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‘Standing Upright Before the Heavens’: Metamorphoses of Customary Christianity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Giordana Charuty
Giordana Charuty*
Affiliation:
CNRS, Université de Paris X, EPHE, Paris

Abstract

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The methods employed by structuralist anthropology in the European area to free lived Christianity from its categorization as a popular religion steeped in ‘pagan relics’ also facilitate the analytical description of social practices and rituals that in France are part of the anti-clerical struggle of the late 19th century. More than forms of philosophical or militant atheism, the spiritualist movements introduce ‘Science’ as a symbolic entity in order to revive learning of counter-empirical ideas at the heart of a mode of religious transmission that persists today and takes on board the demands of secular societies for religious pluralism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , February 2005 , pp. 67 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2005

References

Notes

1. On the theoretical thinking that accompanied this research, see D. Fabre (1989), ‘Le symbolisme en question’, in M. Ségalen (ed.), L’Autre et le semblable, Paris: CNRS, pp. 61-78; J. P. Albert (1990), ‘Destins du mythe dans le christianisme médiéval’, L’Homme 113: 53-72; G. Charuty (ed.) (1995), Nel paese del tempo. Antropologia dell’Europa cristiana, Naples: Liguori, pp. 1-14; G. Charuty (2001), ‘Du catholicisme méridional à l’anthropologie des sociétés chrétiennes’, in D. Albera, A. Blok and C. Bromberger (eds), L’Anthropologie de la Méditerranée. Anthropology of the Mediterranean, Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, MMSH, pp. 359-85.

2. See for example Études rurales, ‘Le retour des morts’, 1987, no. 105-6, and Hésiode. Cahiers d’ethnologie méditerranéenne, ‘La mort difficile’, 1994, no. 2. A new contextualization of E. De Martino’s pioneering work is suggested by C. Gallini (2000) in her introduction to the new edition of Morte e pianto rituale. Dal lamento funebre antico al pianto di Maria, Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, pp. vii-li (1st edn 1958 under the title Morte e pianto rituale nel mondo antico: dal lamento pagano al pianto di Maria).

3. This is the case, for instance, of the miller whose expertise as far as measurement is concerned makes him question the church’s teaching. This figure of the ‘unbeliever’ and people who fail to produce a Christian identity are analysed in G. Charuty (1997), Folie, mariage et mort. Pratiques chrétiennes de la folie en Europe occidentale, Paris: Seuil.

4. Too frequently cultural history claims for itself ideas that crop up everywhere in debates and which, because of this, should be deconstructed, which is not the same as doing a relativist reading of research in the sociology of science. I have unpacked the methodological implications of an ethnographic description of these social practices in (2001) ‘Le retour des métapsychistes’, L’Homme158-9, pp. 353-64.

5. Flammarion leaped to the defence of the monument ‘rising amid light and freedom’ in L’Astronomie, 1886, pp. 361-2.

6. The best study is by D. Chaperon (1998), Camille Flammarion. Entre astronomie et littérature, Paris/Lausanne: Imago. Themes related to Fourier are analysed by M. Nathan (1981), Le Ciel des fouriéristes. Habitants des étoiles et réincarnations de l’âme, Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon.

7. However, the ethnography of these festivals probably has some surprises in store for us…

8. L’Aurore, 9 June 1904, p. 1.

9. This correspondence is preserved in the Fonds Flammarion, dossier ‘Fête du Soleil’ at the Juvisy Observatory. I am grateful to the officers of the Astronomical Society of France, who are continuing the work of exploiting these archives, for facilitating my access to them. Especially J. Pernet and P. Fuentes, who is co-author, with P. Cotardière, of a biography (1994), Camille Flammarion, Paris: Flammarion, and ‘Camille Flammarion et les forces naturelles inconnues’, in B. Bensaude-Vincent and C. Blondel, Des savants face à l’occulte. 1870-1940, Paris: Editions La Découverte, pp. 105-23.

10. On the technical and cultural history of astronomical photography, and the respective positions of Janssen and Flammarion, see the presentations by Q. Bajac, F. Launay and D. Canguilhem (2000) in Dans le champ des étoiles. Les photographes et le ciel, 1850-2000, the catalogue for the exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay (16 June to 24 Sept. 2000) in Paris and the Staatsgalerie (23 Dec. 2000 to 1 Jan. 2001) in Stuttgart, Paris: Editions de la Réunion des musées nationaux.

