Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by historian Will Durant as “the most brilliant writer that ever lived,” Voltaire produced novels, plays, and histories. His first love was theater, a passion he cultivated during a stay in England with exposure to Shakespeare’s works, but he is mostly known for his satirical, witty, and critical commentaries on politics and religion. His satirical novel and philosophical fantasy Candide is still read and admired nearly three centuries after its publication in 1758.
Voltaire may have remained just a gifted French writer of the eighteenth century if not for his association with the intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment came to the forefront of European life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and comprised numerous philosophes, who contributed to the so-called “Age of Reason.”
Enlightenment intellectuals were not a monolithic group, but they shared a general critical and even inimical attitude toward organized religion. Voltaire, and other philosophes, condemned organized religion generally and the Catholic Church particularly. They believed that society was happier without the influence of the Church, which they argued contained selfish, ruthless clerics who demanded unconditional obedience from the superstitious multitude and enforced societal conformity through violent persecution. Faith enslaved the mind, and it was only reason that could “enlighten” the intellect and free it from the darkness of faith.
Enlightened thinkers examined other topics besides religion and questioned nearly every aspect of society, including humanity in general. Many Enlightenment intellectuals viewed humans in different groups and advocated that some ethnic groups were different species and less human than others, especially the natives of America and Africa. Voltaire delved into these discussions and argued that Africans were a completely different species of humans, destined for slavery.
Enlightenment intellectuals were not content just to discuss their ideas. They desired radical change in society, where “reason” reigned supreme and political, economic, and moral actions were unencumbered by Christian influence. The achievement of that goal depended on controlling the institutions of higher learning in Europe, which required weakening the Catholic Church’s role in society in general and the eradication of the Society of Jesus in particular.
At the end of the eighteenth century, the Jesuits controlled hundreds of universities and seminaries in Europe. Enlightened philosophes embarked on a campaign to expel the Jesuits from European countries so that royal and secular control of their institutions of higher learning could occur, which would allow the cult of reason to become dominant.
Voltaire led the charge against the Church and the Jesuits by actively campaigning for their suppression. He recognized that if secular rulers could be convinced to expel the Society and confiscate their colleges and universities, it would be an easier task to convince those same rulers to suppress the Church and its influence in society. In 1773, he wrote, “Once we have destroyed the Jesuits, we shall have our own way with the infamous thing [l’infâme — i.e., the Church].” Once the Jesuits were suppressed, Voltaire wrote, “in twenty years there will be nothing left of the Church.” And indeed, Voltaire’s dream was realized twenty years later in his homeland, when the French revolutionary government persecuted Catholics, confiscated the property of the Church, and suppressed it.
The Enlightenment attack against the Jesuits began in Portugal, when King Joseph I (r. 1750-1777) signed a decree ordering their expulsion from Portugal and Brazil in 1755. A few years later, in 1764, King Louis XV (r. 1715-1774) expelled the Jesuits from France and all its dominions. The Spanish king Charles III (r. 1759-1788) followed suit and in 1767 ejected the Society from Spain and its territories.
Pope Clement XIV (r. 1769-1774) was under intense political pressure from the leading monarchs of Europe to enact ecclesiastical penalties against the Jesuits. The pontiff acquiesced on July 21, 1773 in the bull Dominus ac Redemptor, which suppressed the Society of Jesus after 239 years of faithful service to the Church. Although the pope did not pass judgment on the Society in terms of the charges brought against it by secular rulers, his shameful surrendering to political pressure caused the Jesuits to cease existing for a generation, until the Society was re-established by Pope Pius VII (r. 1800-1823) in 1814.
Freed from the “clutches” of the Jesuits, the colleges and universities of Europe were ripe for the influence and control of Enlightenment thinkers to take root. The age of faith had succumbed to the “age of reason,” which produced skepticism, moral relativism, and secular humanism.
Although many Enlightenment thinkers focused their attack mainly on the Church, they also sought the re-interpretation of academic subjects, including history. History, for the philosophes, provided an example of the barbarity and cruelty of humanity influenced by religion. Voltaire utilized historical events and persons as weapons against the Church by re-interpreting them through a lens of negativity and cynicism. He wrote that the Crusades were “marked by every cruelty, every perfidy, every debauchery, and every folly of which human nature is capable.” The Spanish Inquisition was the ultimate expression of religious intolerance; in the 1764 Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire described one inquisitor as the “embodiment of fanaticism.” And perhaps no greater martyr of intellectual freedom existed than the seventeenth-century Italian mathematician Galileo, who, according to Voltaire, “groaned away his days in the dungeons of the Inquisition, because he had demonstrated by irrefutable proofs the motion of the earth.” Apparently, the fact that Galileo’s most strident critics were fellow scientists, and that he did not irrefutably scientifically prove the earth’s motion, did not sway Voltaire from championing Galileo’s cause in his efforts to discredit the Church.
Interestingly, Voltaire’s public vitriol for the Church did not correlate to his private life. He built a chapel on Ferney, his estate; asked the pope to send relics for the altar; and etched the inscription, “Voltaire erected this to God” on the façade. Voltaire allowed his estate workers to attend Mass and provided instruction in the Catholic faith for their children. He expressed deep admiration for the Sisters of Charity and their work.
Toward the end of his life, Voltaire stated his desire for Christian burial upon his death, which was granted. Although he worked for the eradication of the Church’s dominance in political affairs, he appreciated the contribution of individual Christians to society and the necessity of personal faith in a Supreme Being for the general welfare.
Voltaire died a decade before the beginning of the French Revolution, but many contemporaries, along with modern scholars, credit his political and philosophical works for laying the foundation for that cataclysmic event and its catastrophic impact on the Catholic Church. However, those who ascribe credit to Voltaire for the Revolution fail to recognize that he would not have supported the radical elements who overthrew the monarchy and the Church. Voltaire desired an intelligentsia free from the supposed suffocation of the Church, but he certainly did not subscribe to the notions of democracy and rule by the common people.
Nonetheless, the Revolutionary government disinterred his remains from the Abbey of Selliéres in July 1791 and brought them to Paris in a wagon train, where they were interred in the Panthéon for veneration of the masses and the ultimate expression of gratitude from the “democratic” government. It is an ironic end to the story of one of the most indefatigable enemies of the Church.