How Patriotism Is a Toulousain Affair…

Maïté Bouyssy is interested in Bertrand Barère. Born in Tarbes in 1755, he became a lawyer at the Parliament in 1775. Her contribution is based on the clues that Bertrand Barère gave in the academic eulogies of his time in Toulouse. Under the aegis of the two great prelates, Loménie de Brienne and Castlehill, Barère tried to place himself in circles that would take him out of the anonymity of the basoche. The set of references and dedicatees of Barère's academic eulogies, discreetly show what he owes them, the course of praising “great men”, the then emerging notion of models and the thought of the law concretely forged one of the dimensions of the notion of “national” and “patrie”. And one discovers to what extent not only the Philanthropy Committee of the Encyclopaedic Lodge brought together all the youthful forces of the city of Toulouse to set up a local administration, set up a system for defending the innocent who were unable to pay the costs of justice (against the venality of offices). It developed a sense of the authority of the State as guarantor of religious tolerance. Turgotine and Catholic Enlightenment currents of thought were taken up by the Constituante, particularly in the face of the emergency, which immediately led to the creation of the Committee of Subsistence, one of whose first drafters was Bertrand Barère.