11. In referring to E. Burnouf, La Science des religions, Flammarion was opting for Max Muller’s mythological school despite the criticisms of Sylvain Lévi and the French sociological school. A. Van Gennep (1949) in his turn rejected the ‘solstice’ explanation of St John’s fires, Manuel de folklore français, part 1, vol. 4.

12. A friend of Flammarion, the American dancer introduced a new dance aesthetic, celebrated by the Symbolists. See G. Lista (1994), Loïe Fuller. Danseuse de la Belle Époque, Paris: Stock.

13. In an undated note Raymond Roussel apologized for being unable to attend the festival, dossier ‘Fête du Soleil’.

14. As in the last scene from La Poussière de Soleils (1926). On the poetic transpositions of theories of time, see M. Tani (1988), ‘La mort et le temps. Raymond Roussel et Camille Flammarion’, Europe, no. 714, pp. 96-105, and especially A. Le Brun (1994), Vingt mille lieues sous les mots, Raymond Roussel, Paris: J.-J. Pauvert.

15. Dariex (1892), ‘Le recensement des hallucinations et le congrès international de psychologie expérimentale’, Annales des sciences psychiques, p. 136. This journal (1890-1920) was founded by Charles Richet to combat the lack of interest in medical circles as regards ‘metapsychic’ research. The second question, which was missing from Dariex’s study, was inspired by the English research by E. Gurney, F. Podmore and F. Myers (1886), Phantasms of the Living, translated into French in 1891 with the title Les hallucinations télépathiques.

16. 1895, Paris: Librairie spirite (1st German edn 1890). A Russian imperial counsellor, A. Aksakoff became known as an international expert in ‘transcendental photography’.

17. I analysed the experience of belief based on the use of photos of spirits in (1999): ‘La boîte aux ancêtres. Photographie et science de l’invisible’, Terrain 33, pp. 57-80. The explanation in terms of ‘convergence of interests and uncertainties’ is adopted by B. Bensaude-Vincent and C. Blondel (eds), op. cit. P. Geimer (1999) has done a magnificent job of reconstructing the photographic story of the holy shroud: ‘L’autorité de la photographie. Révélations d’un suaire’, Études photographiques, no. 6, pp. 67-99. The similarity between electric, magnetic and photographic processes as an anthropological paradigm of sensitivity was introduced by M. Frizot (1998), ‘L’image inverse. Le mode négatif et les principes d’inversion en photographie’, Études photographiques, no. 5, pp. 51-71.

18. Dossiers ‘Études psychiques’, Fonds Flammarion, Observatoire de Juvisy. Out of this whole correspondence, which continued until Flammarion’s death, around 5000 letters are today preserved, classified according to year.

19. H. Drévillon (1996) has demonstrated the importance of editorial practices in the 17th century in discrediting astrology: Lire et écrire l’avenir. L’astrologie dans la France du grand siècle (1610-1715), Paris: Champ Vallon. It is remarkable that in contrast the legitimation of new divinatory customs was once again effected via editorial practices.

20. Dieu dans la nature, vol. II, p. 522. In 1886 Flammarion joined the Ligue nationale contre l’athéisme, which participated in the fight within the ranks of ‘free thinkers’ between deists and atheists: G. Minois (1998), Histoire de l’athéisme, Paris: Fayard, p. 459.

21. The history of the Paris associations among which I carried out this ethnography can be found in M. Aubrée and F. Laplantine (1990), La Table, le Livre et les Esprits, Paris: J. C. Lattès, pp. 273-319.

22. This refers to the story type 1645, which is particularly widespread in western Germany, and some versions of which have been collected in France, England, Spain and Sicily. The meeting between two travellers in a foreign place gives access to the dream’s meaning by reuniting the two fragments of their respective dream experiences. See V. Chauvin (1897), ‘Le rêve du Trésor sur le pont’, Revue des traditions populaires, pp. 399-402 (and 1898, pp. 193-6).

23. The choice of these visual or linguistic signs fits the principle, revealed by T. Todorov (1978) with regard to patristic exegesis, for identifying the segments of a text that are susceptible to interpretation: Symbolisme et interpretation, Paris: Seuil. The poorer the linguistic meaning and the more limited its understanding, the more the evocation grafts itself on to it and so the richer the interpretation. In the language of ‘those from the other world’ are found the same elements that patristic exegesis selected: proper nouns, numbers and technical nouns.