THE THEOLOGICO-POLITICAL?it must be added, he becomes sensitivized to a time that, while it does not exist outside
time, does not exist within time either: the time of a people, of the people who await their
incarnation, who are in a sense always invisible, but who reveal themselves for one mo-
ment in history—and who demand faith.
It must not be believed that the scene in Reims Cathedral is simply a phantasmagoria;
it is a condensation of many of the themes that determine the intellectual work which
went intoThe French Revolution. It is not necessary to identify all the references, even
though they are explicitly religious. The image of the Church appears in both the 1847
and 1869 prefaces. Michelet’s reply to those who mourn the fact that the Revolution could
not use the spirit of the Reformation to combat Catholicism is that it adopted no Church
for the very good reason that ‘‘it was itself a Church’’ (a criticism addressed specifically
to Quinet, although he is not mentioned by name). Michelet’s reply to those who criticize
his book and claim to be the heirs of the Girondins or the Jacobins is that he is reluctant
to argue with them because he ‘‘did not want to destroy the unity of the great Church.’’
But the mystical conception of the Revolution is at least as important as the words them-
selves, if not more so. The Revolution was, of course, an event that occurred in a specific
place, but, as he writes at one point and as he constantly suggests, ‘‘it knew nothing of
time or space.’’ The event was modeled on Christ’s appearance on earth. It bears witness
to the fullness of time, to use St. Paul’s expression, but it also abolishes time. It inaugu-
rates an era, but it escapes all temporal determination and represents a spiritual unity that
allows humanity to accede to its own presence. In that sense, it proves to be indestructible,
to exist outside the field of continuing political battles, and to condemn all attempts to
restore the old order as being in vain. With the Revolution, humanity rises above itself,
and henceforth it is only from these new heights that it can relate to itself and survey the
vicissitudes of its history. When he analyzes the Feˆte de la Fe ́de ́ration, Michelet adopts
the language of the theologian, and speaks of it as though it were France’s marriage with
France, as though it were modeled on the marriage between Christ and the Church or
that between the king and the kingdom. And when he returns to the theme of humanity’s
search for its own body, he evokes the moment when the world said to itself: ‘‘Oh, if only
I were one....Ifonly I could at last unite my scattered members, and assemble my
nations.’’ And when, in the 1869 Preface, he returns to 1790, he adds: ‘‘No otheragape,
no other communion was comparable to this.’’ In the same passage, he turns the war of
1792 into a ‘‘holy war.’’ We saw then ‘‘the absolute, infinite nature of sacrifice.’’ This is
enough for him to refute once more Quinet’s thesis that the Revolution could not find
new symbols: ‘‘Faith is all; form counts for little. What does it matter how the altar is
draped? It is still the altar of Right, of Truth, and of Eternal Reason. Not a stone from it
has been lost, and it waits peacefully.’’
It is the establishment of certainty and the new relationship that has been forged
between certainty and revelation, which bear witness to the reinscription of Michelet’s
thought within the matrix of the Christian religion. But we must never lose sight of the
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