CLAUDE LEFORTthey project onto it their own union, that their affects are precipitated in an amorous
identification with that body. If we read him carefully, we find that Michelet in fact
combines two arguments that, while they are connected, do not overlap.
The first relates the political law of the ancien re ́gime to religious law—indeed, it
would not be going too far to say that the one is derived from the other. Christianity
proves to be both the system that shaped the monarchy and the body of institutions that
supports it. This is in fact obvious from the very plan of the Introduction: the first part is
entitled ‘‘Of Religion in the Middle Ages’’ and the second, ‘‘Of the Former Monarchy.’’
Michelet therefore immediately formulates the question: ‘‘Is the Revolution Christian or
anti-Christian? Logically and historically, this question comes before all others.’’ And the
answer is not long in coming: ‘‘On the stage, I still see only two great facts, two principles,
two actors, and two persons: Christianity and the Revolution.’’ He even goes so far as
to assert: ‘‘All the civic institutions that the Revolution invented either emanated from
Christianity, or were modeled on its forms and authorized by it.’’ From this point of view,
the schema is simple: Christianity is ‘‘the religion of grace, of free, arbitrary salvation, and
of the good pleasure of God.’’ The human monarchy is constructed in the image of the
divine monarchy: both govern on behalf of an elect. Arbitrary power, masked as justice,
has taken up its abode in society: it is found ‘‘with depressing regularity in political insti-
tutions.’’ It is a ‘‘carnal principle’’ that supports social organization, the division between
the orders, and the hierarchy of conditions; this is a principle that ‘‘puts justice and
injustice in the blood, that makes them circulate along with the flux of life from one
generation to the next.’’ The theologico-political system is, he suggests, such that it glori-
fies love, the personal relationship that exists between man and God, between man and
king; the spiritual notion of justice is materialized; love is put ‘‘in the place of law.’’ To
paraphrase freely, using the same terms that we used earlier: when the law is fully asserted
and when divine might and human might are condensed within a single person, Law is
imprinted upon power; Law as such is abolished; the motive behind obedience is no
longer fear, but a loving submission to the monarch. At the same time, the obverse of the
love demanded by Christianity is revealed to be its hatred of all who perturb order: ‘‘The
incredible furies of the Church during the Middle Ages,’’ the Inquisition, the books that
were burned, the people who were burned, the history of the Vaudois and the Albigenses.
Compared with that terror, the revolutionary Terror makes one smile. The love inspired
by the king also has its obverse: torture, the Bastille,lettres de cachet, and theLivre rouge.
But Michelet’s second argument, which first emerges in the articulation between the
first and second parts of the Introduction, takes a different direction. The might of the
king does not simply descend from the heights of Christian arbitrariness; it is also con-
structed by his subjects. It is they who built ‘‘this sanctuary, this refuge: the altar of the
kingdom.’’ It is they who invented ‘‘a series of legends and myths embroidered and ampli-
fied by all the efforts of genius: the holy king who was more of a priest than the priests
himself in the thirteenth century, the knight-king in the sixteenth century, the good king
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