Voltaire: Treatise on Tolerance. Вольтер
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though innocent, to be broken alive upon the wheel, than to expose eight counsellors of Languedoc to the mortification of being obliged to own that they had been mistaken; nay, these people made use of this very expression: “That there were more magistrates than Calases”; by which it would seem they inferred that the Calas family ought to be sacrificed to the honor of the magistracy. Alas! they never reflected that the honor of a judge, like that of another man, consists in making reparation for the faults he may have committed.
In France no one believes that the pope, even when assisted by his cardinals, is infallible; ought they then to have believed that eight judges of Toulouse were so? Every sensible and disinterested person did without scruple declare that the decree of the court of justice of Toulouse would be looked upon as void by all Europe, even though particular considerations might prevent it from being declared so by the council.
Such was the state of this surprising affair when it occasioned certain impartial, but sensible, persons to form the design of laying before the public a few reflections upon toleration, indulgence, and commiseration, which the Abbé Houteville in his bombastic and declamatory work, which is false in all the facts, calls a monstrous doctrine, but which reason calls the portion of human nature.
Either the judges of Toulouse, carried away by popular enthusiasm, caused the innocent master of a family to be put to a painful and ignominious death, a thing which is without example; or this master of a family and his wife murdered their eldest son, with the assistance of another son and a friend, which is altogether contrary to nature. In either case, the most holy of all religions has been perverted to the production of an enormous crime. It is therefore to the interest of mankind to examine how far charity or cruelty is consistent with true religion.
Chapter II.
Consequences Of The Execution Of John Calas.
If the order of white penitents had been the cause of the punishment of an innocent person, and of the utter ruin and dispersion of a whole family, and of branding them with that ignominy which is annexed to those who suffer, when it ought properly to fall only upon those who pass an unjust sentence; if the frantic hurry of these penitents in celebrating as a saint one whom they ought to have treated as a self-murderer, brought a virtuous, an innocent fellow-citizen to the scaffold, surely this fatal mistake ought to make them true penitents for the rest of their lives, and they and the judges ought to have their eyes continually filled with tears, without wearing a white cloak or a mask on their faces, to hide those tears. We have a proper respect for all religious orders—they are edifying; but will all the good they have ever been able to do the state compensate for the shocking disaster of which they have been the cause? Their institution seems to have been the work of that zeal which animates the Catholics of Languedoc against those we call Huguenots. One would be tempted to imagine that they had made a vow to hate their brethren; and that, though men have religion enough to hate and persecute, they have not sufficient to love and cherish one another. But what would be the case if these orders were governed by enthusiastic superiors, as were certain congregations, among whom, to use the words of one of our most eloquent and learned magistrates, the custom of seeing visions was reduced to an art and system? Or that their convents had in them those dark rooms, called meditation rooms, which were filled with pictures of frightful devils, armed with long horns and talons, flaming gulfs, crosses, and daggers, with the holy name of Jesus in a scroll over them? Edifying spectacles, doubtless, for eyes already blinded with fanaticism, and for imaginations no less filled with mistaken zeal than with abject submission to the will of their directors!
There have been times, and we know it but too well, in which religious orders have been dangerous to the state. The Frérots and the Flagellants have excited troubles in the kingdom. The League owed its origin to such associations. But wherefore should any set of men thus distinguish themselves from the rest of their fellow-citizens? Is it that they think themselves more perfect? If so, it is offering an insult to the rest of the community; or are they desirous that every Christian should become a member of their society? Truly, it would be a curious sight to see all the inhabitants of Europe in long hoods and masks, with two little round holes to peep through! Or, lastly, do they seriously think that this dress is more acceptable to God than the coats and waistcoats we usually wear? No, no, there is something more at the bottom; this habit is a kind of controversial uniform, a signal for those of a contrary opinion to stand upon their guard, and might in time kindle a kind of civil war in our minds that would terminate in the most terrible consequences, were not the wisdom of the king and of his ministers as great as the folly of these fanatics.
Every one is sufficiently sensible what fatal effects have arisen since Christians have begun to dispute among themselves concerning modes of belief; the blood of the subjects has flown in torrents either on the scaffold or in the field, from the fourth century to the present time. But let us confine ourselves only to the wars and disasters which the disputes concerning reformation have excited in France, and examine into their source. Perhaps a short and faithful portrait of these numberless calamities may open the eyes of some who have not had the advantage of education, and touch those hearts which are not by nature callous.
Chapter III.
A Sketch Of The Reformation In The Sixteenth Century.
When learning began to revive, and the understandings of mankind became more enlightened, there was a general complaint of errors and abuses, and every one acknowledged the complaint to be just.
Pope Alexander VI. made a public purchase of the pontifical crown, and his five bastards shared with him the profits. His son, the Cardinal Duke of Borgia, in concert with the pope, his father, caused the noble families of Vitelli, Urbino, Gravina, and Oliveretto, together with a hundred other lords, to be made away with, in order to seize upon their estates. Julius II., full of the same spirit, excommunicated Louis XII. of France, while he himself, armed cap-a-pie, ravaged a part of Italy with fire and sword. Leo X., in order to raise money to pay the expenses of his pleasures, made a sale of indulgences, like goods in a common market. Those who opposed such shameful impositions were certainly right in a moral view; let us see how far they were so with regard to us, in a political one.
They asserted that as Jesus Christ had never exacted annats, nor reversions, nor sold dispensations for this world nor indulgences for the next, they saw no reason why they should pay a foreign prince his price for these things. Supposing that the annats, the law proceedings in the pope’s court, and the dispensations which still subsist were to cost us no more than five hundred thousand crowns a year; it is clear that since the time of Francis I., that is, in two hundred and fifty years, we have paid a hundred and twenty millions; and if we calculate the different value of the mark of silver, we shall find that this sum amounts to about two hundred and fifty millions of the present money. It may therefore, I think, without any blasphemy be allowed that the heretics in proposing the abolition of these extraordinary taxes, which will be the admiration of posterity, did, in that respect, no great injury to the kingdom, and showed themselves good calculators rather than bad subjects. Add to this, that they were the only persons who understood the Greek language, or had any knowledge of antiquity; let us own likewise, without dissimulation, that with all their errors, we are indebted to them for the opening of our understandings, which had been long buried beneath the most barbarous obscurity.
But as they denied the doctrine of purgatory, concerning which no one ought to have the least doubt, and which, moreover, brought in a comfortable revenue to the monks; as they paid no reverence to relics which every one ought to reverence, and which brought in still greater profits; and lastly, as they attacked the most respectable tenets,6 their adversaries made them no other reply than by committing them to the stake. The king, who styled himself their protector, and who kept a body of them in pay in Germany, marched at the head of a procession through Paris, which was concluded by the execution of a number of