Jean-Baptiste Pérès

Jean-Baptiste Pérès (1752–1840) was a French physicist best known for his 1827 pamphlet Grand Erratum, a polemical satire, translated into many European languages, that attempted "in the interest of conservative theology, to reduce to an absurdity the purely negative tendencies of the rationalistic criticism of the Scriptures then in vogue" (as Frederick W. Loetscher described what he called "the celebrated pamphlet" in The Princeton Theological Review 1906) through humorously suggesting ways in which the history of Napoleon Bonaparte could be shown to be an expression of an ancient sun myth.

Pérès was professor of mathematics and physics at the University of Lyon, later a government attorney and finally librarian at Agen.

Grand Erratum

The pamphlet's complete title in French was Comme quoi Napoléon n’a jamais existé ou Grand Erratum, source d'un nombre infini d'errata à noter dans l'histoire du XIXe siècle ("It seems Napoleon never existed or Grand Erratum, source of an infinite number of errata as noted in the history of the 19th century").

The pamphlet's satire was directed at Charles François Dupuis (1742–1809) and his influential work Origine de tous les Cultes, ou la Réligion Universelle (1795), which attempted to prove that all religions were equally valid and based on common and universal imagery and magic numbers.

Pérès presents an overly rationalistic interpretation of the analogies and etymologies of elements in the popular understanding of Napoleon's life in order to show how, just as the Scriptures or other religious texts could be argued to be mythical, so could Napoleon's life.

Summary of the pamphlet

(The following summary is based on Sonnenfeld; see below. Direct quotations also come from Sonnenfeld.)

The name of Napoleon is suggested to be similar to that of the Ancient Greek sun god Apollo - the name supposedly from the verb apollyô or apoleô, "to exterminate" (the initial N in "Napoleon" could be derived from the Greek prefix nè or nai, "veritable"). Pérès derives the name from the event during the Trojan War when the Sun shone with unusual force, killing many of the Greek soldiers, as revenge for Agamemnon capturing Chryseis, the daughter of the priest of Apollo, Chryses. The family name Bona parte ("good part") could be seen as coming from a dualistic view of the good or light as one extreme, with mala parte ("bad part") being the opposite, darkness or hell (Pérès refers to the proclamation abi in malam partem, made by the priest during the ritual of exorcism).

Several other aspects of Napoleon's origin and family could also be cast as betraying supposedly mythological origins:

The location of Napoleon's birthplace, Corsica, in relation to France, corresponds to that of Delos, which is the mythical place of Apollo's birth, in relation to Greece.