The show "Murmures dans la cité," which was given in Moulins on July 11, 12, and 13, aroused strong opposition in certain circles, mainly due to a financial arrangement involving the "Fonds du Bien Commun," an association co-founded by billionaire Pierre-Édouard Stérin. I have not seen this show, I was not able to attend it, and I have not read the script. The purpose of these few lines is therefore neither to defend nor to attack it. Everyone will have been able to judge for themselves. However, I wish to respond to certain criticisms made in an open letter published by a collective of "archaeologists, historians, heritage agents, museum agents, members of associations, teachers, heritage stakeholders, people concerned with historical accuracy" published in Allier Week on Tuesday, June 24 and widely disseminated on social networks.

The authors of this text are indignant at the choice of characters: "Vercingetorix, Clovis, Saint-Mayeul, Saint-Odilon, Joan of Arc, Sainte-Jeanne-de-Chantal, Napoleon" (I have not changed the spelling, which is aberrant with regard to the names of the saints). The presence of three saints clearly shocks the signatories, who point out that in times when "secularism is under attack from all sides", "it is at the very least disturbing that the main figures summoned to represent the Bourbonnais region are religious saints" (this last expression, "religious saints", being opposed, if we understand correctly, to "secular saints"?). Even before Vercingetorix, Clovis or Napoleon, who we can all agree played a certain role in the history of France and the Bourbonnais region, it was Mayeul, Odilon and Jeanne de Chantal who were the subject of all the discord. The reasoning seems unstoppable: France is a secular country, so it does not have to maintain the memory of "religious" saints (perhaps this should also be read, in the subtext, as "Catholic"). However, such criticism is based on the one hand on a very curious conception of secularism, and on the other hand on a good dose of ignorance, which is surprising coming from a collective made up of archaeologists, historians and heritage stakeholders. 1) A very curious conception of secularism: in fact, since when does being secular imply casting into the dustbin of history everything that predates modern dechristianization and the Revolution? To assert that religious figures, among whom, in the foreground, some who were considered saints, played a leading role in the history of Europe, France and the Bourbonnais region is not an attack on secularism but rather a reminder of an obvious fact, an incontestable reality. No doubt the authors of this article would like to represent the pre-revolutionary centuries by resorting only to figures heralding secularism as they understand it: unfortunately, for the centuries concerned here, such figures do not exist. The Church was then at the heart of society, it had shaped it and provided it with its ideals. It may please, it may displease, but in any case it is an absolute truth. 2) Ignorance: not content with transforming the three saints mentioned into places (by wrongly capitalizing "Saint" and using a hyphen), the authors of the article seem to question the validity of a choice based on figures which they imply would have been secondary to non-Catholics. Why exhume forgotten saints and not figures more in keeping with the (supposed) spirit of our times? For a very simple reason, they will be told: what matters most in history is not the desire to stick to the spirit of the times but the search for the truth, as far as one can approach it, without illusion but with honesty. The show takes place in Moulins. The Cluniac priory of Souvigny, located 12 kilometers from the prefecture of Allier, houses the bodies of Mayeul († 994), a Provençal, and Odilon († 1049), an Auvergnat, both former abbots of Cluny, that is to say of the most important, the most famous and the most influential Benedictine monastery of the Middle Ages. It is difficult today to imagine the central role that monks played in medieval society, especially before the 13th century. Mayeul and even more so Odilon were famous among all men in their time, much like Saint Bernard was a little later. They were the most influential monks of their century and maintained relations with kings, emperors and popes. They admired them, consulted them and listened to them. Should we recall here that in the decades following Odilon's death, a church was built in Cluny which remained the largest in Christianity until the reconstruction of Saint Peter's in Rome in the 16th century? If there is one place in Bourbonnais that deserves to be considered today as a place of memory, it is Souvigny. As for Jeanne de Chantal, founder of the Order of the Visitation, who died in Moulins in 1641, it is difficult to see which other figure linked to the Bourbonnais would have been better placed than her to illustrate the XNUMXth century. The inclusion of any woman other than Joan of Arc in the list of "great men" of the past would not, moreover, offend the feelings of the very progressive authors of the offending article…

The spectators of "Murmures dans la cité," whether historians or simply curious about the past, will judge the show in the coming days. But to dispute the choice of a few saints among the great figures in the history of Bourbonnais on the grounds that France is a secular country makes no sense. Secularism is neither forgetting the past, nor damnatio memoriae of historical figures that would be better ignored because they do not sufficiently announce the present we are living or the future we wish for. In matters of history as elsewhere, naivety and ignorance are always bad advisors.