Le Catéchisme du genre humain
“This work was sent to print two months before the miraculous and forever memorable day of the storming of the Bastille.”
Very rare first edition of the “Gospel of Jacobinism” by Boissel, one of the forerunners of communism, which would be banned on March 28th, 1791.
Copy preceded by a text addressed to the Estates General, signed by the author and dated May 31st, 1789.
Octavo, 206 pp.
Half red morocco, gilt monogram in the center of the front cover, spine with raised bands decorated with gilt and blind tooling, gilt edges, untrimmed copy.
195 x 126 mm.
Boissel, François. The Catechism of the Human Race, which, under the auspices of Nature and its true author, who dictated it to me, I place before the eyes and under the protection of the French Nation and enlightened Europe, for the essential and indispensable establishment of true moral order, and the social education of men, in the knowledge, practice, love & habit of the principles & means to make themselves & keep themselves happy through one another.
1789.
Very rare first edition of the “Gospel of Jacobinism” that embodies the egalitarian utopia of the French Revolution.
Achieving resounding success, the work provoked strong reactions and was placed on the Index by decree of March 28, 1791.
Jaurès would see in Boissel one of the forerunners of communist thought.
The work is structured in three parts, and chapters are organized around “question” and “answer” like a catechism.
It would be reprinted in 1792. The Girondin deputy Lanjuinais described it as the “Gospel of Jacobinism.”
Boissel theorizes, “two months before the miraculous & forever memorable day of the capture of the Bastille,” as he notes in the errata, and before Babeuf, the three scourges of humanity: private property, religion and marriage.
François Boissel (1728-1807) was also a pioneer of popular education and feminism.
In this socialist catechism published in July 1789, he criticizes the foundations of property, religion and marriage, described as scourges of humanity, and calls for a complete change brought about gradually through education, whose aim will be the essential and indispensable establishment of true moral order and the social education of men. Boissel had just enough time, by inserting a Note on the errata page, to salute the miraculous and forever memorable day of the capture of the Bastille.
The work was placed on the Index by decree of March 28, 1791.
An early advocate of the Republic, leader of the Jacobin Club, and at one time close to Robespierre, Boissel continuously supported the Revolution through his writings. He was the one to preside at the ceremonies and deliver the official speech during the transfer of Rousseau’s ashes to the Pantheon in 1794. Arrested in February 1795, he was imprisoned at La Force with Babeuf.
Boissel’s work was rediscovered on the occasion of the bicentennial of the French Revolution.
The copy is preceded by a 3-page text signed by Boissel and bearing the handwritten note “sent on 31 May 1789” addressed “To the Estates-General of France, assembled at Versailles,” in which the author requests permission to print at his own expense the two works he has just written, Memoir and Denunciation to the Estates-General of France… and The Catechism of the Human Race.
