of the royal church... of Saint-Wulfram, where he will be taken in a tumbrel by the executioner who will attach before and behind him a sign on which will be written, in large letters impious one; and there, being on his knees, will confess his crimes...; this done, will have the tongue cut out and will then be taken in the said tumbrel to the public marketplace of this city to have his head cut off on a scaffold; his body and his head will then be thrown on a pyre to be destroyed, burnt, reduced to ashes and these thrown to the wind. We order that before the execution of the said Lefebvre de La Barre the ordin
caption: La Barre Monument at Abbeville
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