In the cultural history of Lyons the seventeenth century has usually been considered as a void between the city's brief but brilliant period as seat of court and thereby intellectual and artistic centre in the early sixteenth century and its role, from the revival of the silk industry in the eighteenth century, as one of the first great neo-classical cities. This view is congruent with a concept of passive decline in provincial France under the rule of Louis XIV. Yet the evidence of Lyons' urban fabric suggests otherwise, for more civic-sponsored building took place in the city during the seventeenth century than in either the century which preceded it or that which followed it. Furthermore this considerable activity culminated in the construction of a new Hotel de Ville immediately acknowledged as surpassing its Parisian counterpart. My dissertation begins by reconstructing these developments in the town, and in particular of those in the Terreaux district, around and including the Hotel de Ville and the College de la Trinite, which thus became Lyons' new capitol. It then proceeds to examine the three principal ceremonial spaces in the town - the Grand Escalier and the Grande Salle in the Hotel de Ville and the Grande Cour in the College de la Trinite - so as to show how the decoration of these spaces constituted a unified iconographical programme, the Restoration of the (Roman) Temple de Lyon. The detailed analysis of these painted decorations, taken with an examination of the dramatic performances sponsored by the Consulate and contemporary transformations in Consular ceremonial, reveals Lyons' self-image in the mid- to late- seventeenth century, such as to force a re-evaluation of the city's politico-economic situation during this period.

On retrace ici le parcours du docteur Alexandre Lacassagne (1843-1924), médecin lyonnais, trajectoire personnelle et scientifique d’un savant de la fin du XIXe siècle, fondateur de l’anthropologie criminelle et d’une école de criminologie passée à la postérité sous le nom d’ « école lyonnaise ». Formé à l’école de santé militaire, il est de cette génération d’hommes et de républicains forgés au feu de la guerre franco-prussienne, de la chute de l’Empire et des débuts de l’aventure coloniale et républicaine. La reconstitution de ses réseaux professionnels, l’étude de ses prises de positions intellectuelles, permet de montrer qu’il est un savant emblématique de son temps. Sa bibliothèque révèle ses états d’âme. L’analyse des ouvrages fait émerger une angoisse récurrente, celle de l’altérité : des criminels bien sûr, mais aussi des femmes, des fous, des invertis, des « primitifs », dont les inquiétantes figures contrastent avec l’image de légèreté et de foi inconditionnelle dans le Progrès qui est habituellement celle de la Belle Époque. L’anthropologie et l’anthropométrie se mettent au service d’une frénésie taxinomique qui trahit l’inquiétude générée par toute indétermination, désormais intolérable. Un double processus d’essentialisation et de hiérarchisation se trouve aux fondements des discours justifiant l’exclusion persistante de certaines catégories de populations, rejetées en deçà de l’Universel. Lacassagne nous sert d’œilleton pour examiner les enjeux biopolitiques de cette exclusion. C’est l’avers, cette face de la médaille qui porte une effigie – et qui serait frappée à celle de l’Autre en cette fin de siècle – et le portrait d’un homme et de son temps par l’inventaire de ses aversions, qu’on a voulu reconstituer. / The following pages will retrace the personal and professional path of the Lyonnais doctor Alexandre Lacassagne (1843-1924), an intellectual from the end of the 19th century who founded anthropological criminology and the school of criminology that would go down in history known as the “école lyonnaise”. Having done his studies at a military school he belonged to that generation of men and Republicans who had been forged by the fires of the Franco-Prussian war, the fall of the Empire and the beginnings of colonial and Republican adventures. The reconstitution of his professional networks and the study of his intellectual positions show that he was an emblematic scholar of his time. His library reveals his true feelings : the analysis of the works shows an ongoing anguish, that of alterity. Of course of criminals, but also of women, of the insane, homosexuals and the “primitive” whose troubling figures contrast with the image of the carefree and unconditional faith in Progress that was quintessential of the “Belle Epoque”. Anthropology and anthropometry are at the service of a taxonomic frenzy that betrays the concern generated by all disinclination that had become intolerable. A process at the same time of essentialism and hierarchism are the foundations of a discourse justifying the ongoing exclusion of certain categories of populations rejected below the “Universel”. Lacassagne serves as a peephole to examine the “biopolitical” stakes of this exclusion. It is the obverse, the side of the coin showing the effigy- and that will be struck with the Other at the end of the century- and the portrait of a man and his time by the inventory of his aversions, which we wished to reconstruct.