Introduction
Esquisses Byzantines and Carillon-Sortie are the two most frequently performed works by the enigmatic French composer Henri Mulet (1878–1967). A dedication printed on the front page of the score of Esquisses Byzantines refers to the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur perched high on Montmartre in Paris. The typical interpretation of this cycle views Esquisses Byzantines as an external tribute to the empirical structure of the basilica; however, only the first five of the suite’s ten movements illustrate the architectural features of the building. The final five allude to different aspects of customs and rituals at the basilica. Curiously, the last two movements have Latin rather than French titles.
Mulet added four inscriptions referred to as “mottos” that strongly suggest a philosophical agenda. He finished the composition in 1908, but for no recorded or anecdotal reason did not publish the work until 1920. The first motto contains the dates 1914–1919. This suggests that the mottos were added at the time of publication.
From 1894 until 1940, a time when art and politics were entwined, ideologies and music in France were inseparable.1 Jane Fulcher notes that composers “were indeed intellectuals, deeply engaged with public issues, symbols, and ideologies, and their evolution in this period cannot be explained by ‘pure’ stylistic development, or sporadic influence from other arts.”2 Mulet was just such an intellectual, and his Esquisses Byzantines is a product of this movement.
The Archdiocese of Paris built Sacré-Coeur Basilica for specific theological and political reasons that are embodied in the towering motto that dominates the apse of the building. Because of their magnitude, two words stand out: Gallia Poenitens (France repents). Ideologically, the construction of Sacré-Coeur was an act of reparation for the sins of France committed during the 1789 Revolution and the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. Even though Mulet composed Esquisses Byzantines in 1908, he may have published it in 1920 to celebrate both the dedication of the basilica and the Allied victory in World War I. To fully understand the ideology of Esquisses Byzantines, an examination of the history of France’s love affair with the Sacred Heart of Jesus is called for.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in France
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is rooted in the concept of Christ’s humanity and the five glorious wounds of his Passion. Minor rituals dedicated to the Sacred Heart were found in late Medieval monastic writings. These became widely popular as a result of the visions of Saint Marguerite-Marie Alacoque (1648–1690), a French nun and mystic. At age 23, Alacoque entered Visitation Convent at Paray-le-Monial. Early in her novitiate, she had visions of the Sacred Heart pierced by a lance for the world’s sins and surmounted by a flame of love. Replete with the drama of Baroque piety, God’s message, sent to the world through Alacoque, was that of a vengeful deity seeking reparation and atonement for the numerous sins of France. These transgressions included material extravagance, moral decadence, and the apostasy of Protestantism. At one point, Alacoque received a vision of three demands of the Sacred Heart that needed to be fulfilled before France could receive abundant blessings from the Lord:
• France, through its king, should be consecrated to the Sacred Heart;
• an edifice should be built for this purpose;
• this historic compact should be recorded on the royal insignia.3
The first test of her prophecy occurred in June 1720, when the merchant ship Grand Saint-Antoine arrived in the port at Marseille. Despite the standard forty-day quarantine imposed on foreign ships, the bubonic plague spread from the ship and ravaged the city. By December, 50,000 people had died. The diocesan bishop, Henri François Xavier de Belsunce de Castelmoron (1671–1755), was well known for his love of public religious spectacles such as large-scale pilgrimages and massive processions. In the plague’s arrival, he saw God’s displeasure with the people of Marseille. In November and December Belsunce staged several penitential cortèges, and by spring 1721 deaths had fallen dramatically.
The plague was an invitation to penitence sent by an angry God whose patience with crime, heresy, and sin had been tested and exceeded. The Sacred Heart of Jesus was the best recourse, according to Belsunce, and his consecration of the city of Marseille to the Sacred Heart was the correct spiritual initiative to take in the face of the plague. The Sacré-Coeur had driven the plague from Marseille.4
When the plague returned in 1722 Belsunce cited ongoing moral corruption as its cause. The city’s principal governors again consecrated Marseille to the Sacred Heart on May 28. By autumn the plague had disappeared from the city. Marseille became the paragon for Catholic France of the power found in devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
The French Church experienced a far greater trial in the Revolution of 1789. Revolutionaries slaughtered scores of Catholic clergy and religious. For the Catholic Counter-Revolution, this civil disturbance was nothing less than another chapter in the ongoing war between good and evil.
