Chapter XI
Original French
Abus de l'Intolérance.
MAis quoi! sera-t-il permis à chaque Citoyen de ne croire que sa raison, & de penser ce que cette raison éclairée ou trompée lui dictera? Il le faut bien,21 pourvu qu'il ne trouble point l'ordre; car il ne dépend pas de l'homme de croire, ou de ne pas croire; mais il dépend de lui de respecter les usages de sa Patrie: & si vous disiez que c'est un crime de ne pas croire à la Religion dominante, vous accuseriez donc vous-mêmes les premiers Chrétiens vos peres, & vous justifieriez ceux que vous accusez de les avoir livrés aux supplices.
Vous répondez que la différence est grande, que toutes les Religions sont les ouvrages des hommes, & que l'Eglise Catholique Apostolique & Romaine est seule l'ouvrage de Dieu. Mais en bonne foi, parce que notre Religion est divine, doit-elle régner par la haine, par les fureurs, par les exils, par l'enlévement des biens, les prisons, les tortures, les meurtres, & par les actions de graces rendues à Dieu pour ces meurtres? Plus la Religion Chrétienne est divine, moins il appartient à l'homme de la commander; si Dieu l'a faite, Dieu la soutiendra sans vous. Vous savez que l'intolérance ne produit que des hypocrites ou des rebelles; quelle funeste alternative! Enfin, voudriez-vous soutenir par des bourreaux la Religion d'un Dieu que des bourreaux ont fait périr, & qui n'a prêché que la douceur & la patience?
Voyez, je vous prie, les conséquences affreuses du droit de l'intolérance: s'il était permis de dépouiller de ses biens, de jetter dans les cachots, de tuer un Citoyen, qui sous un tel degré de latitude ne professerait pas la Religion admise sous ce degré, quelle exception exempterait les premiers de l'Etat des mêmes peines? La Religion lie également le Monarque & les mendiants: aussi, plus de cinquante Docteurs ou Moines ont affirmé cette horreur monstrueuse, qu'il était permis de déposer, de tuer les Souverains qui ne penseraient pas comme l'Eglise dominante; & les Parlements du Royaume n'ont cessé de proscrire ces abominables décisions d'abominables Théologiens.22
Le sang de Henri-le-Grand fumait encore, quand le Parlement de Paris donna un Arrêt qui établissait l'indépendance de la Couronne, comme une Loi fondamentale. Le Cardinal Duperron, qui devait la pourpre à Henri-le-Grand, s'éleva dans les Etats de 1614 contre l'Arrêt du Parlement, & le fit supprimer. Tous les Journaux du temps rapportent les termes dont Duperron se servit dans ses harangues: Si un Prince se faisait Arien, dit-il, on serait bien obligé de le déposer.
Non assurément, Monsieur le Cardinal; on veut bien adopter votre supposition chimérique, qu'un de nos Rois ayant lu l'Histoire des Conciles & des Peres, frappé d'ailleurs de ces paroles, mon Pere est plus grand que moi, les prenant trop à la lettre, & balançant entre le Concile de Nicée & celui de Constantinople, se déclarât pour Eusebe de Nicomédie, je n'en obéirais pas moins à mon Roi, je ne me croirais pas moins lié par le serment que je lui ai fait; & si vous osiez vous soulever contre lui, & que je fusse un de vos juges, je vous déclarerais criminel de leze-Majesté.
Duperron poussa plus loin la dispute, & je l'abrege. Ce n'est pas ici le lieu d'approfondir ces chimeres révoltantes; je me bornerai à dire avec tous les Citoyens, que ce n'est pas parce que Henri IV. fut sacré à Chartres qu'on lui devait obéissance, mais parce que le droit incontestable de la naissance donnait la Couronne à ce Prince, qui la méritait par son courage & par sa bonté.
Qu'il soit donc permis de dire que tout Citoyen doit hériter, par le même droit, des biens de son pere, & qu'on ne voit pas qu'il mérite d'en être privé, & d'être traîné au gibet, parce qu'il sera du sentiment de Ratram contre Pascase Ratberg, & de Bérenger contre Scot.
