21 June 2016

Agricol Perdiguier in Avignon (84)




The writer and politician Agricol Perdiguier (1805–75) has his own square in Avignon, and this monument to him is in that square, along with those of Théophile Aubanel and Joseph Roumanille already shown below. He grew up speaking Provençal as opposed to the national language, had little schooling and was essentially self-taught. His father was a carpenter, a trade which Agricol would later take up. There is another, much more modern and rather eccentric, monument to him in Morières-lès-Avignon (84), which I shall be posting in due course.

Perdiguier's father was a captain of the Republicain army who had to flee on the Restoration. Agricol, at the age of ten, was considered a Bonapartist and was hit violently and dragged through the streets and through streams: the experience would have a lasting impression on him.

In 1824 he made the Tour de France, which was a kind of apprenticeship in which the trainee made a tour of a number of different locations in the country, and which Agricol finished in 1828. He was made a compagnon (a kind of member of a workers' brotherhood) in 1827 in Chartres, and returned to Morières in August 1828. He wrote a number of books, chiefly songs, works on the Compagnonnage, and politics, but also poetry and a theatrical work.

'HOMMAGE À AGRICOL PERDIGUIER
1875 – 1975
FEDERATION COMPAGNONNIQUE
UNION COMAGNONNIQUE
RÉUNIES'

'30 juillet 2005
Cérémonie commémorative du bicentenaire de la naissance d'Agricol Perdiguier
dit Avignonnais-le-Vertu [...], menuisier du Devoir de Liberté et
homme politique, élu représantative du peuple en 1848.'

Links to my other Agricol Periguier posts:

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Agricol Perdiguier in Morières-lès-Avignon
Agricol Perdiguier in cimetière du Père-Lachaise

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