The Works of Voltaire, Vol. IV of XLIII. Romances, Vol. III of III, and A Treatise on Toleration. · Voltaire
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,[7] 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 these unhappy wretches, in the following manner: They were suspended at the end of a long beam, which played upon a pole erected for that purpose, and underneath them was kindled a large fire, into which they were alternately lowered and then raised up again, by which they experienced the most excruciating torments, till a lingering death at last put an end to the longest and most dreadful punishment that cruelty ever invented.
A short time before the death of Francis I., the members of the Parliament of Provence, whom the clergy had incensed against the inhabitants of Mirandol and Cabrière, applied to the king for a body of troops to attend the execution of nineteen persons of that country who had been condemned by them; with the assistance of this armed force they massacred about six thousand souls, without sparing sex or age, and reduced thirty villages to ashes. The people who were the objects of these executions, and who had, till then, been in a manner unknown, were doubtless to blame for having been born Vaudois, but this was their only crime. They had been settled for upwards of three hundred years in deserts and on mountains, which they had rendered fertile by incredible labor, and led a pastoral and quiet life, the perfect image of the innocence which we find attributed to the first ages of the world. They had no acquaintance with the towns or villages round about them, except that obtained by carrying the produce of their grounds thither to sell. Totally ignorant of all military operations, they made no defence, but were slaughtered like timorous animals, whom we drive into a net and then knock them on the head.[8]
After the death of Francis I., a prince who, it must be confessed, was more remarkable for his gallantries and his misfortunes than for his cruelty, the execution of a thousand heretics, and in particular that of Dubourg, a counsellor of the parliament, together with the massacre of Vassy, made the persecuted fly to arms. Their sect multiplied in proportion with the fires lighted for them, and the swords of executioners drawn against them, patience gave way to rage, and they followed the example of their enemies in cruelty. Nine civil wars filled France with carnage, and a peace, more fatal than war itself, produced the day of St. Bartholomew, which stands without example in the annals of crime. Henry III. and Henry IV. fell victims to the league, the one by the hand of a Dominican friar, and the other by that of a monster who had been a brother of the mendicant order. There are those who pretend that humanity, indulgence, and liberty of conscience are horrible things; I would ask such persons seriously, if they could have produced calamities comparable to those I have just related? CHAPTER IV. WHETHER TOLERATION IS DANGEROUS, AND AMONG WHAT NATIONS IT IS PRACTISED. Some people will have it, that if we were to make use of humanity and indulgence towards our mistaken brethren who pray to God in bad French, it would be putting arms into their hands, and we should see revived the bloody days of Jarnac, Moncontour, Coutras, Dreux, St. Denis, and others. I know not how this may be, as I have not the gift of prophecy, but I really cannot discover the congruity of this reasoning, “that because these men took up arms against me when I oppressed them, they will do the same if I show them favor.”
And here I would willingly take the liberty to entreat those who have the reins of government in hand, or are destined to fill the highest stations, for once to examine maturely whether there is any reason to apprehend that indulgence would occasion the same rebellions as cruelty and oppression, and whether what has happened under certain circumstances would happen under others of a different nature, or whether times, opinions, and manners are always the same? The Huguenots, it cannot be denied, have formerly given in to all the rage of enthusiasm, and have been polluted with blood as well as ourselves, but can it be said that the present generation is as barbarous as the former? Have not time and reason, which have lately made so great progress, together with good books, and that natural softness introduced from society, found their way among those who have the guidance of these people? And do we not clearly perceive that almost all Europe has undergone a change within the last century? The hands of government have everywhere been strengthened, while the minds of the people have been softened and civilized; the general police, supported by numerous standing armies, leave us no longer any cause to fear the return of those times of anarchy, when Protestant boors and Catholic peasants were hastily called together from the labors of agriculture to wield the sword against each others’ lives.
