[1] Probably adopting a name which is known to have existed among his
mother’s ancestors. But it is curious that “Voltaire” is an anagram
of his name--Arouet l (e) j (eune)--if u be read as v and j as i.
[2] The condition of Toulouse will be best understood from a
description of these processions which Voltaire gives elsewhere.
In front walked the shoemakers, bearing the authentic head of a
prince of Peloponnesus, who had been Bishop of Toulouse _during the
lifetime_ of Christ. After them came the slaters, carrying the bones
of the fourteen thousand children slain by Herod; the old-clothes
dealers, with a piece of the dress of the Virgin Mary; and the
tailors, with the relics of St. Peter and St. Paul.--J. M.
[3] I know only two instances in history of fathers being charged
with killing their children on account of religion. The first is the
case of the father of St. Barbara, or Ste. Barbe. He had had two
windows made in his bath-room. Barbara, in his absence, had a third
made, to honour the Holy Trinity. She made the sign of the cross on
the marble columns _with the tip of her finger_, and it was deeply
engraved on the stone. Her son came angrily upon her, sword in hand;
but she escaped through a mountain, which opened to receive her. The
father went round the mountain and caught her. She was stripped and
flogged, but God clothed her in a white cloud. In the end her father
cut off her head. So says the _Flower of the Saints_.
The second case is that of Prince Hermenegild. He rebelled against
his father, the king, gave him battle (in 584), and was beaten and
killed by an officer. As his father was an Arian, he was regarded as
a martyr.
[4] Voltaire nobly conceals his work. It was he who, from his exile
near Geneva, sent for young Calas, made searching inquiries in
Toulouse, and instructed the Parisian lawyers to appeal. He enlisted
the interest of English and French visitors at Geneva, and there
was “a rivalry in generosity between the two nations.” After a long
struggle with the Toulouse authorities the sentence was reversed at
Paris amid general enthusiasm. The King very generously pensioned the
widow and the other victims.--J. M.
[5] Thanks to Voltaire and to the progress of Rationalism at Paris,
she was received with the greatest enthusiasm and generosity.--J. M.
[6] In ancient Rome the _devoti_ were those who devoted themselves to
the good of the Republic.
[7] The Catholic Church did not discover the infallibility of the
Pope until 1870, since which date his lips have remained, officially,
closed.--J. M.
[8] A thrust at the Jesuits.--J. M.
[9] The Catholic League for the suppression of Protestantism in
France, in the second half of the sixteenth century, led to much war
and bloodshed.--J. M.
[10] In his treatise _Dieu et les Hommes_ Voltaire, after a very
incomplete survey of history, puts the number of victims of religious
wars and quarrels at 9,468,800.--J. M.
[11] To marry within certain degrees of kindred, etc.--J. M.
[12] An exaggerated account of the Ulster rebellion.--J. M.
[13] This position could be held in a modified form in regard
to ancient Greece. See E. S. P. Haynes’s work, _Religious
Persecution_.--J. M.
[14] The Jews had no right to inflict death after Judæa had become
a Roman province, but the authorities at times overlooked these
punishments of blasphemy.
[15] Ch. 25. Voltaire has in this followed ecclesiastical custom.
The word in Suetonius is not “Christo,” but “Chresto,” and therefore
the passage reads, in English: “Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome
for their constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus.” As
Chrestus was not an uncommon name at Rome, there is no need to apply
the passage to Christ in any way.--J. M.
[16] The passage of Tacitus (_Annals_, xv., 44) is very generally
rejected as an interpolation.--J. M.
[17] I omit many of the lengthy notes, in which Voltaire, with
veiled irony and a bland pretence of orthodoxy--for the reason of
which see the Introduction,--throws doubt on the persecutions. The
freer scholarship of the nineteenth century has so far justified his
scepticism that few are now interested in the fairy tales of the
early “persecutions.” There was only one general repression of the
Christians, under Diocletian. See the latest editions of Gibbon, and
Robertson’s _Short History of Christianity_ (pp. 130-140).--J. M.
[18] Voltaire’s irony and pretence of orthodoxy must again, as in
so many places, be taken into account. You do not, as a French
commentator says, incur death in French law for throwing a piece of
wood into the Rhone.--J. M.
[19] A beautiful youth loved by the Emperor Hadrian.--J. M.
[20] If they had been content to preach and write, they would
probably have been left in peace; but the refusal to take the oaths,
in a constitution in which much use was made of oaths, exposed them
to suspicion. The refusal to take part publicly in the feasts in
honour of the emperors was a sort of crime at a time when the empire
was constantly stirred by revolutions. The insults they offered to
the established cult were punished with severity and barbarism, and
it was an age of rough and violent ways.
[21] _The Deaths of the Persecutors_, ch. iii.--a very untrustworthy
work. It is doubtful if Lactantius wrote it. There was no general
persecution under Domitian, but certain high officials suffered, like
the rest of Rome, from his excessive suspicion.--J. M.
[22] Voltaire, who knew only the late history of Egypt, gives a
lengthy note to explain his disdain. Archæological research has
altered all that.--J. M.
