Jean-François de la Barre

Who was Jean-François de la Barre?

François-Jean Lefebvre de la Barre at the Château Férolles-en-Brie was a young French nobleman, famous for having been tortured and beheaded before his body was burnt on a pyre along with Voltaire's "Philosophical Dictionary" nailed to his torso. la Barre is often said to have been executed for not saluting a Roman Catholic religious procession, but the elements of the case were far more complex.

In France, Lefebvre de la Barre is widely regarded a symbol of the victims of Christian religious intolerance, along with Jean Calas and Pierre-Paul Sirven, all championed by Voltaire. A second replacement statue to de la Barre stands nearby the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Paris at the summit of the butte Montmartre, the highest point in Paris and an 18th arrondissement street nearby the Sacré-Cœur is also named after Lefebvre de la Barre.

Lefebvre de la Barre is a descendant of Joseph-Antoine de La Barre, a governor of the French Antilles and then New France.