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CHAPTER X I I I Reaction Put to Rout: The Dictionnaire Philosophique, the Last of the Encyclopedic and the Belisaire Affair, 1764-1767 During the middle 1760s, while Voltaire's interest in the Calas and Sirven cases was at its most intense, three bombshells burst on the French literary scene which, coming in rapid succession, decisively altered the balance in the long battle for toleration. It is true that apologists of the Revocation had been on the defensive since the late 1750s, when the effort of the abbe Caveirac to rationalize religious repression backfired; but they remained extremely powerful. During successive Assemblies of the Clergy, the First Estate reminded the King of his obligation to police existing anti-Calvinist legislation before yielding up the don gratuit upon which the government was increasingly dependent. Meanwhile, the threat of ecclesiastical censorship was enough to keep all but the boldest critics of 'fanaticism' and 'superstition' from joining the battle for toleration in the open field. The new offensive against clerical reaction began in 1764 with Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique. A year later, the last ten volumes of the Encyelope"die were distributed. Then, early in 1767, the heretofore cautious Jean-Franc.ois Marmontel joined the ranks of militant combatants for religious freedom with his novel Be'lisaire,the fifteenth chapter of which caused something close to panic in the clerical camp. Rather unwisely, the ecclesiastical establishment sallied forth to teach Voltaire's new recruit a lesson, only to be ridiculed for the pathetic anachronism of its intellectual defences. The pamphlet war surrounding the Be'lisaire incident offered Voltaire and his companions an irrestible opportunity to wing towards their adversaries a number of telling shafts: L'lnginu and Marmontel's Les Incas contain parting shots against clerical oppression by warriors who have tasted blood. The cumulative effect was devastating to the religious establishment. When the literary engagements of the 1760s were over, no detached observer could doubt that the champions of toleration had cleared the field. The Dictionnaire philosophique portatif, first published in July 1764, continued to sell well through successive editions during the following decade; from 1770 on, its appearance was paralleled by that of the author's Questions sur VEncyelope4 die, containing much of the same or parallel material.1 In these, as in his earlier writings, Voltaire saw the urge to persecute as an essentially plebeian phenomenon. But while persecution had always 179 180 The Huguenots and French Opinion: 1685-1787 been the product of mass frenzy, it had been given an added impetus with the advent of Christianity; Christ was the first inquisitor of the new order in which men were to be condemned merely for harbouring heterodox ideas.2 Although the Reformation had brought some spiritual relief to humanity, it had not eliminated the shameful record of Christian intolerance, as witness the fate of Ireland's Catholics and the murderous bigotry of two the chief figures of French Protestantism, Calvin and Jurieu. In "Catechisme chinois," Calvin and his fellow Reformer, Luther, are characterized as spiritually hard and intellectually intransigent:3 in "Dogmes," the founder of French Protestantism is pictured as having kicked and abused the idol of papistry only after it had been brought down off its pedestal by earlier Reformers; Voltaire imagines Calvin, standing beside the funeral pyre on which poor Servet is about to be burned, rejoicing that his own peculiar version of the gospel is now crowned with uncontested success: "I have denounced painting and sculpture; I have made abundantly clear that good works are of no avail and that it is diabolical to dance the minuet."4 Jurieu, of course, had always been one of Voltaire's betes noires because of his treatment of Pierre Bayle. Voltaire notes that, as a prophet in exile, the Calvinist theologian had evaded punishment, while the Cevenol zealots whom he incited to revolt were hanged or broken on the wheel.5 But, while Voltaire was convinced that persecution in its Protestant as well as in its Catholic form was far from dead, he had by the end of the 1760s come to believe that its fury had somewhat abated. There were still no doubt a few monks and members of fanatical Protestant sects who were foolish and backward enough to be intolerant, but they would never confess this publicly. Thanks to the philosophes, France seemed to have effectively rescued herself from fanaticism.6 One source of Voltaire's optimism was his conviction that, as humanity moved inevitably towards the...

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