On sait que tous nos dogmes n'ont pas toujours été clairement expliqués, & universellement reçus dans notre Eglise. Jesus-Christ ne nous ayant point dit comment procédait le St. Esprit, l'Eglise Latine crut long-temps avec la Grecque, qu'il ne procédait que du Pere: enfin elle ajouta au Symbole, qu'il procédait aussi du Fils. Je demande, si le lendemain de cette décision, un Citoyen qui s'en serait tenu au symbole de la veille eût été digne de mort? La cruauté, l'injustice serait-elle moins grande de punir aujourd'hui celui qui penserait comme on pensait autrefois? Etait-on coupable du temps d'Honorius I, de croire que Jesus n'avait pas deux volontés?
Il n'y a pas long-temps que l'Immaculée Conception est établie: les Dominicains n'y croyent pas encore. Dans quel temps les Dominicains commenceront-ils à mériter des peines dans ce monde, & dans l'autre?
Si nous devons apprendre de quelqu'un à nous conduire dans nos disputes interminables, c'est certainement des Apôtres & des Evangélistes. Il y avait de quoi exciter un schisme violent entre St. Paul & St. Pierre. Paul dit expressément dans son Epître aux Galates, qu'il résista en face à Pierre, parce que Pierre était répréhensible, parce qu'il usait de dissimulation aussi-bien que Barnabé, parce qu'ils mangeaient avec les Gentils avant l'arrivée de Jacques, & qu'ensuite ils se retirerent secrétement, & se séparerent des Gentils de peur d'offenser les Circoncis. Je vis, ajoute-t-il, qu'ils ne marchaient pas droit selon l'Evangile; je dis à Céphas: Si vous, Juif, vivez comme les Gentils, & non comme les Juifs, pourquoi obligez-vous les Gentils à judaïser?
C'était là un sujet de querelle violente. Il s'agissait de savoir si les nouveaux Chrétiens judaïseraient ou non. St. Paul alla dans ce temps-là même sacrifier dans le Temple de Jérusalem. On sait que les quinze premiers Evêques de Jérusalem furent des Juifs circoncis, qui observerent le Sabath & qui s'abstinrent des viandes défendues. Un Evêque Espagnol ou Portugais, qui se ferait circoncire & qui observerait le Sabath, serait brulé dans un auto-da-fé. Cependant la paix ne fut altérée pour cet objet fondamental, ni parmi les Apôtres, ni parmi les premiers Chrétiens.
Si les Evangélistes avaient ressemblé aux Ecrivains modernes, ils avaient un champ bien vaste pour combattre les uns contre les autres. St. Matthieu compte vingt-huit générations depuis David jusqu'à Jesus. St. Luc en compte quarante-une; & ces générations sont absolument différentes. On ne voit pourtant nulle dissention s'élever entre les Disciples sur ces contrariétés apparentes, très-bien conciliées par plusieurs Peres de l'Eglise. La charité ne fut point blessée, la paix fut conservée. Quelle plus grande leçon de nous tolérer dans nos disputes, & de nous humilier dans tout ce que nous n'entendons pas?
St. Paul, dans son Epître à quelques Juifs de Rome, convertis au Christianisme, employe toute la fin du Chapitre III à dire que la seule Foi glorifie, & que les œuvres ne justifient personne. St. Jacques, au contraire, dans son Epître aux douze Tribus dispersées par toute la terre, Chapitre II, ne cesse de dire qu'on ne peut être sauvé sans les œuvres. Voilà ce qui a séparé deux grandes Communions parmi nous, & ce qui ne divisa point les Apôtres.
Si la persécution contre ceux avec qui nous disputons, était une action sainte, il faut avouer que celui qui aurait fait tuer le plus d'hérétiques serait le plus grand Saint du Paradis. Quelle figure ferait un homme qui se serait contenté de dépouiller ses freres, & de les plonger dans des cachots, auprès d'un zélé qui en aurait massacré des centaines le jour de la St. Barthelemi? en voici la preuve.
