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Fun fact... or not so fun? For 12 years of the revolutionary era, France did use decimal time. And the calendar and clocks were organized around a 10 day week
by paulorlando 1y ago
Fun fact... or not so fun?
For 12 years of the revolutionary era, France did use decimal time. And the calendar and clocks were organized around a 10 day week and a 10 hour day. But those changes, coupled with the loss of Sunday worship, had other effects on the population.
Here’s an assessment of what was really meant and then lost by the elimination of Sunday:
“‘The elderly ladies took advantage of the long journey (to church) to exchange old stories with other old gossips … they met friends and relatives on the way, or when they reached the county town, whom they enjoyed seeing … there then followed a meal or perhaps a reciprocal invitation, which led to one relative or another….’ But if that was the way it was for the old ladies, what did Sunday mean to ‘young girls, whose blood throbbed with the sweetest desire of nature!’ We can well understand their impatience, ‘they waited for each other at the start of the road they shared,’ they danced.
“Now, however, when the Tenth Day came around, ‘the men were left to the devices they always had:’ the old men went to the tavern, and they bargained. The young men drank and, deprived of their ‘lovely village girls’, they quarrelled. As for the women, they had nothing left to do in village. The mothers were miserable in their little hamlets, the daughters too, and out of this came their need to gather together in crowds. If the need for recreation is necessary because of moral forces… there is absolutely no doubt that village girls find it very hard to bear privations which are likely to prolong their unmarried state: ‘in all regions the pleasure of love is the greatest pleasure.'”
– from The Revolution Against the Church, From Reason to the Supreme Being, by Michel Vovelle, pp 158-159.
- thrance 1y agoI know the real goal of the republican calendar was to undermine the Church's power by making it so Sundays would fall at random days of the week, and also screw over the workers by leaving them with a worse weekend-to-week ratio. However, all I ever read about this part of the revolution seems to indicate that people just didn't comply and went to church anyway on Sundays, and also didn't work that day. On that account, I feel likr your quote is kind of partisan. People wouldn't have been left lost and aimlessly drinking on their tenth day because of a lack of God, because they never quit going to church!
- paulorlando 1y agoNot sure I understand what you mean. At least, I thought that (most? all?) the churches were closed for the worst part of the French Revolution aftermath. For example, the new state transformed Notre Dame and other Catholic churches into Temples of Reason, from which the new state religion, the Cult of Reason, would be celebrated. It didn't last long. Hard to create a new religion quickly. Maybe some echoes of recent history there.
- thrance 1y agoIt was much more nuanced than that, and the vast majority of the French people stayed Christian during the period. Also, keep in mind the revolution was mostly a Paris thing, the rest of the country was left relatively unaffected at first. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dechristianization_of_France_during_the_French_Revolution?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dechristianization_of_France_d...
- paulorlando 1y agoIs the difference "stayed Catholic" vs the churches had to close?
- pessimizer 1y agoPretty sure it mattered when and where you were. Armies and militias were sent to put down defiant regions who had set up their own armies and militias in order to keep the Revolution out.
- mousethatroared 1y agoYa, Vendee really protests too much
- ashoeafoot 1y agohttps://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sowjetischer_Revolutionskalender https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sowjetischer_Revolutionskale... did the divide and conquer of people better by asigning them non overlapping weekends by colour