Panthéonizations and exhumations : ceremonial reburials in revolutionary France.

During the French Revolution, the Panthéon was created as a national mausoleum to house the remains of the grands hommes of France. Alongside the recently deceased heroes of the Revolution, the deputies of the National Assembly selected illustrious figures from French history to be transferred to the Panthéon. Only two of the selected figures were reburied within the monument: Voltaire and Rousseau. This thesis examines the significance of these ceremonial reburials on the French Revolution. Reburials, although largely ignored in the scholarship of the Revolution, were key to the creation of a modified culture of death which allowed the revolutionaries to move past the Catholic death culture of the ancien regime.