[1848: Gregor Mendel, the monk who wanted to be a citizen].

This article proposes a previously unpublished French translation of a petition, in German, addressed by six Augustinian friars to the Constitutional Parliament of Vienna in the revolutionary year 1848. The petition states that members of religious orders are deprived of civil rights and demands that they be given citizenship ; it also contains a bitter attack on the monastic institution. We suggest that Mendel was the author of this text, which he signed and actually hand-wrote.