For some, the religious policy of the Revolution was sure to bring down divine chastisement, for others, the Revolution was itself a chastisement. Profanations and wicked exaltations were the signs by which they recognized in the Revolution an evil of terrifying and unsurpassed strength.5
The demands made by God to Alacoque had not yet been fulfilled, and Catholic France was suffering for it. Meanwhile, the Catholic Counter-Revolution, fueled largely by rural conservatives, embraced the Sacred Heart of Jesus as its symbol. Convents and pious families churned out embroidered Sacred Heart emblems by the tens of thousands, and several militant priestly orders dedicated to the Sacred Heart were formed. “. . . The Sacré-Coeur emerged as the devotion and the image of Catholic resistance to the scourge of the Revolution.”6
Once the Revolution was over, nineteenth-century France struggled to determine which political system would best serve it. Political regimes and forms of government changed repeatedly. The brief restoration of the Bourbon monarchy between 1814 and 1830 created the opportunity to consecrate the nation to the Sacred Heart. Louis XVI had done so privately before the Revolution, but Louis XVIII, who ruled from 1814 until 1824, was too savvy a politician to engage in an act that could be so divisive to the nation. Another surge of fervor to fulfill Alacoque’s prophecy ensued when France was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The pious French believed that these two wars were a divine condemnation of a nation fallen from grace. Bishop Félix Fournier (1803–1877) of Nantes proclaimed, “Defeat . . . was a punishment from God; it was the consequence of moral failure on a national scale.”7 Catholic France recognized these disasters as a call from God to repent and atone for its sins.
The National Vow and the construction of the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur
In 1870 Alexandre Félix Legentil (1821–1889) became a refugee in Poitiers after the Franco-Prussian defeat, the patriotic trauma of the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, and the devastation of the Paris Commune. While there, inspired by similar building projects in Lyon and Marseille, he vowed to build a national church dedicated to the Sacred Heart. He quickly won the enthusiasm of Hubert Rohault de Fleury (1828–1910), his brother-in-law, and the support of Cardinal Pie, Bishop of Poitiers. Legentil and de Fleury were able to convince Parisian Archbishop Joseph Hyppolyte Guibert (1802–1886) to support their National Vow to the Sacred Heart and the construction of Sacré-Coeur. Guibert wanted to keep its text as apolitical as possible for fear of the Republicans. After some correspondence and negotiation on the exact wording of the vow, Legentil, Hubert Rohault de Fleury, and Cardinal Guibert opted for the following:
In spite of the misfortunes that ravage France, and perhaps of even greater woes that threaten it; in spite of the sacrilegious attacks committed in Rome against the laws of the Church and the Holy See, and against the sacred person of the Vicar of Jesus Christ; We humble ourselves before God, and, bringing together in our love the Church and our homeland, we recognize that we have been guilty and rightly punished. And to make appropriate amends for our sins and to obtain from the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ the forgiveness of our transgressions as well as the extraordinary relief that alone can deliver the Sovereign Pontiff from his captivity, and put an end to France’s misfortunes, we promise to contribute to the erection in Paris of a sanctuary dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.8
In fulfillment of the prophecy of Alacoque, multiple consecrations were made to the Sacred Heart. Along with its widely disseminated emblem, France only needed a church, and the National Vow ensured that this would happen.
After the far-left socialist Paris Commune was suppressed on May 28, 1871, the Third French Republic was quickly formed. Conservative royalist Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers (1797–1877) was elected president. The following year, Archbishop Guibert formally approved the Sacré-Coeur building project on January 18. The endorsement of the National Vow by Pope Pius IX quickly followed in July 1872. Guibert wrote the following to Legentil and Fleury: “This temple, erected as a public act of contrition and reparation . . . will stand among us as a protest against other monuments and works of art erected for the glorification of vice and impiety.”9 These “monuments” refer to the massive rebuilding of Paris undertaken by Georges-Eugène Haussmann (1809–1891) by order of Emperor Napoleon III during the Second Empire (1852–1870).
Guibert was keenly interested in choosing the right place for the new church. He considered consecrating several existing buildings, including the Paris Opéra and the Trocadéro. Both were constructed during Haussman’s renovation of Paris. The debate lasted for some time until Guibert visited the summit of Montmartre, the “Hill of the Martyrs,” and was overwhelmed by the magnificent view of Paris. During Roman Emperor Decius’s persecution of Christians in 250 A.D., Saint Denis, the first evangelist of Gall, was martyred on Montmartre. Saint Joan of Arc and other saints made pilgrimages to the site, and Saint Ignatius of Loyola founded the Jesuit order there. During the Commune, two royalist generals who were defending Montmartre from the Republican mob were also martyred there. The site had been used for various purposes throughout the centuries but was not for sale.
