Birth of Saint-Just

Handwritten parish baptism record of Louis-Antoine Saint-Just, dated 25 August 1767.

WHAT HAPPENED

On the day of his birth, 25th of August 1767, Louis-Antoine was baptized by his maternal uncle ( priest Edmond-Léonard Robinot) in the church of Saint-Aré in Decize.

Located between Nevers and Moulins, the small town of Decize then had forges, a plaster factory, coal mines, and warehouses where Burgundy wines were stored. Louis Antoine was probably born in the house of his maternal grandfather, Léonard Robinot, on the Quai du Pont-de-Loire, at the corner of Rue des Pêcheurs. There is a whole family drama about his parents’ marriage and his grandfather being against it, but that’s a story for another time!

Exterior of the Church of Saint-Aré in Decize, the church where Louis-Antoine Saint-Just was baptised.

His godparents were his second uncle, Antoine Robinot and Françoise Ravard the wife of a lawyer in the Parlement. He was named Louis after his father and Antoine after his godfather.

The baptismal font is in the archive of the church of Saint-Aré. We can’t be sure, but since it’s a 18th century font it might have been used for the baptism of baby Saint Just…

Eighteenth-century stone baptismal font in the Church of Saint-Aré in Decize.

Related reading

ReviewTwelve who RuledTwelve Who Ruled remains one of the strongest accounts of the Terror, not least because Palmer neither romanticises it nor reduces it to a catalogue of horrors. His prose is readable and often remarkably vivid, and he manages to combine serious scholarship with a narrative that never feels weighed down by it. His liberal outlook is evident, but he is generally fair to the men he studies and resists easy moral judgements. More than eighty years after its publication, the book has inevitably been overtaken in places by later scholarship, but surprisingly little of it feels obsolete. As an introduction to the Committee of Public Safety and the politics of Year II, it is still difficult to better.→PerspectiveSaint-Just and the Problem of Being Twenty-FourSaint-Just was repeatedly challenged over his age during elections in 1790 and 1791. The episodes offer a useful glimpse into the electoral rules of the early French Revolution, who qualified as an active citizen, and how Saint-Just tried to get around them.→TranslationSaint-Just Hyping up Robespierre’s SpeechSaint-Just, ordinarily rather reserved at the Jacobin Club, made an exception on January 1, 1793. Despite presiding over the session, he didn’t share personal views or push his own agenda. Instead, he invited his colleagues to fund the printing and nationwide distribution of Robespierre’s second speech on Louis XVI’s trial (delivered on December 28, 1792)→

Timeline context

August 1767 · 1 entry →

3 May 1748Birth of Abbé Sieyès→7 May 1748Birth of Olympe de Gouges→25 Aug 1767Birth of Saint-JustYou are here 29 Mar 1796Charette Is Executed at Nantes→

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Timeline context

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