Theophilanthropy

The Theophilanthropie (French Théophilanthropie ) belonged to other cults revolution into an ensemble civil religious festivals and beliefs during the French Revolution, which was to take the place of Christianity and Catholicism in particular in the social and political center. The Theophilanthropie belongs in the second half of the 1790s and thus already in the late phase of the revolution; they found only limited distribution.

The Theophilanthropie saw itself, as its name said, as " love of God and men ", according to her, what was the basis of all civilization. The deistic cult recognized a "Supreme Being " and the immortality of the soul, but forbade any further metaphysical or theological discussion. Masonic influences are suspected. The cultic acts were very simple, more important had the moral and social demands and regulations. How the Cult of Reason saw the Theophilanthropie the world as an ordered according to non-contradictory laws formations.

The Theophilantropie, entered, but still as " Theoanthropophilie " in September 1796 with a manual on the content and practice of the cult public appearance. The author was a bookseller named Jean -Baptiste Chemin- Dupontès. Chemin, the one the first very similar second manual titled in December 1796 Manuel of théophilanthropes, edited, organized with the teachers of the blind Valentin Haiiy the first public ceremony in January 1797. Cult won under its new name until his ban 1801/1803 certain dissemination in Paris and several provincial cities. Among the many bourgeois- intellectual followers was with Louis -Marie de La Révellière - Lépeaux even a member of the government, which supported the Theophilanthropie written and spoken. La Révellière, however, was forced in June 1799 from the Directoire, so that magistrate protection was largely lost. Because of the Concordat of 1801 between Napoleon Bonaparte and Pope, the authorities forbade any theophilanthropische meeting in a public building. 1803 forbade the prefect of the Seine the cult for good.