_Alia tempora, aliæ curæ._ It would be highly absurd in the present days to decimate the body of the Sorbonne because it formerly petitioned for burning the _Pucelle d’Orléans_ because it declared Henry III. to have lost his right to the throne, and because it excommunicated and proscribed the illustrious Henry IV. We certainly should not think of prosecuting the other public bodies of the nation, who committed the like excesses in those times of error and madness; it would not only be very unjust, but as ridiculous as if we were to oblige all the inhabitants of Marseilles to undergo a course of physic because they had the plague in 1720. Should we at present go and sack Rome, as the troops of Charles the Fifth did, because Pope Sixtus the Fifth, in the year 1585, granted a nine years’ indulgence to all Frenchmen who would take up arms against their sovereign? No, surely it is enough if we prevent the court of Rome from ever being guilty of such excesses in the future. The rage inspired by a spirit of controversy, and the abuse made of the Christian religion from want of properly understanding it, has occasioned as much bloodshed, and produced as many calamities in Germany, England, and even in Holland, as in France; and yet, at present, the difference in religion occasions no disturbances in those countries; but the Jew, the Catholic, the Lutheran, the Calvinist, the Anabaptist, the Socinian, the Moravian, and a multitude of other sects live in brotherly harmony together, and contribute equally to the good of society.
In Holland they no longer fear that the disputations of a Gomar[9] concerning predestination should bring the head of a grand pensionary to the block, nor in London that the quarrels between the Presbyterians and the Episcopals about a form of prayer and a surplice should again spill the blood of their kings upon a scaffold.[10] Ireland, now populous and rich, will not any more behold its Catholic inhabitants sacrificing, as an acceptable offering, the lives of their Protestant brethren, by burying them alive, hanging up mothers upon gibbets, and tying their daughters round their necks to see them expire together; ripping up women with child, taking the half-formed infant from the womb, and throwing it to swine or dogs to be devoured; putting a dagger into the hands of their manacled prisoners, and forcing them to plunge it into the breasts of their fathers, their mothers, their wives, or children, thereby hoping to make them guilty of parricide, and damn their souls while they destroyed their bodies; all which we find related by Rapin, who served as an officer in the English service in Ireland, and who lived very near the time of those transactions, and confirmed by most of the English historians. No! such cruelties as these were never to be paralleled, so they doubtless will never be imitated. Philosophy, the sister of religion, has herself snatched the poniard from the hands of superstition, so long bathed in blood; and the human understanding, recovered from its delirium, stands amazed at the shocking brutalities into which it has been hurried by enthusiasm.
We ourselves know that in France there is a rich and populous province where the Protestant religion prevails much more than that of the Church of Rome. The University of Alsace consists almost entirely of Lutherans, and they are likewise in possession of most of the civil posts in that province; and yet the public peace has never once been disturbed by any quarrels about religion since that province has belonged to our kings. And what is the reason? Because no one is persecuted there on account of his religion. Seek not to lay a restraint upon the mind, and you may always be sure that the mind will be yours. I do not mean by this to insinuate that those who are of a different faith to the prince under whose government they live should have an equal share in the places of profits and honor with those who are of the established religion of the state. In England the Roman Catholics, who are in general looked upon to be friends to the Pretender, are excluded from all civil posts, and are even double-taxed; but then, in every other respect, they enjoy the prerogatives of citizens.
Some of our bishops in France have been suspected of thinking that their honor and interest is concerned in not suffering any Protestants within their diocese, and that this is the principal obstacle to allowing of toleration amongst us; but this I cannot believe. The episcopal body in France is composed of persons of quality, who think and act in a manner suitable to their high birth; and as envy itself must confess that they are generous and charitable, they therefore certainly cannot think that those whom they thus drive out of their diocese would become converts in any other country, but great honor would redound from the conversion of them at home; nor would the prelate be any loser by it in his temporals, seeing that the greater the number of the inhabitants, the greater is the value of the land. A certain Polish bishop had a farmer who was an Anabaptist, and a receiver of his rents who was a Socinian. Some person proposed to the bishop to prosecute the latter in the spiritual court for not believing in transubstantiation, and to turn the other out of his farm because he would not have his son christened till he was fifteen years of age; the prelate very prudently replied that though he made no doubt of their being eternally damned in the next world, yet he found them extremely necessary to him in this.
Let us now for a while quit our own little sphere, and take a survey of the rest of the globe. The Grand Seignior peaceably rules over subjects of twenty different religions; upwards of two hundred thousand Greeks live unmolested within the walls of Constantinople; the mufti himself nominates the Greek patriarch, and presents him to the Emperor, and, at the same time, allows the residence of a Latin patriarch. The Sultan appoints Latin bishops for some of the Greek isles. The form used on this occasion is as follows:[11] “I command such a one to go and reside as bishop in the Isle of Chios, according to the ancient custom and idle ceremonies of those people.” The Ottoman Empire swarms with Jacobins, Nestorians, Monothelites, Cophti, Christians of St. John, Guebres, and Banians; and the Turkish annals do not furnish us with one single instance of a rebellion occasioned by any of these different sects. Go into India, Persia, and Tartary, and you will meet with the same toleration and the same tranquillity. Peter the Great encouraged all kinds of religions throughout his vast empire; trade and agriculture have been gainers by it, and no injury ever happened therefrom to the body politic. We do not find that the Chinese government, during the course of four thousand years that it has existed, has ever adopted any other religion than that of the Noachides, which consists in the simple worship of one God; and yet it tolerates the superstitions of Fo, and that of a multitude of bonzes; which might be productive of dangerous consequences did not the wisdom of the tribunals keep them within proper bounds.