Le Successeur de St. Pierre & son Consistoire ne peuvent errer; ils approuverent, célébrerent, consacrerent l'action de la St. Barthelemi: donc cette action était très-sainte; donc, de deux assassins égaux en piété, celui qui aurait éventré vingt-quatre femmes grosses Huguenotes, doit être élevé en gloire du double de celui qui n'en aura éventré que douze: par la même raison les fanatiques des Cévennes devaient croire qu'ils seraient élevés en gloire à proportion du nombre des Prêtres, des Religieux, & des femmes Catholiques qu'ils auraient égorgés. Ce sont là d'étranges titres pour la gloire éternelle.
21 Voyez l'excellente Lettre de Loke sur la Tolérance.
22 Le Jésuite Busembaum, commenté par le Jésuite La Croix, dit, qu'il est permis de tuer un Prince excommunié par le Pape, dans quelque Pays qu'on trouve ce Prince, parce que l'Univers appartient au Pape, & que celui qui accepte cette commission fait une œuvre très-charitable. C'est cette proposition inventée dans les petites maisons de l'Enfer, qui a le plus soulevé toute la France contre les Jésuites. On leur a reproché alors plus que jamais ce dogme si souvent enseigné par eux & si souvent désavoué. Ils ont cru se justifier en montrant à peu près les mêmes décisions dans St. Thomas & dans plusieurs Jacobins.[A] En effet, St. Thomas d'Aquin, Docteur Angélique, interprete de la volonté divine, ce sont ses titres, avance qu'un Prince apostat perd son droit à la Couronne, & qu'on ne doit plus lui obéir:[B] que l'Eglise peut le punir de mort: qu'on n'a toléré l'Empereur Julien que parce qu'on n'était pas le plus fort:[C] que de droit on doit tuer tout Hérétique:[D] que ceux qui délivrent le Peuple d'un Prince qui gouverne tyranniquement, sont très-louables, &c. &c. On respecte fort l'Ange de l'Ecole; mais si dans les temps de Jacques Clément, son confrere, & du Feuillant Ravaillac, il était venu soutenir en France de telles propositions, comment aurait-on traité l'Ange de l'Ecole?
[A] Voyez, si vous pouvez, la Lettre d'un homme du monde à un Théologien sur St. Thomas; c'est une brochure de Jésuite, de 1762.
[B] Liv. II, part. 2, question 12.
[C] Liv. II, part. 2, question 12.
[D] Ibid. question 11 & 12.
Il faut avouer que Jean Gerson, Chancelier de l'Université, alla encore plus loin que St. Thomas, & le Cordelier Jean Petit, infiniment plus loin que Gerson. Plusieurs Cordeliers soutinrent les horribles Theses de Jean Petit. Il faut avouer que cette doctrine diabolique du Régicide vient uniquement de la folle idée où ont été long-temps presque tous les Moines, que le Pape est un Dieu en terre, qui peut disposer à son gré du Trône & de la vie des Rois. Nous avons été en cela fort au-dessous de ces Tartares qui croyent le grand Lama immortel; il leur distribue sa chaise percée, ils font sécher ces reliques, les enchassent, & les baisent dévotement. Pour moi, j'avoue que j'aimerois mieux, pour le bien de la paix, porter à mon cou de telles reliques, que de croire que le Pape ait le moindre droit sur le temporel des Rois, ni même sur le mien, en quelque cas que ce puisse être.
Musean translation
Complete machine-assisted Musean translation directly from French, reviewed against it. Includes all 25 chapters, Voltaire’s notes and the added Article with six edition references. Article transcription: French Wikisource, Garnier 1879, revision 15479820. Translation and Article: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.
The Abuses of Intolerance.
But what! Shall every citizen be allowed to believe only his own reason, and to think whatever that reason, enlightened or deceived, dictates to him? He must be,21 provided he does not disturb the peace; for it is not in a man’s power to believe or disbelieve, but it is in his power to respect the customs of his country. And if you said it was a crime not to believe in the dominant religion, you would yourselves be accusing the first Christians, your fathers, and vindicating those whom you accuse of having delivered them to execution.
