When enlightenment spread, with the renaissance of letters in the
fifteenth century, there was a very general complaint of abuses, and
everybody agrees that the complaint was just.
Pope Alexander VI. had openly bought the papal tiara, and his five
bastards shared its advantages. His son, the cardinal-duke of Borgia,
made an end, in concert with his father, of Vitelli, Urbino, Gravina,
Oliveretto, and a hundred other nobles, in order to seize their
lands. Julius II., animated by the same spirit, excommunicated Louis
XII. and gave his kingdom to the first occupant; while he himself,
helmet on head and cuirass on back, spread blood and fire over part
of Italy. Leo X., to pay for his pleasures, sold indulgences, as the
taxes are sold in the open market. They who revolted against this
brigandage were, at least, not wrong from the moral point of view.
Let us see if they were wrong in politics.
They said that, since Jesus Christ had never exacted fees, nor sold
dispensations for this world or indulgences for the next, one might
refuse to pay a foreign prince the price of these things. Supposing
that our fees to Rome and the dispensations which we still buy[11]
did not cost us more than five hundred thousand francs a year, it is
clear that, since the time of Francis I., we should have paid, in
two hundred and fifty years, a hundred and twenty million francs;
allowing for the change of value in money, we may say about two
hundred and fifty millions [£10,000,000]. One may, therefore,
without blasphemy, admit that the heretics, in proposing to abolish
these singular taxes, which will astonish a later age, did not do
a very grave wrong to the kingdom, and that they were rather good
financiers than bad subjects. Let us add that they alone knew Greek,
and were acquainted with antiquity. Let us grant that, in spite of
their errors, we owe to them the development of the human mind, so
long buried in the densest barbarism.
But, as they denied the existence of Purgatory, which it is not
permitted to doubt, and which brought a considerable income to
the monks; and as they did not venerate relics, which ought to be
venerated, and which are a source of even greater profit--in fine,
as they assailed much-respected dogmas, the only answer to them
at first was to burn them. The king, who protected and subsidised
them in Germany, walked at the head of a procession in Paris, and
at the close a number of the wretches were executed. This was the
manner of execution. They were hung at the end of a long beam, which
was balanced, like a see-saw, across a tree. A big fire was lit
underneath, and they were alternately sunk into it and raised out.
Their torments were thus protracted, until death relieved them from a
more hideous punishment than any barbarian had ever invented.
Shortly before the death of Francis I. certain members of the
Parlement de Provence, instigated by their clergy against the
inhabitants of Merindol and Cabrières, asked the king for troops
to support the execution of nineteen persons of the district whom
they had condemned. They had six thousand slain, without regard to
sex or age or infancy, and they reduced thirty towns to ashes. These
people, who had not hitherto been heard of, were, no doubt, in the
wrong to have been born Waldensians; but that was their only crime.
They had been settled for three hundred years in the deserts and on
the mountains, which they had, with incredible labour, made fertile.
Their quiet, pastoral life represented the supposed innocence of the
first ages of men. They knew the neighbouring towns only by selling
fruit to them. They had no law-courts and never warred; they did
not defend themselves. They were slain as one slays animals in an
enclosure.
After the death of Francis I.--a prince who is better known for his
amours and misfortunes than his cruelty--the execution of a thousand
heretics, especially of the Councillor of the Parlement, Dubourg, and
the massacre of Vassy, caused the persecuted sect to take to arms.
They had increased in the light of the flames and under the sword of
the executioner, and substituted fury for patience. They imitated
the cruelties of their enemies. Nine civil wars filled France with
carnage; and a peace more fatal than war led to the massacre of St.
Bartholomew, which is without precedent in the annals of crime.
The [Catholic] League assassinated Henry III. and Henry IV. by the
hands of a Dominican monk, and of a monster who had belonged to
the order of St. Bernard. There are those who say that humanity,
indulgence, and liberty of conscience are horrible things. Candidly,
could they have brought about calamities such as these?
WHETHER TOLERATION IS DANGEROUS, AND AMONG
WHAT PEOPLES IT IS FOUND
There are some who say that, if we treated with paternal indulgence
those erring brethren who pray to God in bad French [instead of bad
Latin], we should be putting weapons in their hands, and would once
more witness the battles of Jarnac, Moncontour, Coutras, Dreux, and
St. Denis. I do not know anything about this, as I am not a prophet;
but it seems to me an illogical piece of reasoning to say: “These men
rebelled when I treated them ill, therefore they will rebel when I
treat them well.”
