The murder of Calas, which was perpetrated with the sword of justice
at Toulouse on March 9, 1762, is one of the most singular events that
deserve the attention of our own and of later ages. We quickly forget
the long list of the dead who have perished in our battles. It is the
inevitable fate of war; those who die by the sword might themselves
have inflicted death on their enemies, and did not die without the
means of defending themselves. When the risk and the advantage are
equal astonishment ceases, and even pity is enfeebled. But when
an innocent father is given into the hands of error, of passion,
or of fanaticism; when the accused has no defence but his virtue;
when those who dispose of his life run no risk but that of making a
mistake; when they can slay with impunity by a legal decree--then the
voice of the general public is heard, and each fears for himself.
They see that no man’s life is safe before a court that has been set
up to guard the welfare of citizens, and every voice is raised in a
demand of vengeance.
In this strange incident we have to deal with religion, suicide,
and parricide. The question was, Whether a father and mother had
strangled their son to please God, a brother had strangled his
brother, and a friend had strangled his friend; or whether the judges
had incurred the reproach of breaking on the wheel an innocent
father, or of sparing a guilty mother, brother, and friend.
Jean Calas, a man of sixty-eight years, had been engaged in commerce
at Toulouse for more than forty years, and was recognised by all who
knew him as a good father. He was a Protestant, as were also his wife
and family, except one son, who had abjured the heresy, and was in
receipt of a small allowance from his father. He seemed to be so far
removed from the absurd fanaticism that breaks the bonds of society
that he had approved the conversion of his son [Louis Calas], and had
had in his service for thirty years a zealous Catholic woman, who had
reared all his children.
One of the sons of Jean Calas, named Marc Antoine, was a man of
letters. He was regarded as of a restless, sombre, and violent
character. This young man, failing to enter the commercial world,
for which he was unfitted, or the legal world, because he could
not obtain the necessary certificate that he was a Catholic,
determined to end his life, and informed a friend of his intention.
He strengthened his resolution by reading all that has ever been
written on suicide.
Having one day lost his money in gambling, he determined to carry
out his plan on that very day. A personal friend and friend of the
family, named Lavaisse, a young man of nineteen, well known for
his candid and kindly ways, the son of a distinguished lawyer at
Toulouse, had come from Bordeaux on the previous day, October 12,
1761. He happened to sup with the Calas family. The father, mother,
Marc Antoine, the elder son, and Pierre, the second son, were
present. After supper they withdrew to a small room. Marc Antoine
disappeared, and when young Lavaisse was ready to go, and he and
Pierre Calas had gone down-stairs, they found, near the shop below,
Marc Antoine in his shirt, hanging from a door, his coat folded under
the counter. His shirt was unruffled, his hair was neatly combed, and
he had no wound or mark on the body.
We will omit the details which were given in court, and the grief and
despair of his parents; their cries were heard by the neighbours.
Lavaisse and Pierre, beside themselves, ran for surgeons and the
police.
While they were doing this, and the father and mother sobbed and
wept, the people of Toulouse gathered round the house. They are
superstitious and impulsive people; they regard as monsters their
brothers who do not share their religion. It was at Toulouse that
solemn thanks were offered to God for the death of Henry III.,
and that an oath was taken to kill any man who should propose to
recognise the great and good Henry IV. This city still celebrates
every year, by a procession and fireworks, the day on which it
massacred four thousand heretical citizens two hundred years ago. Six
decrees of the Council have been passed in vain for the suppression
of this odious festival; the people of Toulouse celebrate it still
like a floral festival.[2]
Some fanatic in the crowd cried out that Jean Calas had hanged his
son Marc Antoine. The cry was soon repeated on all sides; some
adding that the deceased was to have abjured Protestantism on the
following day, and that the family and young Lavaisse had strangled
him out of hatred of the Catholic religion. In a moment all doubt
had disappeared. The whole town was persuaded that it is a point of
religion with the Protestants for a father and mother to kill their
children when they wish to change their faith.
The agitation could not end here. It was imagined that the
Protestants of Languedoc had held a meeting the night before; that
they had, by a majority of votes, chosen an executioner for the
sect; that the choice had fallen on young Lavaisse; and that, in the
space of twenty-four hours, the young man had received the news of
his appointment, and had come from Bordeaux to help Jean Calas, his
wife, and their son Pierre to strangle a friend, son, and brother.
The captain of Toulouse, David, excited by these rumours and wishing
to give effect to them by a prompt execution, took a step which
is against the laws and regulations. He put the Calas family, the
Catholic servant, and Lavaisse in irons.
A report not less vicious than his procedure was published. He even
went further. Marc Antoine Calas had died a Calvinist; and, if he had
taken his own life, his body was supposed to be dragged on a hurdle.
Instead of this, he was buried with great pomp in the church of St.