You answer that the difference is great: all religions are the work of men, and the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church alone is the work of God. But in good faith, because our religion is divine, must it reign through hatred, fury, exile, confiscation of property, prisons, torture, murder, and thanksgiving offered to God for these murders? The more divine the Christian religion is, the less it falls to man to impose it. If God made it, God will sustain it without you. You know that intolerance produces only hypocrites or rebels. What a disastrous choice! Finally, would you uphold through executioners the religion of a God whom executioners put to death, and who preached only gentleness and patience?
Consider, I beg you, the dreadful consequences of a right to intolerance. If it were permissible to strip a citizen of his property, throw him into a dungeon, or kill him because, at a particular degree of latitude, he did not profess the religion accepted at that degree, what exception would exempt the foremost men of the state from the same penalties? Religion binds the monarch and the beggar equally. And so more than fifty theologians or monks have asserted this monstrous horror: that it was permissible to depose and kill sovereigns who did not think as the dominant Church did. The kingdom’s sovereign law courts have never ceased proscribing these abominable rulings of abominable theologians.22
The blood of Henry the Great was still smoking when the Parlement of Paris issued a decree establishing the independence of the Crown as a fundamental law. Cardinal Du Perron, who owed his cardinal’s purple to Henry the Great, rose in the Estates of 1614 against the court’s decree and had it suppressed. All the journals of the time report the words Du Perron used in his speeches: “If a prince became an Arian,” he said, “we would certainly be obliged to depose him.”
Certainly not, Your Eminence. Let us accept your fanciful supposition: one of our kings, having read the history of the councils and the Fathers, struck also by the words “my Father is greater than I,” taking them too literally, and wavering between the Council of Nicaea and that of Constantinople, should declare for Eusebius of Nicomedia. I would obey my king no less; I would consider myself no less bound by the oath I had sworn him. And if you dared to rise against him, and I were one of your judges, I would pronounce you guilty of treason.
Du Perron carried the dispute further, and I abridge it. This is not the place to probe these revolting fantasies. I will confine myself to saying, with all citizens, that obedience was owed to Henry IV not because he was consecrated at Chartres, but because the incontestable right of birth gave the Crown to that prince, who deserved it through his courage and goodness.
Let us therefore be allowed to say that every citizen ought, by the same right, to inherit his father’s property, and that we cannot see how he deserves to be deprived of it and dragged to the gallows because he agrees with Ratramnus against Paschasius Radbertus, and with Berengar against Scotus.
We know that not all our dogmas have always been clearly explained and universally accepted in our Church. Since Jesus Christ did not tell us how the Holy Spirit proceeded, the Latin Church long believed, with the Greek, that he proceeded from the Father alone; at last it added to the Creed that he proceeded also from the Son. I ask whether, on the day after this decision, a citizen who had held to the previous day’s creed would have deserved death. Would it be any less cruel or unjust today to punish someone who thought as people once thought? In the time of Honorius I, was it a crime to believe that Jesus did not have two wills?
The Immaculate Conception has not been established for long; the Dominicans still do not believe in it. At what point will the Dominicans begin to deserve punishment in this world and the next?
If we should learn from anyone how to conduct ourselves in our endless disputes, it is surely from the Apostles and the Evangelists. There was enough to provoke a violent schism between St. Paul and St. Peter. In his Epistle to the Galatians, Paul expressly says that he withstood Peter to his face because Peter was blameworthy, because he practiced dissimulation as Barnabas did, because they ate with Gentiles before James arrived, then secretly withdrew and separated themselves from the Gentiles for fear of offending the circumcised. “I saw,” he adds, “that they were not walking uprightly according to the Gospel; I said to Cephas: If you, a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, why do you compel the Gentiles to live as Jews?”
Here was cause for a violent quarrel. The question was whether the new Christians would follow Jewish practices or not. At that very time St. Paul went to offer sacrifice in the temple of Jerusalem. We know that the first fifteen bishops of Jerusalem were circumcised Jews who observed the Sabbath and abstained from forbidden meats. A Spanish or Portuguese bishop who had himself circumcised and observed the Sabbath would be burned in an auto-da-fé. Yet peace was not disturbed over this fundamental matter, either among the Apostles or among the first Christians.
