L’Évangile selon Babeuf
Babeuf’s Gospel

Summary/Abstract: It might seem strange - even shocking - to link Babeuf with the Bible. After all, he rejected Catholicism early in the French Revolution, giving up his birth name, François-Noël, and choosing the Roman names Camille and later Gracchus to better reflect his commitment to equality - a cause that eventually led to his execution in 1797. Yet, the Bible appears often in his writings, and the figure of Christ plays an important role in how Babeuf saw himself: first as an apostle, then as a martyr for Equality. Babouvism, which helped shape early communist ideas, draws from the Bible, often using parody or imitation. The Conspiracy of the Equals followed this path, aiming to create a new moral and political code - a “Decalogue of holy human- 20 Ronan Chalmin ity, of sans-culottism, of inalienable equity,” as Babeuf wrote in his Manifesto of the Plebeians (1795). This manifesto became a kind of modern gospel for the oppressed.

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