To secure Montmartre, Guibert made a petition to the National Assembly concerning the construction of the church. On July 23, 1873, the National Assembly passed a law that proclaimed the construction of Sacré Coeur a public utility (Paris). Meanwhile, the Republic appointed a new president, Patrice de MacMahon (1808–1893), Marshall of France and Duke of Magenta, whose main ambition was to establish a constitutional monarchy. Catholic sympathizers held the majority in the National Assembly, and the land was seized by the government by expropriation (“eminent domain”) and sold to the Archdiocese of Paris.
Although declared an act of public utility, the project received no tax funding. Rather, donations poured in from across the country from private “subscribers” who purchased construction stones that would bear their names. During the nineteenth century, Gothic architecture was considered the quintessential style; however, the Works Committee of 1872 chose a Byzantine concept proposed by Paul Abadie (1812–1884) from among the seventy-eight entries in a competition held for the design of the building. The style of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and San Marco Basilica in Venice inspired Abadie’s plan. Workers laid the cornerstone of the basilica on June 16, 1875, in the presence of President MacMahon, who donated a statue of the Sacred Heart that stands in the apsidal chapel in the crypt. Subsequent Republican regimes regarded the construction of the basilica as an incitement to civil war. They considered halting progress on the building in 1873, 1897, and 1899; but because the government would have had to reimburse the eight million subscribers some thirty million francs, work continued. Sacré Coeur was ready for consecration in 1914, but the outbreak of World War I delayed this until October 24, 1919.
Henri Mulet and the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur
On October 17, 1878, three years after work began with laying the cornerstone of the new church, Henri Mulet was born. Sacré-Coeur was a constant presence throughout his childhood, as he was reared in its shadows. Henri’s entire family was musical. Gabriel, his father, was a celebrated choirmaster of Sacré-Coeur from 1886 to 1903. Blanche Victorie Patin Gatin, his mother, played the harmonium both in the provisional chapel erected on the site and later in the unfinished great church.10 From her, Henri learned to play the organ and piano.11
In his day, Gabriel Mulet received widespread acclaim as the master of the choir of Sacré-Coeur and as a composer of liturgical music. Although forgotten today, his works include the 1894 Cantata à Jeanne d’Arc and a Tantum ergo for choir and large orchestra composed in 1900. He also composed the text and music for a “Chant Populaire” for the dedication of the great bell of Sacré-Coeur, simply titled The Savoyarde.
The Bulletin de l’Oeuvre du Vœu national notes that the hymn’s “music constitutes a model of imitative harmony.”12 Sacré-Coeur historian Father Jacques Benoist further opines that this influence is obvious in Mulet’s Esquisses Byzantines.13 In Gabriel’s hymn, the choir sings the pious text, while a recurring “strike” on low C of the organ pedals marked “Savoyarde” represents the tolling of the massive bell. This tolling bell effect is somewhat akin to the oscillating octaves heard in Henri’s “Campanile” movement, thus suggesting that Henri may have learned something about musical composition from his father. Additionally, father and son collaborated on a pious “Cantique pour la Communion,” O Mon Jésus, with a text by Gabriel and music by Henri. The work was published in 1900 by Le Beau, a small religious publishing house that Leduc assimilated in 1905.
In 1889 Henri Mulet enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied organ and composition with Charles-Marie Widor. Mulet was generally a musical conservative, and because of his birthdate, he is considered a Middle-Impressionist composer.14 Although he only composed for fifteen years, 1896–1911, one can group his compositional output into three broad stylistic periods. In 1911 he appears to have stopped composing abruptly. “He was hostile to the changes and innovations of the twentieth century, and his style remained strongly rooted in the symphonic organ of Cavaillé-Coll of the nineteenth century.”15 In 1937 he retired from his final church position at Saint Philippe-du-Roule and the Paris musical scene because his colleagues and even the church’s authorities preferred “modern” music to Franck and his contemporaries.16
In 1924 Mulet’s colleague and friend Vincent d’Indy (1851–1931) offered Henri the position of professor of organ at the Schola Cantorum where he taught until 1931. The Schola, founded as a foil to the Conservatoire’s emphasis on theatrical music, emphasized formal technique over originality. The Schola’s sacred music curriculum was an exemplar of the principles for church music dictated in the 1903 Motu Proprio by Pope Pius X. This explicitly ultramontane document idealized Gregorian chant and Roman-style polyphony as best suited to the Catholic liturgy. The Schola implemented the papal agenda.