[23] Not wholly unknown. We know that the mother of Galerius, an
ignorant peasant, was stung by the insults of Christian officers in
the palace, and inflamed her son, who persuaded Diocletian to take
action. The action was mild at first; but Christians tore down the
imperial edict, and the palace was twice set on fire. Then Diocletian
yielded.--J. M.
[24] The persecution under Diocletian began in 303.--J. M.
[25] The Jesuit Busenbaum, edited by the Jesuit La Croix, says
that “it is lawful to kill a prince excommunicated by the Pope,
in whatever country he may be found, because the universe belongs
to the Pope, and he who accepts this commission does a charitable
deed.” This proposition, drawn up in the antechambers of hell, has
done more than anything to raise France against the Jesuits. [They
were expelled from France in 1767.--J. M.]. They endeavoured to
justify themselves by pointing out that the same conclusions are
found in St. Thomas and other Dominicans. As a matter of fact, St.
Thomas of Aquin, the “angelic doctor” and “interpreter of the divine
will”--such are his titles,--says that an apostate prince loses his
right to the crown, and should no longer be obeyed (Bk. II., Part
II., quest. xii.); that the Church may punish him with death; that
the Emperor Julian was tolerated only because the Christians were
weak (same passage); that it is right to kill any heretic (same
place, questions xi. and xii.); that those are laudable who free a
people from a tyrannical prince, etc. We must admit that Gerson,
Chancellor of the University, went farther than St. Thomas, and the
Franciscan Jean Petit much farther than Gerson.
[26] It was not defined by the Church until 1854.--J. M.
[27] This section is somewhat abridged, as much of it is better
developed in preceding works.--J. M.
[28] Voltaire’s eagerness to show the tolerance of the Jews is
purely paradoxical and ironical. His sole object in this section is
to expose the crudities of the Old Testament, under the cloak of
orthodox theological reasoning. Hence he omits the savage laws of
_Deuteronomy_ against foreign cults.--J. M.
[29] It may be useful to recall that, as earlier pages show,
Voltaire did not believe in the “next world.” Much of the phrasing
of this part is, when it is not ironical, merely an _argumentum ad
hominem_.--J. M.
[30] See that excellent work, _The Manual of the Inquisition_.
[31] This horrible doctrine must not wholly be relegated to the
eighteenth century and the Middle Ages. It is still solemn Catholic
doctrine, defined by the Vatican Council in 1870, that no atheist or
agnostic, whether in good or bad faith, can be saved.--J. M.
[32] Daughter of the Emperor Diocletian. Not executed by
Christians.--J. M.
[33] The homily is supposed to have been delivered in London.--J. M.
[34] Greece threw off the Turkish yoke in 1827.--J. M.
[35] In the Greek, Latin, and modern Bibles it is “firmament.” In
the Hebrew text it is “expanse,” though other passages show that it
refers to the solid vault or firmament of the Babylonians.--J. M.
[36] The Rev. Professor Sayce regards _Job_ as a piece of north
Arabian or Edomite literature, borrowed by the Jews.--J. M.
[37] Ninety years old (_Genesis_ xvii., 17).--J. M.
[38] A shaft at the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.--J. M.
[39] See the _Acts of St. Thecla_, written in the first century by a
disciple of St. Paul, and recognised as authentic by Tertullian, St.
Cyprian, St. Gregory of Nazianzum, St. Ambrose, etc.
[40] Spurious _Acts of the Apostle_ xxi.
[41] 1 _Corinthians_ ix., 4, 5, and 7.
[42] _Thessalonians_ iv., 16 and 17.
[43] _Acts_ xxi.
[44] Matthew gives five thousand men and five loaves in chapter xiv.,
and four thousand men and five loaves in chapter xv. Apparently, they
are two different miracles, which makes in all nine thousand men and
at least nine thousand women. If you add nine thousand children, the
total number of diners amounts to twenty-seven thousand--which is
considerable.
[45] A pun of which the point is lost in English. The French phrase,
to make a man “swallow the gudgeon,” means to “gull” a man. Voltaire
turns the “two little fishes” of the gospel into gudgeons to
accommodate his joke.--J. M.
[46] In France, an abbey of which the “abbot” was a kind of absentee
landlord. He lived at Paris, with the title and revenue, and left the
work to a sub-abbot.--J. M.
[47] The indictment is too severe. The later years of Constantine
were marked by silly extravagance, but not debauch. The execution
of his father-in-law was justified. His (partial) acceptance of
Christianity was earlier than Voltaire supposes, and there is no
serious ground for suggesting large payments of money. But it is now
beyond question that he put his brother-in-law (Licinius) to death
treacherously, had his wife, son, and nephew murdered, and greatly
degenerated in later life.--J. M.
[48] No; in the Senate.--J. M.
[49] _Matthew_ xx., 23.
[50] _Matthew_ xx., 26 and 27.
[51] All Christians believe that Jesus was born in a stable, between
an ox and an ass. There is, however, no mention of this in the
gospels. It was imagined by Justin, and is mentioned by Lactantius,
or at least the author of a bad Latin poem on the passions, which is
attributed to Lactantius.
[52]
A time by fate appointed was to come,
When sea, and earth, and all the realm of heaven
Should flame, and ruin seize the world’s great mass.