Godefroy Calès

Jean Marie Noël Godefroy Calès was a French physician and politician. He was born on 21 March 1799 in Franciade , Seine and died on 25 July 1868 in Villefranche-de-Lauragais, Haute-Garonne.

Biography Godefroy Calès was born on 21 March 1799 in Franciade in a family from Occitania with a republican tradition. His father, Jean Calès (born in Caraman on 8 November 1764, deceased in Mazamet on 11 October 1840 and married to Marianne Louise Victorine Fournier, deceased on 9 February 1744 in Villefranche-de-Lauragais), was a physician and the administrator of the region Haute-Garonne between 1793 and 1794. He was later appointed, in 1799, chief physician of the military hospital of Franciade, then called and located after the revolution within the walls of the Abbey Church of St Denis, where his son Godefroy was born. He then filled, from 1800 to 1804, the functions of Inspector-General of Military Hospitals. Jean Calès was the brother of Jean-Marie Calès (1757–1834), the eldest, also physician and representative at the National Convention and at the Council of Five-Hundred, and of Jean-Chrysostôme Calès (1769–1853), colonel in Napoleon's Great Army, baron of the Empire and representative at the Chamber of Representatives. Their parents (Godefroy's grandparents), Jean Calès, who was an alderman of Caraman, and Jeanne Rochas, were landowners of the region of Lauragais near Toulouse, from old Protestant families rooted in the region and forced to convert to Catholicism after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes issued by King Louis XIV in 1685.

The younger brother of Godefroy, Louis Denis Godefroy Calès, (born in November 1800 in Etain, Meuse), medical student in Toulouse in 1821, then professor at Castres, was presented to the Faculty of Protestant Theology of Montauban (created in 1808 by Napoleon I) and the Protestant consistory named him, on 20 April 1832, pastor in Viane (Tarn) where he will officiate until June 1874. left Godefroy Calès (oil painting, unattributed)Faithful to family's traditions, Godefroy Calès followed, in Montpellier, the courses at the Faculty of Medicine and was received doctor in 1822. Established in Villefranche-de-Lauragais, where he had early acquired a certain political influence in republican circles, he was named after the Revolution of 1830 Commander of the National Guard; but seeing that the government was embarking on a course which was not his, he resigned. Godefroy remained close, intellectually and politically, to his uncle Jean-Marie, and this, despite the fact that the royalists condemned him to exile and banished him from the national territory in 1816, as a regicide, during the restoration of Monarchy. A letter written from Liège in 1833 by the former conventional and deputy to the Council of the Five-Hundred, and addressed to his nephew Godefroy, explicitly testifies about the proximity of their common republican convictions. Still remaining a member of the Municipal Council of Villefranche until 1848, Godefroy proclaimed that year, during the French second revolution, the Republic, and took over the administration of the city. in the Lauragais, alongside Doctors Jean Hameau (Landes) and Roussilhe (Aude). This disease, which has become rare in developed countries, is due to malnutrition and is manifested by dermatitis, diarrhea and, in the most severe cases, dementia. In the absence of treatment, the outcome is death. It reaches poor populations whose diet contains little tryptophan and Vitamin B3 (Niacin, Vitamin PP), as in the case of non-nixtamalized maize diets.

The observations and works of Calès made in Villefranche-de-Lauragais served as a foundation for the subsequent work of the doctor, philanthropist and politician Théophile Roussel (of the Academy of Medicine) who will contribute to publicize the disease in France, by the publication in 1845 of « De la pellagre », but especially by the second enlarged edition entitled « Traité de la pellagre et des pseudo-pellagres » published in 1866. The importance of Roussel is also to be found in his continuous action with health authorities to eradicate pellagra.

Thus, Roussel undertook a study trip to the South-West of France in 1847 and visited Dr. Calès in Villefranche to better understand this terrible plague. He will recognize in Calès the accuracy of his observations on the links of the disease with malnutrition, misery and deprivation, as well as with the maize crops of the region. He also saw in him a forerunner of the sanitary approaches against the impotence of therapeutic agents:

This sensitivity to the living conditions of the needy will underlie his future political action and his commitment to stand for the legislative elections of 23 April 1848.

A republican «fourtyeighter» deputy of the Mountain

Godefroy Calès was a very popular and advanced Republican militant in his département, and was elected on 23 April 1848, representative of Haute-Garonne at the Constituent National Assembly of the new Republic (Second Republic) declared after the Revolution of February 1848 and the overthrow of King Louis Philippe. These elections were the first to be held by universal suffrage since 1792.