I would venture to take the liberty to invite those who are at
the head of the government, and those who are destined for high
positions, to reflect carefully whether one really has ground to fear
that kindness will lead to the same revolts as cruelty; whether what
happened in certain circumstances is sure to happen in different
circumstances; if the times, public opinion, and morals are unchanged.
The Huguenots, it is true, have been as inebriated with fanaticism
and stained with blood as we. But are this generation as barbaric as
their fathers? Have not time, the progress of reason, good books, and
the humanising influence of society had an effect on the leaders of
these people? And do we not perceive that the aspect of nearly the
whole of Europe has been changed within the last fifty years?
Government is stronger everywhere, and morals have improved. The
ordinary police, supported by numerous standing armies, gives us some
security against a return to that age of anarchy in which Calvinistic
peasants fought Catholic peasants, hastily enrolled between the
sowing and the harvest.
Different times have different needs. It would be absurd to
decimate the Sorbonne to-day because it once presented a demand for
the burning of the Maid of Orleans, declared that Henry III. had
forfeited his kingdom, excommunicated him, and proscribed the great
Henry IV. We will not think of inquiring into the other bodies in the
kingdom who committed the same excesses in those frenzied days. It
would not only be unjust, but would be as stupid as to purge all the
inhabitants of Marseilles because they had the plague in 1720.
Shall we go and sack Rome, as the troops of Charles V. did, because
Sixtus V. in 1585 granted an indulgence of nine years to all
Frenchmen who would take up arms against their sovereign? Is it not
enough to prevent Rome for ever from reverting to such excesses?
The rage that is inspired by the dogmatic spirit and the abuse of
the Christian religion, wrongly conceived, has shed as much blood
and led to as many disasters in Germany, England, and even Holland,
as in France. Yet religious difference causes no trouble to-day in
those States. The Jew, the Catholic, the Greek, the Lutheran, the
Calvinist, the Anabaptist, the Socinian, the Memnonist, the Moravian,
and so many others, live like brothers in these countries, and
contribute alike to the good of the social body.
They fear no longer in Holland that disputes about predestination
will end in heads being cut off. They fear no longer at London that
the quarrels of Presbyterians and Episcopalians about liturgies
and surplices will lead to the death of a king on the scaffold.
A populous and wealthier Ireland will no longer see its Catholic
citizens sacrifice its Protestant citizens to God during two months,
bury them alive, hang their mothers to gibbets, tie the girls to
the necks of their mothers, and see them expire together; or put
swords in the hands of their prisoners and guide their hands to
the bosoms of their wives, their fathers, their mothers, and their
daughters, thinking to make parricides of them, and damn them as
well as exterminate them.[12] Such is the account given by Rapin
Thoyras, an officer in Ireland, and almost a contemporary; so we
find in all the annals and histories of England. It will never be
repeated. Philosophy, the sister of religion, has disarmed the hands
that superstition had so long stained with blood; and the human mind,
awakening from its intoxication, is amazed at the excesses into which
fanaticism had led it.
We have in France a rich province in which the Lutherans outnumber
the Catholics. The University of Alsace is in the hands of the
Lutherans. They occupy some of the municipal offices; yet not the
least religious quarrel has disturbed this province since it came
into the possession of our kings. Why? Because no one has ever been
persecuted in it. Seek not to vex the hearts of men, and they are
yours.
I do not say that all who are not of the same religion as the prince
should share the positions and honours of those who follow the
dominant religion. In England the Catholics, who are regarded as
attached to the party of the Pretender, are not admitted to office.
They even pay double taxes. In other respects, however, they have all
the rights of citizens.
Some of the French bishops have been suspected of holding that it
redounds neither to their honour nor their profit to have Calvinists
in their dioceses. This is said to be one of the greatest obstacles
to toleration. I cannot believe it. The episcopal body in France
is composed of gentlemen, who think and act with the nobility that
befits their birth. They are charitable and generous; so much justice
must be done them. They must think that their fugitive subjects
will assuredly not be converted in foreign countries, and that,
when they return to their pastors, they may be enlightened by their
instructions and touched by their example. There would be honour in
converting them, and their material interests would not suffer. The
more citizens there were, the larger would be the income from the
prelate’s estates.