Stephen, although the priest protested against this profanation.
There are in Languedoc four confraternities of penitents--the
white, the blue, the grey, and the black. Their members wear a long
hood, with a cloth mask, pierced with two holes for the eyes. They
endeavoured to induce the Duke of Fitz-James, the governor of the
province, to enter their ranks, but he refused. The white penitents
held a solemn service over Marc Antoine Calas, as over a martyr.
No church ever celebrated the feast of a martyr with more pomp;
but it was a terrible pomp. They had raised above a magnificent
bier a skeleton, which was made to move its bones. It represented
Marc Antoine Calas holding a palm in one hand, and in the other the
pen with which he was to sign his abjuration of heresy. This pen,
in-point of fact, signed the death-sentence of his father.
The only thing that remained for the poor devil who had taken his
life was canonisation. Everybody regarded him as a saint; some
invoked him, others went to pray at his tomb, others sought miracles
of him, and others, again, related the miracles he had wrought. A
monk extracted some of his teeth, to have permanent relics of him.
A pious woman, who was rather deaf, told how she heard the sound of
bells. An apoplectic priest was cured, after taking an emetic. Legal
declarations of these prodigies were drawn up. The writer of this
account has in his possession the attestation that a young man of
Toulouse went mad because he had prayed for several nights at the
tomb of the new saint, and could not obtain the miracle he sought.
Some of the magistrates belonged to the confraternity of white
penitents. From that moment the death of Jean Calas seemed inevitable.
What contributed most to his fate was the approach of that singular
festival which the people of Toulouse hold every year in memory
of the massacre of four thousand Huguenots. The year 1762 was the
bicentenary of the event. The city was decorated with all the
trappings of the ceremony, and the heated imagination of the people
was still further excited. It was stated publicly that the scaffold
on which the Calas were to be executed would be the chief ornament
of the festival; it was said that Providence itself provided these
victims for sacrifice in honour of our holy religion. A score of
people heard these, and even more violent things. And this in our
days--in an age when philosophy has made so much progress, and a
hundred academies are writing for the improvement of our morals! It
would seem that fanaticism is angry at the success of reason, and
combats it more furiously.
Thirteen judges met daily to bring the trial to a close. There was
not, and could not be, any evidence against the family; but a deluded
religion took the place of proof. Six of the judges long persisted
in condemning Jean Calas, his son, and Lavaisse to the wheel, and
the wife of Jean Calas to the stake. The other seven, more moderate,
wished at least to make an inquiry. The discussions were long and
frequent. One of the judges, convinced that the accused were innocent
and the crime was impossible, spoke strongly on their behalf. He
opposed a zeal for humanity to the zeal for severity, and became the
public pleader for the Calas in Toulouse, where the incessant cries
of outraged religion demanded the blood of the accused. Another
judge, known for his violent temper, spoke against the Calas with the
same spirit. At last, amid great excitement, they both threw up the
case and retired to the country.
But by a singular misfortune the judge who was favourable to the
Calas had the delicacy to persist in his resignation, and the other
returned to condemn those whom he could not judge. His voice it was
that drew up the condemnation to the wheel. There were now eight
votes to five, as one of the six opposing judges had passed to the
more severe party after considerable discussion.
It seems that in a case of parricide, when a father is to be
condemned to the most frightful death, the verdict ought to be
unanimous, as the evidence for so rare a crime ought to be such as
to convince everybody.[3] The slightest doubt in such a case should
intimidate a judge who is to sign the death-sentence. The weakness of
our reason and its inadequacy are shown daily; and what greater proof
of it can we have than when we find a citizen condemned to the wheel
by a majority of one vote? In ancient Athens there had to be fifty
votes above the half to secure a sentence of death. It shows us, most
unprofitably, that the Greeks were wiser and more humane than we.
It seemed impossible that Jean Calas, an old man of sixty-eight
years, whose limbs had long been swollen and weak, had been able
to strangle and hang a young man in his twenty-eighth year, above
the average in strength. It seemed certain that he must have been
assisted in the murder by his wife, his son Pierre, Lavaisse, and
the servant. They had not left each other’s company for an instant
on the evening of the fatal event. But this supposition was just
as absurd as the other. How could a zealous Catholic servant allow
Huguenots to kill a young man, reared by herself, to punish him for
embracing her own religion? How could Lavaisse have come expressly
from Bordeaux to strangle his friend, whose conversion was unknown to
him? How could a tender mother lay hands on her son? How could the
whole of them together strangle a young man who was stronger than all
of them without a long and violent struggle, without cries that would
have aroused the neighbours, without repeated blows and torn garments?
It was evident that, if there had been any crime, all the accused
were equally guilty, as they had never left each other for a moment;
it was evident that they were not all guilty; and it was evident that
the father alone could not have done it. Nevertheless, the father
alone was condemned to the wheel.