Calès sat first, until 26 May 1849, in the « Committee of the Cults », a parliamentary committee of 42 members established to consider the question of a possible revision of the Concordat concluded with the Catholic Church in 1801, and consider the project of a complete Separation of the Churches and the State. The majority of the members of the committee, like a large part of the French, not wanting to reiterate the excesses of the revolution of 1789 in religious matters, and taking advantage of the climate of concord of the revolution of 1848, believed in the necessity and possibility of an agreement between Rome and the Republic, and wished to see negotiations open between Paris and the Holy See, to give the Concordat a new and more liberal foundation. They did not wish to see however the Concordat abrogated unilaterally. They also rejected the idea of a complete separation between the church and the state.

In the assembly, Calès sat with the extreme-left group of the Mountain (French: La Montagne, whose members sat on the highest benches of the Assembly), like his uncle Jean-Marie Calès half a century before (in 1792) at the National Convention. This group, in 1848, was led and organized by Alexandre Ledru-Rollin and comprising sixty-six deputies such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Pierre Leroux, Victor Schœlcher or Félicité Robert de Lamennais, some of the pioneers of socialism in history. Calès attempted to defend the political achievements and the important social benefits obtained after the Revolution of February 1848 against the attacks of the moderate Republicans and of the party of Order (a political group formed by monarchists and conservatives, led by prominent members including Adolphe Thiers, Francois Guizot, Odilon Barrot, and Alexis de Tocqueville), who were the majority in the assembly. Thus, Calès violently opposed the reactionary policy of the Assembly and voted constantly with the montagnarde left and often with the associated independent extreme left (in particular with deputies such as Étienne Arago, Victor Considerant et Edgar Quinet). Madame Quinet wrote later:

His parliamentary work Supporter of the freedom of expression, Calès was opposing any restrictive law on the press, such as that on the restoration of the deposits for the newspapers. However, on 9–11 August 1848, the Assembly voted the extension of press offenses, the aggravation of penalties and the increase of the deposits.

Calès had been constantly interested in the social question which was progressively rising in France since the beginning of the 19th century. He therefore supported the uprising of May and June 1848. Thus, when on 26 August 1848, the Assembly proposed the prosecution of the former member of the Provisional Government Louis Blanc and the former prefect of police Marc Caussidière, who had been accused of having participated to the uprising, Calès strongly opposed the project. Prosecutions will be finally voted by the conservative majority and maintained. Blanc and Caussidière were forced to flee on exile. founded both on a strong legislative and parliamentary power, and on a non-personalised and limited executive power. Thus, on 6 October 1848, Godefroy Calès defended the Grevy amendment, which proposed that « The National Assembly delegates the executive power to a citizen, who takes the title of president of the council of ministers, elected for a limited time, and always revocable ». Indeed, through this amendment, the young republican Jules Grevy wanted to oppose the project of an election of the President of the Republic by universal suffrage, and proposed instead to obtain the election of a president of the executive, who will be always revocable by the National Assembly, thus refusing to legitimize the power to one single person above everything: however, following Lamartine's recommendation, the majority of the deputies rejected the amendment. in the following weeks, the French troops will finally receive the order of the Prince-President and Odilon Barrot to crush the Roman Revolution led by the republicans Giuseppe Mazzini and General Garibaldi.

Towards the dissolution of the Constituent assembly

L'Assemblée en récréation. (Caricature by Cham representing the Constituent National Assembly (1850). Proudhon (bottom-left), Lamartine (on his knees, bottom-center), Crémieux (next to Lamartine, bottom-center), Considerant (next to Lamartine, holding a stick, center-left), Thiers (center-right), general Cavaignac (upper-right, with a newspaper hat), Ledru-Rollin (upper-left, facing the explosion of the Laws & Constitution)... are represented.) Godefroy Calès vividly opposed the Rateau proposal: after the election of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte as President of the Republic on 11 December 1848, and the nomination of the conservative cabinet Odilon Barrot on le 20 December 1848, the party of Order wanted to take advantage of its state of grace and to get rid as quickly as possible of the republican representatives who were opposing the right-wing government. He thus called for the rapid dissolution of the Constituent National Assembly of 1848 before the term of its legislature, and the election of a new Legislative Assembly. Supported by the government, the « Rateau proposal » was opposed by many representatives, from the deputies of the Mountain to some moderate republicans like Alphonse de Lamartine, Adolphe Billault or Jules Grévy, who felt that the task of the Constituent Assembly was not over. Vigorously discussed on 12 January 1849, Godefroy Calès and the Left couldn't prevent its adoption on 29 January.

Annexes