The story of Pierre Rivière: the horrible patricide of the nineteenth century that Michel Foucault told

One of the stories told by the philosopher and historian Michel Foucault (Poitiers, 1926) is one that speaks of a notorious patricide that shook France in 1835. During a seminar at the College de France, the brilliant writer collected, reconstructed and ordered all the legal and journalistic documents of the time that spoke of the multiple homicide committed by young Pierre Rivière.

Foucault began in the afternoon to collect all the information of the case and to narrate with extreme precision all the actions of the 20-year-old boy who cruelly cut his mother and his brothers throat.

In his book “Me, Pierre Rivere. Having slaughtered my mother, my sister and my brother”, published by fable Tusquets, Foucault chronologically orders the facts of the case, which draws the attention of the writer (also a psychologist and sociologist) because of its relationship with psychiatry and criminal justice.

The crime in the Rivières' house was reported on June 3, 1835, when the authorities arrested Pierre, after finding the lifeless bodies of his mother, brother and sister.

The victims are Victoire Brion, wife of Pierre-Margrin Rivière, and the couple's two children. Almost immediately it is ruled that the murderer was his own relative, who at that time was just over 20 years old.

The media of the time reflected the horror of society in the face of the image of the young patricide, later diagnosed with a mental disorder. “It never seemed normal at all, seeing that his father was a victim of his wife's constant entanglements, wanting to free him, he went to his mother's house that morning and armed with a sickle killed her,” says one of the rulings of the case.

On June 9, 1835, Pierre was questioned for the sole purpose of knowing why he had killed his mother (who was seven months pregnant and whom he broke in half with a sickle) and his two brothers, Victorie and Jules, and he replied: “Because God commanded me to justify His providence; they were united.”

“The three of them agreed to persecute my father,” he replied, having pointed out that he had learned that from the Bible.

In the course of history it is described how the residents of the village, located in the north of France, claim that he is a madman who always showed a “strange” behavior.

In Pierre Rivière's memoirs, he makes a detailed text of why he killed the elements of his family:

“When my father went there to work she expressed all her dislike to him; he tried to conquer her, he said: since you didn't want to stay with me, do you want me to come and live here with your parents?” , to which Pierre's mother only replied: “that every year I bring her the money she earned to manage it as she wanted”. Faced with this answer, Pierre mentions that he killed his mother because of the bad way he treated his father, the sister for following his mother's ideals and his little brother or because he loved them both.

This text by Michel Foucault makes a good distinction of the same fact in the face of different explanations of the crime and how it is interpreted by the different forms that codify in public opinion: legal, medical, police and journalistic.

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