“To the great men, the grateful country.” Engraved on the pediment of the Pantheon, this inscription pays tribute to the women and men who are markers of the French history housed in this high place of memory.
This Thursday, October 9, anniversary of the abolition of the death penalty, Robert Badinter, a fervent bearer of this law enacted in 1981, will enter the Pantheon. This will be the fifth pantheon chaired by Emmanuel Macron, after those of Simone Veil, Maurice Genevoix, Joséphine Baker and Missak Manouchian, accompanied by his wife Mélinée and his comrades.
“His name must appear alongside those who have done so much for human progress and for France,” declared the President of the Republic during the national tribute paid to the former lawyer on February 14, 2024.
At the end of the afternoon, François Mitterrand’s former Minister of Justice will join the approximately 80 personalities celebrated in this temple of French history.
Who makes the decision to pantheonize?
Initially, in 1791, “it was the Constituent Assembly, which gave rise to the creation of the Pantheon, that elected the personalities worthy of receiving the honors of the Republic,” states the official website of the historical monument. The decision-making process evolved a few years later, when Napoleon Bonaparte granted himself this right during the First Empire (1804-1815).
“During the Napoleonic era, half of the personalities buried in the crypt were dignitaries of the Empire, most of whom today are practically unknown,” explains the Pantheon.
Parliament and its deputies will again take power during the Third and Fourth Republic, before the decision to pantheonize falls to the French president from 1958, the year of the beginning of the Fifth Republic.
From now on, it is solely up to the head of state to decide whether or not to enter the Pantheon. With five pantheonizations, including that of Robert Badinter, Emmanuel Macron is just behind François Mitterrand, holder of the Fifth Republic record with seven ceremonies. The two men are far ahead of Georges Pompidou and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who have never used this royal right.
Embody “the values of the Republic”
First of all, for a personality to be pantheonized, it must “have embodied in an exemplary manner, through its writings, its commitments or its actions, the values of the Republic,” the monument specifies on its official website.
Furthermore, it is mandatory that the personality, through his or her words or his family, approve “the principle of entry into the Pantheon.”
In 2009, for example, when Nicolas Sarkozy proposed the idea of moving Albert Camus to the Pantheon, the philosopher’s son, Jean Camus, opposed it, fearing a “political power grab.” For Charles de Gaulle, the situation is even different, since it was the former head of state himself who refused to enter the Pantheon before his death, his wish being to rest in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises.
“After the official announcement of the pantheonization by the President of the Republic, the entrance ceremony to the Pantheon is being intensively prepared, within about three months,” explains the website of the French place of memory.
As for the purely administrative character, the pantheonism “is not defined by any text”, it is explained on the monument’s website. That is to say, the entry of a personality into the monument depends almost exclusively on the appreciation of the President of the Republic.
Charb’s family calls for pantheonization
When Robert Badinter enters the monument on the Sainte-Geneviève mountain, another name has emerged in recent days. Earlier this week, Charb’s family asked that the Charlie Hebdo cartoonist, killed in the terrorist attacks on the satirical newspaper’s editorial office in 2015, enter the Pantheon.
This pantheonization “would engrave in the marble of our Republic the visceral attachment of the French people to freedom of expression,” wrote Riss, the weekly’s publishing director, in his editorial on Wednesday, October 8. The decision now lies with President Emmanuel Macron.
Source: BFM TV
