Claude-Emmanuel de Pastoret

Who was Claude-Emmanuel de Pastoret?

Claude-Emmanuel Joseph Pierre, marquis de Pastoret was a French author and politician.

Pastoret was elected member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres on the strength of his "Zoroastre, Confucius et Mahomet comparés comme sectaires, legislateurs et moralistes". He was Venerable Master of "Les Neuf Sœurs" from 1788 till 1789.

In 1790 Claude-Emannuel Pastoret—then president of the Parisian electoral body to the National Assembly—was offered the offices of Minister of Interior and Minister of Justice by the desperate King Louis XVI. He declined the honours and was elected "procureur géneral syndic du département de la Seine". It was in this capacity that he was responsible for the transformation of the église Sainte-Génevieve into a temple where the remains of great citizens of the new state were to be honoured: the Panthéon, Paris.

In the National Assembly he pleaded for the abolition of slavery and the secularisation of the civil state, thought he was not a deputy.

Elected to the Legislative Assembly by the electors of Paris, he was honoured as the first deputy to be elected President. It was not unusual for intellectuals to be elected to public office, and he joined such noteworthies as Condorcet. He most frequently allied himself with the constitutionalist faction, and was highly respected by the opponent Girondist faction. He would undertake a variety of projects during the course of the Assembly, including requesting repressive measures against émigrés, the abolition of the New Year address to the Crown, and the deletion of the purely honorific designations. He voted for the abolition of the University of Paris and made a long speech to propose to raise a "statue of liberty" on the ruins of the Bastille. Alas, he realized as time went by that the reforms which he had been the first to demand increasingly threatened the royal authority he was trying to protect.