Especially significant here is that the Schola Cantorum did not just define musical values that it considered to be “national,” it established a “code” that associated them with genres, styles, repertoires, and techniques. . . . French nationalist leagues taught the Republic that music could be invariable as a form of "representation”—that it could help shape perceptions when surrounded by a discourse that imbued it with ideological meaning.17
Mulet seems to have been a papal sympathizer. Aware of the demands that Pope Pius X made of Catholic musicians, he acquiesced. Many like Messiaen did not. In 1921 Mulet presented a lecture to the General Congress of Sacred Music in Strasbourg titled, “The Harmful and Anti-religious Tendencies of the Modern Organ.” The article, published in 1922, critiques the Hope-Jones cinema organ and its use in church. Mulet called it the “Antichrist.” Although Mulet played the cinema organ during his time at Draguignan, his distaste for its liturgical use comes from the papal dictum: “They are also anti-religious because the orchestral organ leads to the performance of transcriptions of orchestral music and even of music for the theatre, which is formally condemned by our Holy Father Pope Pius X.”18
Eventually Mulet withdrew from public life. He spent his last years at the convent of the Little Sisters of the Poor in Draguignan. He died there on September 20, 1967, elusive, secretive, and largely forgotten. No obituary was published, and the location of his grave has been forgotten.
Esquisses Byzantines as Mulet’s spiritual testament
Esquisses Byzantines is a programmatic set of pieces. Its first five movements describe the physical structure of the basilica, and the second five relate aspects of its ideology, customs, and rituals. Three programmatic “mottos” that Mulet added to the piece at the time of publication hint at this ideological schema. Together, these mottos strongly suggest that Mulet’s work is a kind of sermon on the power of the devotion of the victorious French to the Sacred Heart.
Mulet was reclusive and not at all interested in displaying his biography for public scrutiny. He rarely commented on his pieces or music in general. Our knowledge of Mulet, his music, and his temperament comes to us mainly in the form of anecdotes by one of his closest friends, Félix Raugel (1881–1975). The theories in this article cannot be verified in first-person writings by Mulet; likewise, the personal significance of his compositions is vague. Raugel was ignorant of the programmatic meanings of Mulet’s music. Even Henri’s wife Isabelle really did not understand him.19
Mulet completed Esquisses Byzantines in 1908 but did not add the dedication—“In memory of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre, 1914–1919”—until its 1920 publication. These dates are critical: they are of World War I. Many people believe that Mulet composed the work between 1914 and 1919. This is incorrect. He added those dates to the motto, and they refer only to the motto and not the actual years of composition.
Primed to be dedicated on October 17, 1914, the festivities for the dedication of the basilica were postponed because the previous July, war with Germany intervened. At the onset of the war, the French did not know if God would take pity on them, but many believed the spiritual reparations moved him to do so. Faced with the prospect of another humiliating defeat at the hands of Germany, the French bishops sought to fulfill God’s demands to France almost as soon as the war began. “As early as 1914, the Bulletin’s columnist recalled that France had not responded to the three main demands made of it in 1689. Therefore, the Lord can hardly cover it with glory!”20 At the time, conservative Catholics were overwhelmingly monarchists. Modern secular forms of government had been condemned decades earlier in the “Syllabus of Errors” issued by Pope Pius IX in 1864. Pope Pius X reinforced this condemnation with his “Oath Against Modernism” in 1910, which was professed by all religious and many lay Catholics. The French bishops consecrated the entire country to the Sacred Heart on its feast day, June 11, 1915, and many allied banners displayed an emblem of the Sacred Heart:
In March 1917, soldiers from France, England, Italy, Japan, Poland, Romania, and Russia gathered in Paray-le-Monial with their banners on which a Sacred Heart was affixed. They met again on June 15, 1917, in Montmartre for a day of Catholic soldiers of the Allied armies, where they renewed according to the formula of Cardinal Amette [of Paris] their solemn consecration to the Sacred Heart. Montmartre is therefore naturally regarded by the allies as the center of the expansion of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus throughout
the world.21
Only at the end of that bloody conflict was the Basilica finally consecrated. A victorious France—led by the fiery oratory of [George] Clemenceau [sic]—joyfully celebrated the consecration of a monument conceived of in the course of a losing war with Germany a generation before. Gallia Poenitens at last brought its rewards.22
For Catholic France, this victory was the direct result of the intervention of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the fulfillment of the prophecies of Sainte Marguerite-Marie Alacoque. In the Savoyarde hymn, Gabriel Mulet foretells this in the ninth stanza: “You will shout the Hosanna of glory / When our soldiers, Happy Day, / Will come back with victory / Under the flag of the Sacred Heart.”23
The basilica was finally consecrated on October 24, 1919, and the people of France recognized it as a symbol of the Allied victory in the war.
