Cordeliers

A few hours before designer Véronique Nichanian presented her Hermès men’s runway show in June, she took in the setting, a lush, verdant courtyard in Paris’s Cloître des Cordeliers that she said is a well-kept secret.

In 1790 he attracted attention by some pamphlets, and became a prominent member of the club of the Cordeliers in 1791.

We may, indeed, smile at the absurdity of some of its parallels, and they may seem shocking enough when cleverly presented, stripped of all that softens them, in the “Alcoran des Cordeliers.”

At its origin," he says, "one of the principal features of this fete, the one, at least, which peculiarly attracted the attention of the mob, consisted in scenes from the Old and New Testament which were represented on theatres erected along the route of the procession, but chiefly at the main court of the Convent des Cordeliers, they belonged, unquestionably, to the miracles' proper, having retained that characteristic simplicity and brevity which is found in the most ancient pieces.

The Cordeliers were from the first the centre of the popular principle in the French Revolution carried to its extreme point; they were the earliest to suspect the court of being irreconcilably hostile to freedom; and it was they who most vehemently proclaimed the need for root-and-branch measures.