Had the Evangelists resembled modern writers, they would have had a vast field on which to fight one another. St. Matthew counts twenty-eight generations from David to Jesus. St. Luke counts forty-one; and these generations are entirely different. Yet we see no dissension arise among the disciples over these apparent contradictions, so well reconciled by several Fathers of the Church. Charity was not wounded; peace was preserved. What greater lesson could there be in tolerating one another in our disputes and humbling ourselves before everything we do not understand?
St. Paul, in his epistle to some Jews of Rome converted to Christianity, devotes the whole end of Chapter III to saying that faith alone glorifies, and that works justify no one. St. James, on the contrary, in his epistle to the twelve tribes scattered throughout the earth, Chapter II, never ceases saying that one cannot be saved without works. This is what has separated two great communions among us, and what did not divide the Apostles.
If persecuting those with whom we dispute were a holy deed, we must admit that whoever had the most heretics killed would be the greatest saint in paradise. What figure would a man who had contented himself with stripping his brothers of their property and plunging them into dungeons cut beside a zealot who had massacred hundreds on St. Bartholomew’s Day? Here is the proof.
St. Peter’s successor and his consistory cannot err; they approved, celebrated, and consecrated the deed of St. Bartholomew’s Day: therefore this deed was most holy; therefore, of two assassins equal in piety, the one who had disemboweled twenty-four pregnant Huguenot women must be raised to twice the glory of the one who had disemboweled only twelve. For the same reason, the fanatics of the Cévennes must have believed that they would be raised to glory in proportion to the number of priests, men in religious orders, and Catholic women whose throats they had cut. These are strange claims to eternal glory.
21 See Locke’s excellent Lettre sur la Tolérance.
22 The Jesuit Busenbaum, with commentary by the Jesuit La Croix, says that “it is permissible to kill a prince excommunicated by the pope, in whatever country that prince may be found, because the universe belongs to the pope, and whoever accepts this commission performs a most charitable deed.” This proposition, invented in the madhouses of hell, has done more than anything else to rouse all France against the Jesuits. They were then reproached more than ever for this doctrine, so often taught by them and so often disavowed. They thought to justify themselves by showing almost the same rulings in St. Thomas and several Dominicans.[A] Indeed, St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, interpreter of the divine will—such are his titles—asserts that an apostate prince loses his right to the Crown and must no longer be obeyed;[B] that the Church may punish him with death; that the emperor Julian was tolerated only because Christians did not have the greater strength;[C] that by right every heretic ought to be killed;[D] that those who deliver a people from a prince who governs tyrannically are highly praiseworthy, etc., etc. The Angel of the Schools is greatly respected; but if, in the days of his fellow Dominican Jacques Clément and of the Feuillant Ravaillac, he had come to France to maintain such propositions, how would the Angel of the Schools have been treated?
[A] See, if you can, the Lettre d'un homme du monde à un Théologien sur St. Thomas; it is a Jesuit pamphlet of 1762.
[B] Liv. II, part. 2, question 12.
[C] Liv. II, part. 2, question 12.
[D] Ibid. question 11 & 12.
We must admit that Jean Gerson, chancellor of the University, went still further than St. Thomas, and the Franciscan Jean Petit infinitely further than Gerson. Several Franciscans upheld Jean Petit’s horrible theses. We must admit that this diabolical doctrine of regicide derives solely from the mad idea, long held by almost all monks, that the pope is a God on earth who can dispose as he pleases of kings’ thrones and lives. In this we have sunk far below those Tatars who believe the great Lama immortal: he distributes the contents of his close-stool to them; they dry these relics, place them in shrines, and kiss them devoutly. For my part, I confess that, for the sake of peace, I would rather wear such relics around my neck than believe that the pope has the slightest right over the worldly affairs of kings, or even over my own, in any case whatever.
Plain English translation
Independent, complete machine-assisted Plain English translation directly from French, reviewed against it. All 25 chapters, author’s notes and added Article with six edition references are retained. Article transcription: French Wikisource, Garnier 1879, revision 15479820. Translation and Article: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.
Abuses of intolerance.
But what! Is every citizen to be allowed to trust only his own reason and think whatever that reason, enlightened or mistaken, tells him? He must be allowed to,21 provided he does not disturb public order. Whether a person believes or does not believe is not within his control. But he can choose to respect his country’s customs. And if you said it was a crime not to believe in the dominant religion, you would be accusing the first Christians, your own forefathers, and justifying those whom you accuse of sending them to their deaths.