The High Altar was consecrated by Cardinal Amette, Archbishop of Paris, and thirty bishops consecrated the other thirty altars—fifteen in the Basilica, and fifteen in the crypt. At midday, the Pontifical High Mass was celebrated by Cardinal Vico, Prefect of the Congregation of Rites.24
Had Mulet composed a mere tribute to the basilica’s architecture, the dates on the score’s dedication might likely be those of the entire time of construction from cornerstone to consecration (1875–1919). Instead, Mulet chose the dates from the beginning of World War I to its formal end with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919. Moreover, English speakers tend to limit the meaning of the word memoîre to its cognate translation “memory.” This might suggest some nostalgia or sentimental longing for something in the distant past, perhaps a reflection on Mulet’s childhood lived in the shadow of the basilica or as if the building had been destroyed; however, memoîre can also mean a thesis or proposition needing defending.25 Mulet’s proposal may have been that the Sacred Heart of Jesus and his church saved France. One may view Mulet’s work as not only a celebration of the consecration of the building but also a celebration of the Allied victory that Catholics attributed to the divine intervention of the Sacred Heart. In this light, the motto may even be a defense of the prophecies of Alacoque.
The fourth movement, “Chapelle des Morts” (“Chapel of the Dead”), bears the inscription: “In venerable memory of His Eminence Cardinal Guibert whose empty tomb in this chapel is still waiting for the fulfillment of his last will.” The Chapelle des Morts in the basilica’s crypt includes the tomb of Cardinal Guibert, surmounted by a statue of him presenting a miniature of the basilica to God. Additionally, the tomb of his successor, Cardinal Richard, is there as is an urn containing the heart of Alexandre Legentil. Despite the plural name and multiple tombs found in this chapel, Mulet singularizes Cardinal Guibert.
The son of a farmer, Guibert was born on December 13, 1802, in Aix-en-Provence. After several years at a Sulpician major seminary, he became a Missionary of Provence on January 25, 1823. On August 14, 1825, in Marseille he was ordained a priest. He received three successive bishoprics: Viviers in 1842, Tours in 1857, and Paris in 1871. He was elevated to the College of Cardinals on December 22, 1873. His appointment to Paris was hardly a “promotion,” for all three of his predecessors had been assassinated in office. Guibert initially refused the appointment, but Pope Pius IX mandated his acceptance of the post. He was installed as archbishop in Notre-Dame Cathedral on October 27, 1871. He died on July 8, 1886. According to multiple biographers, the two tremendous achievements of his tenure in Paris were the construction of the basilica and the establishment of the Catholic University (Institute) in 1875.
Guibert was the principal representative of the ultramontane movement in France. Ultramontanism, which translates “beyond the mountains (Alps),” was an unorganized movement of conservative nineteenth-century Catholics that emphasized absolute, centralized papal authority. The movement arose in the 1860s when the Italian Unification movement conquered the Papal States. The ultramontane Catholics supported the restoration of the Papal States without compromise. Concerning papal authority, Guibert writes: “The Bishops desire order; they respect authority, which is the principal foundation of society. The hand of the Church has never been seen in revolutions. You will do well to direct your attention and solicitude elsewhere.”26 And again: “The republic has received neither from God nor from history any promise of immortality.”27 Guibert’s writings highlight an ardent desire among conservative Catholics to restore the French monarchy and practical papal sovereignty. The Republic was the enemy.
