Alongside Hébert and Roux, Chaumette was one of the best-known radicals of the Paris Commune. He proposed and implemented numerous social and moral measures for the poor, widows, people with mental illnesses and prostitutes. On many issues, he was less uncompromising and therefore posed less of a threat to the committees of Year II. He likewise had no sympathy for equal rights for women. Yet his favourite project – the fight against Christianity – proved his undoing. In the end, he was condemned for seeking, through his atheism, to eradicate all notions of morality and every idea of divinity. The followers of his nature-oriented and partly anarchic Cult of Reason, who had still been allowed to hold a lavish celebration at Notre-Dame in November 1793, had been silenced. The way was clear for Robespierre’s Supreme Being.
December 5, 1792 · He becomes procurator of the Paris Commune and adopts the name Anaxagoras as a sign of his break with Christianity.
September 1793 · He supports the policy of the Terror, calling for a revolutionary army to secure food supplies and harsh measures against food hoarders.
November 10, 1793 · Festival of Reason at Notre-Dame in Paris.
February 18, 1794 · Chaumette delivers a speech on the abolition of slavery at Notre-Dame, renamed the Temple of Reason.
March 13, 1794 · Arrested during the crackdown on the Hébertists.
April 13, 1794 · Sentenced to death on charges including conspiracy against the liberty and security of the French people. He is executed in Paris the same day.
Anaxagoras Chaumette lived to be 30 years old.
Quotes
I was formerly called Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette because my god-father believed in the saints. Since the revolution I have taken the name of a saint who was hanged for his republican principles. Anaxagoras Chaumette, December 1792
They want to crush us; well then! We must forestall them and crush them ourselves; we have the power in our hands. Chaumette on the rich, 4 September 1793
No more priests, no other gods than those that nature offers us. Chaumette at the Festival of Reason, 10 November 1793
Alongside Hébert and Roux, Chaumette was one of the best-known radicals of the Paris Commune. He proposed and implemented numerous social and moral measures for the poor, widows, people with mental illnesses and prostitutes. On many issues, he was less uncompromising and therefore posed less of a threat to the committees of Year II. He likewise had no sympathy for equal rights for women. Yet his favourite project – the fight against Christianity – proved his undoing. In the end, he was condemned for seeking, through his atheism, to 