You answer that there is a great difference: all religions are human works, while the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church alone is God’s work. But honestly, because our religion is divine, must it rule through hatred, rage, exile, confiscation of property, prisons, torture, murder, and thanksgiving to God for those murders? The more divine the Christian religion is, the less it is for human beings to impose it. If God made it, God will sustain it without you. You know that intolerance produces only hypocrites or rebels. What a disastrous choice! In short, would you use executioners to uphold the religion of a God whom executioners killed, and who preached only gentleness and patience?
Please consider the terrible consequences of a right to be intolerant. Suppose it were permissible to strip a citizen of his property, throw him into a dungeon, or kill him because, at a particular degree of latitude, he did not profess the religion accepted at that latitude. What exception would exempt the highest people in the state from the same penalties? Religion binds the monarch and beggars equally. Accordingly, more than fifty theologians or monks have asserted this monstrous horror: that it is permissible to depose and kill sovereigns who do not think like the dominant Church. The kingdom’s sovereign law courts have never stopped condemning these abominable rulings by abominable theologians.22
Henry the Great’s blood was still steaming when the Parlement of Paris issued a ruling establishing the Crown’s independence as a fundamental law. Cardinal Du Perron, who owed his cardinal’s robes to Henry the Great, opposed the court’s ruling at the Estates-General of 1614 and had it suppressed. All the journals of the time report the terms Du Perron used in his speeches: “If a ruler became an Arian,” he said, “we would certainly be obliged to depose him.”
Certainly not, Cardinal. Let us accept your imaginary case: one of our kings reads the history of the councils and the Fathers; he is also struck by the words “my Father is greater than I” and takes them too literally; he hesitates between the Council of Nicaea and that of Constantinople, and declares himself for Eusebius of Nicomedia. I would obey my king no less, and consider myself no less bound by the oath I had sworn to him. And if you dared rise against him, and I were one of your judges, I would declare you guilty of a crime against the sovereign.
Du Perron took the argument further; I am shortening it. This is not the place to examine these outrageous fantasies in depth. I will limit myself to saying, with all citizens, that obedience was owed to Henry IV not because he was crowned at Chartres, but because the unquestionable right of birth gave the Crown to this ruler, who deserved it through his courage and goodness.
Then let us be allowed to say that every citizen should inherit his father’s property by the same right. There is no reason why he should deserve to lose it and be dragged to the gallows because he agrees with Ratramnus against Paschasius Radbertus, and with Berengar against Scotus.
We know that not all our doctrines have always been clearly explained and universally accepted in our Church. Since Jesus Christ did not tell us how the Holy Spirit proceeded, the Latin Church long believed, with the Greek Church, that he proceeded from the Father alone. Finally it added to the Creed that he also proceeded from the Son. I ask whether, on the day after this decision, a citizen who kept to the previous day’s creed would have deserved death. Would it be any less cruel and unjust to punish someone today for thinking as people once thought? In the time of Honorius I, was it a crime to believe that Jesus did not have two wills?
The Immaculate Conception was established only recently. The Dominicans still do not believe in it. At what point will the Dominicans begin to deserve punishment in this world and the next?
If we should learn from anyone how to behave in our endless disputes, it is surely from the Apostles and the Evangelists. There was enough to cause a violent split between St. Paul and St. Peter. In his Epistle to the Galatians, Paul expressly says that he opposed Peter to his face because Peter was at fault, because he was pretending, as was Barnabas. Before James arrived they had eaten with the Gentiles; afterward they quietly withdrew and separated themselves from the Gentiles for fear of offending the circumcised. “I saw,” he adds, “that they were not walking straight according to the Gospel. I said to Cephas: If you, a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, why do you force the Gentiles to live as Jews?”
Here was a subject for a violent quarrel. The question was whether the new Christians would follow Jewish practices or not. At that very time St. Paul went to offer sacrifice in the Temple in Jerusalem. We know that the first fifteen bishops of Jerusalem were circumcised Jews who observed the Sabbath and abstained from forbidden meats. A Spanish or Portuguese bishop who had himself circumcised and observed the Sabbath would be burned in an auto-da-fé. Yet this fundamental issue did not disturb the peace among either the Apostles or the first Christians.