Before his death, Guibert directed that his Requiem Mass should be simple and that the money that would have been spent on an elaborate funeral be given to the poor. At first, he was laid in state and was buried in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. His remains were later transferred to the Chapel of the Dead in Sacré-Coeur. A Latin inscription on his tomb states that he was interred there in 1922, thirty-six years later. Mulet’s motto suggests his indignation that Guibert’s remains were still missing from the Chapel of the Dead in 1919. Whether this indicates that Mulet supported Guibert’s ideology is debatable, but he seemed to admire the cardinal enough to bring attention to his empty tomb.
The fifth movement, “Campanile” (“Bell Tower”), bears the inscription “All white, it towers over the vastness of the countryside from afar.” The basilica sits on Montmartre, one of the highest points in Paris. Guibert chose this site because of the view of the city that it affords; however, Mulet chose the word “campagne” rather than “ville” or “Cité,” perhaps because he felt that the bell tower is the pinnacle point not only of Paris but of the entire country. He reinforces this by identifying the bell tower, not the basilica as a whole, as this zenith point. “Campagne” can also mean a military or political campaign. This could be Mulet’s deliberate allusion to the evangelical mission of the basilica and to call all of France to penitential conversion.
By 1912 the bell tower of Sacré-Coeur was complete and thus was not finished when Mulet wrote his work in 1908. Because of this, Mulet may have had an idealized vision of the belfry and the entire basilica in mind. The bell tower and its great drone bell, “La Savoyarde,” were sources of great pride among Parisian Catholics. Catholic churches have named, blessed, and consecrated bells for centuries in a rite known as the “baptism of bells.” The formal name of the great bell of Sacré-Coeur is Françoise Marguerite of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, colloquially known as La Savoyarde. The bell was cast at the Paccard foundry in Annecy-le-Vieux. Francis Albert Leuilleux, Archbishop of Chambery, and the bishops of Savoy initiated its creation; the clergy and upper and lower classes of the province funded it, hence the nickname La Savoyarde.
Weighing nineteen tons, La Savoyarde is the largest bell in France and the sixth largest in Europe. It arrived at Montmartre on October 16, 1895. A team of twenty-eight horses pulled it into Paris. Its arrival was a huge public spectacle attended by hundreds of thousands of Parisians. It was formally baptized on this date by Cardinal Archbishop Richard of Paris. A souvenir booklet from the occasion tells us, “The voice of the bells is the voice of God,”28 and that, “It is, thank God, this terrible Savoyard, of a size and weight to resist all the attacks of the demolishers and the shock of all future revolutions.”29 “It is, in all respects, the most beautiful bell that has been made to this day. It is the largest, the richest, and the most harmonious that exists in France. She is the queen of the world’s bells. We can only delight in it: it is the Bell of the Sacred Heart.”30 By using the word “campagne” to include all territories outside of the city of Paris, Mulet may very well have been advancing the mission and message of the basilica for all of France and even the world.
The most interesting and vastly popular movement that suggests an ideological program for the Esquisses Byzantines is its final movement: “Tu es petra et portae inferi non praevalebunt adversus te” (“You are the rock and the gates of Hell will never prevail against you”). Mulet’s manuscript that Leduc presumably used for publication, now in a private collection, shows that at the time of composition, Mulet titled the work simply “Toccata.” Mulet scribbled this out and added the “Tu es petra” title in different ink, along with a host of other changes. This points to the ideological meaning given the work at the time of publication. The Latin inscription is a quote from the Vulgate Bible that asserts that Christ established the papacy. The Greek text of Saint Matthew’s Gospel has been the subject of debate among Christians since the Western Schism. The Catholic Church’s official interpretation of the Vulgate states that the Church is founded not on a geological rock but by Christ who appointed Peter as the first pope and established the Petrine ministry as God’s eternal presence in the world. Orthodox and Protestant churches interpret the Greek differently. The full text of Matthew 16:18–19 reads: “Et ego dico tibi, quia tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam, et portae inferi non praevalebunt adversus eam,” “And I tell you, because you are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” Mulet made three edits to the Biblical text.
The first edit is the change from “Petrus,” a masculine, proper noun meaning the name Peter, to “petra,” a feminine noun meaning a geological rock. Given the uniform association between Mulet’s Catholic audience with the papacy, this revision is startling. Several seminary professors of Church history found no precedent in the Catholic world for this alteration. One of them felt that the substitution was so bizarre that perhaps Mulet was writing from memory and misquoted the Vulgate!
