Voltaire's work follows the trial of Jean Calas (1698-1762), a French Protestant merchant accused of murdering his son Marc-Antoine to prevent his supposed conversion to the Catholic Church. Calas was executed in Toulouse on March 10, 1762, after being tortured; he never confessed to the crime that completely lacked evidence. Calas was executed largely in response to the reaction of an angry mob and the zealousness of some local magistrates. Struck with the extreme injustice of the case, Voltaire undertook a private and public campaign to exonerate Jean Calas. In doing so, he put Catholic prejudice and fanaticism on display. In 1765, after Louis XV of France fired the chief magistrate and the case was retried by another court, Calas was posthumously exonerated and his family paid 36 thousand francs.V
Voltaire's argument is illustrated in the following passages:
"There are about forty millions of inhabitants in Europe who are not members of the Church of Rome; should we say to every one of them, 'Sir, since you are infallibly damned, I shall neither eat, converse, nor have any connections with you?'";
"O different worshipers of a peaceful God! If you have a cruel heart, if, while you adore he whose whole law consists of these few words, "Love God and your neighbor'..."
"I see all the dead of past ages and of our own appearing in His presence. Are you very sure that our Creator and Father will say to the wise and virtuous Confucius, to the legislator Solon, to Pythagoras, Zaleucus, Socrates, Plato, the divine Antonins, the good Trajan, to Titus, the delights of mankind, to Epictetus, and to many others, models of men: 'Go, monsters, go and suffer torments that are infinite in intensity and duration. Let your punishment be eternal as I am. But you, my beloved ones, Jean Châtel, Ravaillac, Damiens, Cartouche, etc. who have died according to the prescribed rules, sit forever at my right hand and share my empire and my felicity.' You draw back with horror at these words; and after they have escaped me, I have nothing more to say to you."
Voltaire finished the work by January 2, 1763, and it was printed by the Cramer brothers in Geneva in April 1763. After copies had been distributed to selected recipients, including Madame de Pompadour, ministers of the French privy council, Frederick the Great, and some German princes, it began to be distributed in October 1763 and was quickly banned. [1] [2] However, the book still made its way to the public, becoming extremely popular in Paris and throughout Europe.
In January 2015, after the Charlie Hebdo shooting, it was reported that Treatise on Tolerance had become a bestseller in France more than 250 years after its first publication. [3] [4]
John Calvin was a French theologian, pastor and reformer in Geneva during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism, including its doctrines of predestination and of God's absolute sovereignty in the salvation of the human soul from death and eternal damnation. Calvinist doctrines were influenced by and elaborated upon the Augustinian and other Christian traditions. Various Congregational, Reformed and Presbyterian churches, which look to Calvin as the chief expositor of their beliefs, have spread throughout the world.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher (philosophe), writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic, and educational thought.
François-Marie Arouet, known by his nom de plumeM. de Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher (philosophe), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit and his criticism of Christianity and of slavery, Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.
Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm was a German-born French-language journalist, art critic, diplomat and contributor to the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. In 1765 Grimm wrote Poème lyrique, an influential article for the Encyclopédie on lyric and opera librettos. Like Christoph Willibald Gluck and Ranieri de' Calzabigi, Grimm became interested in opera reform. According to Martin Fontius, a German literary theorist, "sooner or later a book entitled The Aesthetic Ideas of Grimm will have to be written."
Jean-François de La Harpe was a French playwright, writer and literary critic.
Our Lady of La Salette is a Marian apparition reported by two French children, Maximin Giraud and Mélanie Calvat, to have occurred at La Salette-Fallavaux, France, in 1846.
The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis, is a Christian devotional book first composed in Medieval Latin as De Imitatione Christi. The devotional text is divided into four books of detailed spiritual instructions: (i) "Helpful Counsels of the Spiritual Life", (ii) "Directives for the Interior Life", (iii) "On Interior Consolation", and (iv) "On the Blessed Sacrament". The devotional approach of The Imitation of Christ emphasises the interior life and withdrawal from the mundanities of the world, as opposed to the active imitation of Christ practised by other friars. The devotions of the books emphasize devotion to the Eucharist as the key element of spiritual life.