If the Evangelists had been like modern writers, they would have had a very broad field for attacking one another. St. Matthew counts twenty-eight generations from David to Jesus. St. Luke counts forty-one, and these generations are completely different. Yet we see no disagreement arise among the disciples over these apparent contradictions, which several Fathers of the Church have reconciled very well. Charity was not harmed; peace was preserved. What greater lesson could there be in tolerating one another in our disputes and being humble about everything we do not understand?
In his Epistle to some Jews in Rome who had converted to Christianity, St. Paul uses the whole end of Chapter III to say that faith alone brings glory and works justify no one. St. James, on the contrary, in Chapter II of his Epistle to the twelve tribes scattered throughout the earth, repeatedly says that we cannot be saved without works. This is what has separated two great religious communities among us, yet did not divide the Apostles.
If persecuting those with whom we argue were a holy act, we would have to admit that whoever had the most heretics killed would be the greatest saint in heaven. How would a man who had merely stripped his brothers of their property and plunged them into dungeons compare with a zealot who massacred hundreds on St. Bartholomew’s Day? Here is the proof.
St. Peter’s successor and his consistory cannot be wrong. They approved, celebrated, and consecrated the act of St. Bartholomew’s Day. Therefore that act was very holy. Therefore, of two murderers equally devout, the one who disemboweled twenty-four pregnant Huguenot women must be raised to twice the heavenly glory of the one who disemboweled only twelve. For the same reason, the fanatics of the Cévennes must have believed that they would be raised to glory in proportion to the number of priests, members of religious orders, and Catholic women they slaughtered. These are strange qualifications for eternal glory.
21 See Locke’s excellent Lettre sur la Tolérance.
22 The Jesuit Busenbaum, with commentary by the Jesuit La Croix, says that “it is permissible to kill a ruler excommunicated by the pope, in whatever country that ruler is found, because the universe belongs to the pope, and whoever accepts this mission does a very charitable deed.” This proposition, invented in the madhouses of hell, did more than anything else to turn all France against the Jesuits. More than ever, they were then reproached for this doctrine, which they had so often taught and so often disowned. They thought they could justify themselves by pointing to much the same rulings in St. Thomas and several Dominicans.[A] Indeed, St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor and interpreter of the divine will—those are his titles—asserts that an apostate ruler loses his right to the Crown and must no longer be obeyed;[B] that the Church can punish him with death; that the emperor Julian was tolerated only because Christians lacked the strength to do otherwise;[C] that by right every heretic should be killed;[D] that those who free the people from a ruler who governs tyrannically deserve great praise, etc., etc. The Angel of the Schools is greatly respected. But if, in the days of Jacques Clément, his fellow Dominican, and the Feuillant Ravaillac, he had come to France to defend such propositions, how would the Angel of the Schools have been treated?
[A] See, if you can, the Lettre d'un homme du monde à un Théologien sur St. Thomas. It is a Jesuit pamphlet of 1762.
[B] Liv. II, part. 2, question 12.
[C] Liv. II, part. 2, question 12.
[D] Ibid. question 11 & 12.
We must admit that Jean Gerson, chancellor of the university, went even further than St. Thomas, and that the Franciscan Jean Petit went infinitely further than Gerson. Several Franciscans defended Jean Petit’s horrible theses. We must admit that this devilish doctrine of regicide comes entirely from the mad idea, long held by almost all monks, that the pope is a God on earth who can dispose of kings’ thrones and lives as he pleases. In this we have fallen far below those Tatars who believe the great Lama is immortal. He distributes the contents of his commode to them; they dry these relics, put them in shrines, and devoutly kiss them. For my part, I admit that for the sake of peace I would rather wear such relics around my neck than believe that the pope has the slightest authority over kings’ worldly affairs, or even mine, under any circumstances whatever.
About this section
Chapter XI is part of Treatise on Tolerance by Voltaire. This page sets the French original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is chapter 11 of 26 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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