Martyrs of charity, heroes of solidarity: Catholic and Republican responses to the fire at Bazar de la Charité Paris 1897

The fire that devastated Paris' Bazar de la Charité on 4 May 1897, claiming around 130 lives, occurred at a moment of tension-ridden ambiguity in relations between the Catholic Church and the French Republican state—a moment traversed by initiatives of Ralliement and by the resistance that those initiatives encountered in both the Catholic and the Republican camp. The article shows how these tensions were reflected and worked out in the interpretations of the fire that were publicly offered by Catholic and Republican spokesmen. Focusing on the rhetoric and imagery of these interpretations, it shows how terms like ‘solidarity’, ‘charity’ and ‘sacrifice’ were employed in a range of senses and of rhetorical contexts, serving sometimes as vehicles of negotiation between Catholic and Republican sensibilities, sometimes as markers of intransigent positions. Discourse on the fire, both Catholic and Republican, found a potent focus in contrasting images of a heroism structured by class and gender, highlighting on the one hand the solidaristic spirit of heroic working class males and on the other the sacrificial martyrdom of upper class women.