A Polish bishop had an Anabaptist for farmer and a Socinian for
steward. It was suggested that he ought to discharge and prosecute
the latter because he did not believe in consubstantiality, and the
former because he did not baptise his child until it was fifteen
years old. He replied that they would be damned for ever in the next
world, but that they were very useful to him in this.
Let us get out of our grooves and study the rest of the globe. The
Sultan governs in peace twenty million people of different religions;
two hundred thousand Greeks live in security at Constantinople;
the _muphti_ himself nominates and presents to the emperor the
Greek patriarch, and they also admit a Latin patriarch. The Sultan
nominates Latin bishops for some of the Greek islands, using the
following formula: “I command him to go and reside as bishop in
the island of Chios, according to their ancient usage and their
vain ceremonies.” The empire is full of Jacobites, Nestorians, and
Monothelites; it contains Copts, Christians of St. John, Jews, and
Hindoos. The annals of Turkey do not record any revolt instigated by
any of these religions.
Go to India, Persia, or Tartary, and you will find the same
toleration and tranquillity. Peter the Great patronised all the cults
in his vast empire. Commerce and agriculture profited by it, and the
body politic never suffered from it.
The government of China has not, during the four thousand years of
its known history, had any cult but the simple worship of one God.
Nevertheless, it tolerates the superstitions of Fo, and permits a
large number of bronzes, who would be dangerous if the prudence of
the courts did not restrain them.
It is true that the great Emperor Yang-Chin, perhaps the wisest and
most magnanimous emperor that China ever had, expelled the Jesuits.
But it was not because he was intolerant; it was because the Jesuits
were. They themselves give, in their curious letters, the words of
the good prince to them: “I know that your religion is intolerant; I
know what you have done in Manila and Japan. You deceived my father;
think not to deceive me.” If you read the whole of his speech to
them, you will see that he was one of the wisest and most clement of
men. How could he retain European physicians who, under pretence of
showing thermometers and æolipiles at court, had carried off a prince
of the blood? What would he have said if he had read our history and
was acquainted with the days of our League and of the Gunpowder Plot?
It was enough for him to be informed of the indecent quarrels of the
Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, and secular priests sent into his
State from the ends of the earth. They came to preach the truth,
and fell to anathematising each other. Hence the emperor was bound
to expel the foreign disturbers. But how kindly he dismissed them!
What paternal care did he not devote to their journey, and in order
to protect them from insult on the way? Their very banishment was a
lesson in toleration and humanity.
The Japanese were the most tolerant of all men. A dozen peaceful
religions throve in their empire, when the Jesuits came with a
thirteenth. As they soon showed that they would tolerate no other,
there arose a civil war, even more frightful than that of the League,
and the land was desolated. In the end the Christian religion was
drowned in blood; the Japanese closed their empire, and regarded
us only as wild beasts, like those which the English have cleared
out of their island. The minister Colbert, knowing how we need the
Japanese, who have no need of us, tried in vain to reopen commerce
with their empire. He found them inflexible.
Thus the whole of our continent shows us that we must neither preach
nor practise intolerance.
Turn your eyes to the other hemisphere. Study Carolina, of which the
wise Locke was the legislator. Seven fathers of families sufficed to
set up a public cult approved by the law; and this liberty gave rise
to no disorder. Heaven preserve us from quoting this as an example
for France to follow! We quote it only to show that the greatest
excess of toleration was not followed by the slightest dissension.
But what is good and useful in a young colony is not suitable for a
long-established kingdom.
What shall we say of the primitive people who have been derisively
called Quakers, but who, however ridiculous their customs may be,
have been so virtuous and given so useful a lesson of peace to other
men? There are a hundred thousand of them in Pennsylvania. Discord
and controversy are unknown in the happy country they have made for
themselves; and the very name of their chief town, Philadelphia,
which unceasingly reminds them that all men are brothers, is an
example and a shame to nations that are yet ignorant of toleration.
Toleration, in fine, never led to civil war; intolerance has covered
the earth with carnage. Choose, then, between these rivals--between
the mother who would have her son slain and the mother who yields,
provided his life be spared.
I speak here only of the interest of nations. While respecting
theology, as I do, I regard in this article only the physical and
moral well-being of society. I beg every impartial reader to weigh
these truths, verify them, and add to them. Attentive readers, who
restrain not their thoughts, always go farther than the author.