It is true that the great Yong-T-Chin, the most wise and magnanimous of all the emperors of China, drove the Jesuits out of his kingdom; but this was not because that prince himself was non-tolerant, but, on the contrary, because the Jesuits were so. They themselves, in their letters, have given us the speech the emperor made to them on that occasion: “I know,” said he, “that your religion admits not of toleration; I know how you have behaved in the Manilas and in Japan; you deceived my father, but think not to deceive me in the same manner.” And if we read the whole of the conversation which he deigned to hold with them, we must confess him to be the wisest and most clement of all princes. How could he indeed, with any consistency, keep in his kingdom European philosophers, who, under the pretence of teaching the use of thermometers and eolipiles, had found means to debauch a prince of the blood? But what would this emperor have said had he read our histories, and had he been acquainted with the times of the League and the Gunpowder Plot?
It was sufficient for him to be informed of the outrageous and indecent disputes between those Jesuits, Dominicans, Capuchins, and secular priests who were sent as missionaries into his dominions from one extremity of the globe to preach the truth; instead of which they employed their time in mutually pronouncing damnation against one another. The emperor, then, did no more than send away a set of foreigners who were disturbers of the public peace. But with what infinite goodness did he dismiss them! and with what paternal care did he provide for their accommodation in their journey, and to prevent their meeting with any insult on their way! This very act of banishment might serve as an example of toleration and humanity. [12] The Japanese were the most tolerant of all nations; twelve different religions were peaceably established in their empire; when the Jesuits came, they made the thirteenth; and, in a very little time after their arrival, they would not suffer any other than their own. Everyone knows the consequence of these proceedings; a civil war, as calamitous as that of the League, soon spread destruction and carnage through the empire; till at length the Christian religion was itself swallowed up in the torrents of blood it had set aflowing, and the Japanese forever shut the entrance of their country against all foreigners, looking upon us as no better than savage beasts, such as those from which the English have happily cleared their island. Colbert, the minister, who knew the necessity we were in of the commodities of Japan, which wants nothing from us, labored in vain to settle a trade with that empire; he found those people inflexible.
Thus, then, everything on our continent shows us that we ought neither to preach nor to exercise non-toleration. Let us now cast our eyes on the other hemisphere. Behold Carolina! whose laws were framed by the wise Locke; there every master of a family, who has only seven souls under his roof, may establish what religion he pleases, provided all those seven persons concur with him therein; and yet this great indulgence has not, hitherto, been the occasion of any disorders. God forbid that I should mention this as an example to every master of a family to set up a particular worship in his house; I have only introduced it to show that the utmost lengths to which toleration can be carried have never yet given rise even to the slightest dissensions. And what shall we say of those pacific primitive Christians, who have, by way of derision, been called Quakers; and who, though some of their customs may perhaps be ridiculous, are yet remarkable for the virtue and sobriety of their lives, and for having in vain endeavored to preach peace and good-will to the rest of mankind? There are at least a hundred thousand of them in Pennsylvania; discord and controversy are unknown in that happy spot where they have settled; the very name of their principal city, Philadelphia, is a continual memento to them that all men are brethren, and is at once an example and reproach to those nations which have not yet adopted toleration.
To conclude, toleration has never yet excited civil wars, whereas its opposite has filled the earth with slaughter and desolation. Let any one then judge which of the two is more entitled to our esteem, or which we should applaud; the mother who would deliver her son into the hand of the executioner, or she who would resign all right to him to save his life. In all that I have said I have had only the interest of nations in view, and, as I pay all due respect to the doctrines of the Church, I have in this article only considered the physical and moral advantages of society. I therefore hope that every impartial reader will properly weigh these truths, that he will view them in their proper light, and rectify what may be amiss. Those who read with attention, and reciprocally communicate their thoughts, will always have the start of the author.[13]
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.