The dominant theory to explain this change is that the “rock” is Montmartre Hill, and that “hell” is an allegory for the passage of time and erosion by the elements. This widely accepted theory does not come directly from Mulet nor anecdotally from Raugel. The Greek word “Petrus” appears sixteen times in the New Testament. If Mulet only wanted to speak of geological rocks, he could have selected any of these since the “Tu es petra” text has such a strong association with the papacy. Another theory says that “petra” refers to the smaller, Medieval church of Saint Pierre-de-Montmartre, an institution consecrated over 700 years before the basilica. Regardless, both interpretations struggle to compete with the dominant Catholic exegesis.
Significant, too, is the omission of the phrase “et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam,” the portion of the text interpreted as the source of papal authority. This omission suggests that Mulet is not arguing for the legitimacy of the Petrine office but the invincibility of “petra.” The third edit is the change of the word “eam” (“him”) to “te” (“you”) to match the feminine gender of “petra.” This change is significant because of the distance between the two agreeing words in the Latin text. A mere misquotation would not be so precise. Despite the difference in languages, Mulet may have linked the French “Montmartre” with the Latin “petra” because both are of feminine gender. Without a doubt, “petra” means “rock.” Mulet just changed the Biblical text to suit his purpose, a tactic that he frequently employed in various other pieces. Knowing that his Catholic audience would immediately associate this passage with the papacy, Mulet may have intended another double meaning of the word “petra.”
To fully understand Mulet’s use of the title and its relationship to the basilica, one needs to examine the status of the papacy by 1920. The French Revolution of 1789 effectively ended the notion of government as a divinely ordained hierarchy. This idea quickly swept across the globe. In Italy, minor revolutions in the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s gave rise to the movement to unite the Italian peninsula: the Risorgimento. Because the centrally located Papal States divided Italy in half, the Italian nationalists viewed them as an obstacle to unification. The nationalists conquered them one by one, and by 1861 only Rome remained directly under papal rule. The pope’s army was weak and had never been able to defend any of its states without the military assistance of historically Catholic countries. Most of these allies withdrew their aid when the First Vatican Council (1869–1870) decreed papal infallibility. Only the French remained, and the onset of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 recalled all these troops from Rome. The pope pleaded for international assistance, but still enraged at the definition of papal infallibility, the leadership of Europe’s traditionally Catholic countries refused. King Victor Emmanuel II (1820–1878) of Italy attempted diplomatic resolutions to the problem of Rome, but Pope Pius IX would cede nothing to the Italians.
Rome, undefended, was invaded by the Italian army under the command of Raffaele Cadorna (1815–1897) in the early morning hours of September 20, 1870. It fell soon afterward. The populace of Rome was itself divided on whether Rome should be independent of the papacy. “The Catholic religion represented the hand of medieval superstition and inequality, faith in the supernatural rather than in reason.”31 By 1873, cries of “death to the Pope” rang in the streets, which led to the excommunication of King Victor Emmanuel II for his Law of Suppression of Religious Corporations. Unwavering, the pope insisted that his spiritual autonomy depended upon his territorial sovereignty. There was no room in Rome for two sovereigns. Pope Pius IX declared himself “Prisoner of the Vatican” and refused to leave its buildings rather than to accept the sovereignty of the King of Italy. He and his successors would remain “prisoners” until Pope Pius XI bartered the Lateran Treaty with Benito Mussolini in 1929, creating the Vatican City State.
When Rome fell, France gazed at the events in Italy with tears in its eyes. France, the Pope’s surest defender, abandoned him in his hour of greatest need. The papal nuncio to France remarked that as “. . . the French army’s catastrophe on the Rhine began, . . . the conviction is spreading and deepening that the French government’s sins toward the Holy See have provoked God’s wrath on France.”32 The French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War was God’s punishment inflicted on the nation for abandoning the pope. France needed to atone for its sins against God when it allowed Papal Rome to fall.
“To obtain the deliverance of the Sovereign Pontiff and the Salvation of France” is one of two fundamental goals of Legentil’s National Vow. The construction of Sacré-Coeur to fulfill the demands of Alacoque’s vision was a required act of reparation for the country’s sins against the papacy. To win back God’s favor, its construction was essential. Revolutions in France and Italy had ended the church’s immediate, practical, governing authority, resulting in the execution of bishops and clergy and the demolition of once-great monasteries and convents. The pope was walled up in the Vatican in the face of a secular government and a populace thirsty for his blood. The bishop of Poitiers, François Pie, noted that, “The Revolution of 1789 is the original sin of public life.”33 Simply put: hell is the Revolution. The Savoyarde dedication booklet anticipates this explicitly, stating that its purpose is “to resist all the attacks of the demolishers and the shock of all the future revolutions” (italics added).34 The precedent of this view and its likely dissemination among French Catholics suggests that Mulet’s message in this final movement of the cycle is a statement of faith in both the physical building and its ideology; and as such, “Tu es petra” is no mere circus showpiece, but the profound prayer of a fervent heart and a statement of hope and comfort to an oppressed Church.