Religious tolerance or religioustoleration may signify "no more than forbearance and the permission given by the adherents of a dominant religion for other religions to exist, even though the latter are looked on with disapproval as inferior, mistaken, or harmful". Historically, most incidents and writings pertaining to toleration involve the status of minority and dissenting viewpoints in relation to a dominant state religion. However, religion is also sociological, and the practice of toleration has always had a political aspect as well.
François-Jean Lefebvre de la Barre was a French nobleman. He was 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 Catholic religious procession, though other charges of a similar nature were laid against him.
Jean Calas was a merchant living in Toulouse, France, who was tried, judicially tortured, and executed for the murder of his son, despite his protestations of innocence. Calas was a Protestant in an officially Catholic society. Doubts about his guilt were raised by opponents of the Catholic Church and he was exonerated in 1764. In France, he became a symbolic victim of religious intolerance, along with François-Jean de la Barre and Pierre-Paul Sirven.
The Dictionnaire philosophique is an encyclopedic dictionary published by the Enlightenment thinker Voltaire in 1764. The alphabetically arranged articles often criticize the Roman Catholic Church, Judaism, Islam, and other institutions. The first edition, released in June 1764, went by the name of Dictionnaire philosophique portatif. It was 344 pages and consisted of 73 articles. Later versions were expanded into two volumes consisting of 120 articles.
Jean Meslier was a French Catholic priest (abbé) who was discovered, upon his death, to have written a book-length philosophical essay promoting atheism and materialism. Described by the author as his "testament" to his parishioners, the text criticizes and denounces all religions.
18th-century French literature is French literature written between 1715, the year of the death of King Louis XIV of France, and 1798, the year of the coup d'État of Bonaparte which brought the Consulate to power, concluded the French Revolution, and began the modern era of French history. This century of enormous economic, social, intellectual and political transformation produced two important literary and philosophical movements: during what became known as the Age of Enlightenment, the Philosophes questioned all existing institutions, including the church and state, and applied rationalism and scientific analysis to society; and a very different movement, which emerged in reaction to the first movement; the beginnings of Romanticism, which exalted the role of emotion in art and life.
Pierre-Paul Sirven (1709–1777) is one of Voltaire's causes célèbres in his campaign to écraser l'infame.
Atheism, as defined by the entry in Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie, is "the opinion of those who deny the existence of a God in the world. The simple ignorance of God doesn't constitute atheism. To be charged with the odious title of atheism one must have the notion of God and reject it." In the period of the Enlightenment, avowed and open atheism was made possible by the advance of religious toleration, but was also far from encouraged.
Laurent Angliviel de la Beaumelle was a French Protestant writer.
Christianity Unveiled, or Examination of the Principles and Effects of the Christian Religion(Le christianisme dévoilé, ou Examen des principes et des effets de la religion chrétienne) is an anti-Christian book attributed to Baron d'Holbach, probably published in 1766 under a pseudonym in Nancy.
Joseph Omer Joly de Fleury was a member of the distinguished Joly de Fleury family, originally from Burgundy, from which came a number of leading French magistrates and officials under the ancien regime. He is notable for four principal things: his strong opposition to the philosophes and the publication of the Encyclopedie in 1759; his role in the expulsion of the Jesuits; his involvement in the Lally Tollendal Affair; and his ban on inoculation against smallpox in June 1763. In a pun on his name, Voltaire described him as ‘ni Homère, ni joli, ni fleuri'. In one of his private letters, Voltaire described him as a ‘little black balloon puffed up with stinking vapours’
Robert-François Damiens was a French domestic servant whose attempted assassination of King Louis XV in 1757 culminated in his public execution. He was the last person to be executed in France by dismemberment, the traditional form of death penalty reserved for regicides.
Events from the year 1762 in France