CHAUMETTE, PIERRE-GASPARD

born May 24, 1763, Nevers, Fr. died April 13, 1794, Paris French Revolutionary leader, social reformer, and promoter of the anti-Christian cult of the goddess Reason, who was put to death by the Revolutionary tribunal because of his democratic extremism. Chaumette went to sea as a cabin boy, studied botany, traveled widely in France, and then (1789/90) settled in Paris as a medical student. As an active Revolutionary he signed the petition (July 17, 1791) that demanded the abdication of Louis XVI. From December 1792 he was procurator-general of the Paris commune, in which capacity he improved conditions in the hospitals; organized decent burial for the poor; and forbade whipping in the schools, prostitution, obscene publications, and lotteries. Strenuously anti-Catholic, he organized the first ceremony of the worship of Reason (personified by an actress) in Notre-Dame Cathedral (Nov. 10, 1793). His order to close the Paris churches (Nov. 23, 1793) remained effective despite the attempted intervention of Robespierre. His antipathy to the bourgeois-republican Girondins may have caused the leaders of the Reign of Terror to fear him as a potential leader of the sansculottes (lowest classes). Although he had not aided the advocate of sansculotte insurrection, Jacques-Ren Hbert, Chaumette was arrested and executed after the Hbertists were suppressed (March 1794).