Conclusion
While there is no doubt that Mulet’s Esquisses Byzantines is a colorful interpretation of the architecture of the Sacré-Coeur Basilica in Paris, one should not neglect its ideological program. A close reading of this text completes the understanding of the piece in a more philosophical way than the empiricists suggest. The ideology of the basilica is one of atonement—a call to France to repent for the sins of the Revolution and for failure to protect the pope from the Risorgimento. The fruit of this penance was the Allied victory in World War I. Mulet’s programmatic inscriptions seem to support this as does his otherwise unknown motivation for publishing the work at this time. Mulet never commented on the program of the Esquisses Byzantines, but this in no way dismisses this close reading.
The French victory in World War I confirmed for conservative Catholics that the final fulfillment of the prophecies of Marguerite-Marie Alacoque had been successful. France had atoned for its sins. Alacoque was canonized on May 13, 1920, the final affirmation of the victory won through the Sacred Heart of Jesus for France and the world.
Notes
1. Jane F. Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual: Music and Ideology in France 1914–1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), page 17.
2. Ibid., page 5.
3. Raymond A. Jonas, France and the Cult of the Sacred Heart: an Epic Tale for Modern Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), page 27.
4. Ibid., page 40.
5. Ibid., page 83.
6. Ibid., page 90.
7. Ibid., page 149.
8. Alfred Van den Brule, Le Sacré-Coeur De Montmartre: Hubert Rohault De Fleury (Paris: Spes, 1930), page 134.
9. David Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2006), page 376.
10. Jacques Benoist, “Le Sacré-Coeur De Montmartre De 1870 a Nos Jours,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, volume 26, number 1 (1992), pages 355–356.
11. Felix Raugel, letter to Kenneth Saslaw, July 7, 1973. Correspondence: Saslaw archives, Donna Walters, Gautier, Mississippi, November 16, 2023.
12. Bulletin De l’Œuvre Du Vœu National, Archives Historiques De l’Archevêché De Paris (AHAP), 1895, page 924.
13. Benoist, page 608.
14. Donna Mary Walters, Steven Best, and Thomas Fielding, The Enigmatic Organist (manuscript), page 1.
15. Ibid., page 26.
16. Ibid., page 23.
17. Fulcher, op. cit., page 11.
18. “Les tendances et antireligieuses néfastes de l’orgue moderne,” Congres General de Musique Sacrée, Strasbourg, July 26–31, 1921, page 9.
19. Isabelle Mulet letter to Kenneth Saslaw, July 7, 1973. Correspondence in Saslaw archives, Donna Walters, Gautier, Mississippi, November 16, 2023.
20. Benoist, op. cit., page 586.
20. Benoist, op. cit., page 588.
21. Harvey, op. cit., page 381.
22. G. Mulet, “La Savoyarde: Cantique Populaire” (Grenoble, M. Fleurot, 1896).
23. Paul Handley, editor, “Sacre Coeur Is Consecrated,” Church Times, October 25, 2019, www.churchtimes.co.uk/.
24. Jean-Loup Truche, Concerning the Translations of the Words “Memoîre” and “Campagnes,” email to the author, January 12, 2020.
25. Quoted in R. F. O’Conner, “Cardinal Guibert.” American Catholic Quarterly Review, Volume XLII, Number 165 (January 1917), page 465.
26. Ibid., page 487.
27. Savoyarde.
28. Ibid., page 47.
29. Ibid., page 71.
30. David Kertzer, Prisoner of the Vatican (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006), page 111.
31. Ibid., page 39.
32. Kertzer, op. cit., p. 39.
33. Jonas, op. cit., page 147.
34. “Voeu national au Sacré Coeur: cérémonie du baptême de Françoise Marguerite du Sacré-Coeur [cloche dite la Savoyarde de]” (Paris: Imprimerie Devalois, 1895).