The reason of the sentence was as inconceivable as all the rest. The
judges, who were bent on executing Jean Calas, persuaded the others
that the weak old man could not endure the torture, and would on the
scaffold confess his crime and accuse his accomplices. They were
confounded when the old man, expiring on the wheel, prayed God to
witness his innocence, and begged him to pardon his judges.
They were compelled to pass a second sentence in contradiction of
the first, and to set free the mother, the son Pierre, the young
Lavaisse, and the servant; but one of the councillors pointing
out that this verdict gave the lie to the other, that they were
condemning themselves, and that, as the accused were all together
at the supposed hour of the crime, the acquittal of the survivors
necessarily proved the innocence of the dead father, they decided to
banish Pierre Calas. This banishment seemed as illogical and absurd
as all the rest. Pierre Calas was either guilty or innocent. If he
was guilty, he should be broken on the wheel like his father; if he
was innocent, they had no right to banish him. However, the judges,
terrified by the execution of the father and the touching piety of
his end, thought they were saving their honour by affecting to pardon
the son, as if it were not a fresh prevarication to pardon him; and
they thought that the banishment of this poor and helpless young man
was not a great injustice after that they had already committed.
They began with threatening Pierre Calas, in his dungeon, that he
would suffer like his father if he did not renounce his religion. The
young man attests this on oath: “A Dominican monk came to my cell and
threatened me with the same kind of death if I did not give up my
religion.”
Pierre Calas, on leaving the city, met a priest, who compelled him
to return to Toulouse. They confined him in a Dominican convent, and
forced him to perform Catholic functions. It was part of what they
wanted. It was the price of his father’s blood, and religion seemed
to be avenged.
The daughters were taken from the mother and put in a convent. The
mother, almost sprinkled with the blood of her husband, her eldest
son dead, the younger banished, deprived of her daughters and all her
property, was alone in the world, without bread, without hope, dying
of the intolerable misery. Certain persons, having carefully examined
the circumstances of this horrible adventure, were so impressed
that they urged the widow, who had retired into solitude, to go and
demand justice at the feet of the throne.[4] At the time she shrank
from publicity; moreover, being English by birth, and having been
transplanted into a French province in early youth, the name of Paris
terrified her. She imagined that the capital of the kingdom would be
still more barbaric than the capital of Languedoc. At length the duty
of clearing the memory of her husband prevailed over her weakness.
She reached Paris almost at the point of death. She was astonished at
her reception, at the help and the tears that were given to her.[5]
At Paris reason dominates fanaticism, however powerful it be; in the
provinces fanaticism almost always overcomes reason.
M. de Beaumont, the famous advocate of the Parlement de Paris,
undertook to defend her, and drew up a memorial signed by fifteen
other advocates. M. Loiseau, not less eloquent, drew up a memoir on
behalf of the family. M. Mariette, an advocate of the Council, drew
up a judicial inquiry which brought conviction to every mind. These
three generous defenders of the laws of innocence gave to the widow
the profit on the sale of their memoirs. Paris and the whole of
Europe were moved with pity, and demanded justice for the unfortunate
woman. The verdict was given by the public long before it was signed
by the Council.
The spirit of pity penetrated the ministry, in spite of the torrent
of business that so often shuts out pity, and in spite of that
daily sight of misery that does even more to harden the heart. The
daughters were restored to their mother. As they sat, clothed in
crape and bathed in tears, their judges were seen to weep.
They had still enemies, however, for it was a question of religion.
Many of those people who are known in France as “devout”[6] said
openly that it was much better to let an innocent old Calvinist be
slain than to compel eight Councillors of Languedoc to admit that
they were wrong. One even heard such phrases as “There are more
magistrates than Calas”; and it was inferred that the Calas family
ought to be sacrificed to the honour of the magistrates. They did not
reflect that the honour of judges, like that of other men, consists
in repairing their blunders. It is not believed in France that the
Pope is infallible, even with the assistance of his cardinals[7];
we might just as well admit that eight judges of Toulouse are not.
All other people, more reasonable and disinterested, said that the
Toulouse verdict would be reversed all over Europe, even if special
considerations prevented it from being reversed by the Council.
Such was the position of this astonishing adventure when it moved
certain impartial and reasonable persons to submit to the public a
few reflections on the subject of toleration, indulgence, and pity,
which the Abbé Houteville calls “a monstrous dogma,” in his garbled
version of the facts, and which reason calls an “appanage of nature.”
Either the judges of Toulouse, swept away by the fanaticism of
the people, have broken on the wheel an innocent man, which is
unprecedented; or the father and his wife strangled their elder son,
with the assistance of another son and a friend, which is unnatural.
In either case the abuse of religion has led to a great crime. It is,
therefore, of interest to the race to inquire whether religion ought
to be charitable or barbaric.