A More Secular Europe, Divided by the Cross‏

After the feeding frenzy, the sharks, sated and relaxed, always wax philosophical.

Following the French Revolution, the French were in the market for a new, non-hierarchical hierarchy to usher in a new day. They had risen above Christianity, its divisiveness and its rules (and rulers.) With blood dripping from the chandeliers, the Cult of Reason emerged, a humanistic and abstract concept purporting to hold Reason as a sacred guiding principle. Appropriate unrestrained celebrations and parties ensued. Unreasonable behavior became the disorder of the day.

A schism developed led by Robespierre. Tiptoeing carefully through the corpses, he argued that Reason was only a means to an end, Virtue. (It is really amazing when one thinks of all this.) He proclaimed the existence of God, the immorality of the soul and the social responsibilities such beliefs implied. Robespierre declared a national celebration of the Cult of the Supreme Being and it would be held annually. No less a person than David designed the event on and around an artificial mountain. Not surprisingly, Robespierre was the chief celebrant.

Eventually the Wheel of High-minded Principle turned again. The oxymoronic Committee of Public Safety led by Robespierre was deposed, its members arrested and guillotined. This extension of The Terror is strangely pointed to as the end of The Terror.

It took the pinnacle of the Revolution, the great republican Napoleon Bonaparte, to ban the Cult officially.