The Abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution

"In this superb intellectual biography of the first priest enshrined in the Panthéon, the holiest temple of French republicanism, Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall focuses on the ambiguous legacy of the abbé Henri Grégoire's lifelong involvement in efforts to integrate what would today be called 'minorities' and 'underprivileged groups' into a universalistic vision of the French nation....Skillfully mapping out what she sees as the far-reaching ramifications of the regeneration paradigm, Sepinwall finds echoes of Grégoire's urge to erase difference in paternalistic French colonial policy and, in serendipitous anticipation of the media coverage garnered by recent rioting by Muslim and black youth, in longstanding republican resistance to cultural pluralism within the hexagon."—Barry Shapiro, American Historical Review

"Excellent book....Sepinwall's illuminating study provides the best-researched and most comprehensive account of his stance toward the Jews now available in any language."—Allan Arkush, Jewish History

"Superb biography, which is likely to become the classic scholarly study in English on Grégoire."—Jean-François Brière, Nineteenth Century French Studies

"[Sepinwall] does an impressive job of exploring and intertwining the multiple aspects of Grégoire's political, religious, and intellectual career.... [Her] thoughtful and ambitious biography has given us ample reason to understand this man 'as agent, as window, and as symbol' of universalism and the Revolution's legacy (6)."—Suzanne Desan, Journal of Modern History

"Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall has written a fascinating book from which both scholars and students can gain insights on how the interaction of ideas in eighteenth-century France influenced the thinking of one individual and how these same ideas shaped the outcome of the French Revolution. The author refers to her book as a 'social biography, one that focuses on individuals in order to illuminate larger cultural developments'(4). These cultural developments have resonance for contemporary French society and indeed for all Western societies. As the author so aptly states, 'We still need to figure ways to create sustainable human communities, without requiring a cultural homogenization that can only lead both to cultural impoverishment and deadly resentment' (237)."—Todd Jermstad, Libraries and the Cultural Record

"Sepinwall has intelligently used Grégoire as a vehicle to ask important questions about modern French society: how can the universal ideals of equality espoused by the French Revolution be reconciled with cultural and religious differences? How can the power of religious belief be reconciled with a secular state which is regarded as essential for the preservation of republican values?....We should be grateful to her for using Grégoire as a way into discussing some fundamental problems of French society, and at the same time for linking them with the ideas of the French Revolution."—Martyn Lyons, European Legacy

"Excellent biography . . . . Masterful analysis."—The Historian

"This is a first-rate study of a gifted but flawed individual whose vision for the future never became a reality."—T.M. Keefe, Choice: Current Reviews For Academic Libraries

"What can be done with a people that produces 246 different cheeses? General De Gaulle's remark may be apocryphal—France has far more than 246 cheeses—but it captures a central dilemma in French history. How could such a diverse collection of peoples be forged into a single nation? . . . For Alyssa Sepinwall, the 'crucial question' of the Abbé Grégoire's life, and the central problem of the French Revolution, was 'how to build a coherent and egalitarian national community out of a diverse people'. . . . Sepinwall . . . convincingly demonstrates the way that his views on the Jews, the French peasantry and colonialism were shaped by his experiences in late 18th-century Lorraine and Alsace. . . . She is also excellent on his posthumous career.—London Review of Books

"Very few leaders played as prominent role in the French Revolution as the Abbé Henri Grégoire. . . . Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall's first-rate intellectual biography explains the contradictions and contexts that have made Grégoire's ideas worth arguing about for over 200 years. . . . Sepinwall's Grégoire is likely to sit on the shelf next to David Jordan's Revolutionary Career of Maximilien Robespierre, Leo Gershoy's Bertrand Barère: A Reluctant Terrorist, R. B. Rose's Gracchus Babeuf, the First Revolutionary Communist, and Keith Michael Baker's Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics in a series of standard outstanding biographies in English of important French revolutionary leaders. . . . This is a book for all serious students of the French Revolution."—Gary Kates, H-france Review of Books

"Makes an important contribution to French Revolution historiography."—Catholic Historical Review