The Nexus Archive
Enlightenment Satire · Treatise
A Treatise on Toleration
by Voltaire · The Satirist of Optimism · Enlightenment, 1694-1778
Voltaire uses the Calas case to attack religious persecution and argue for toleration through history, satire, and moral appeal.
- Advanced
- ~2 hr 45 min read
- 2 chapter guides
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the CHAPTER VIII. WHETHER THE ROMANS ENCOURAGED TOLERATION. guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
After a Judicial Killing
Jean Calas was executed in Toulouse in 1762 amid the false suspicion that he had murdered his son to prevent conversion to Catholicism. Voltaire turned the campaign to clear the family into a wider indictment of fanaticism, judicial haste, and sectarian power.
Voltaire mixes case history, scriptural argument, comparison, irony, imagined voices, and direct prayer. His aim is practical: to make persecution appear both irrational and intolerable.
For Voltaire, an error in belief does not erase a person's claim to justice. Voltaire's demand for mercy rests on human fallibility: people who know so little should hesitate before using their power to destroy another life.
The opening pages
CHAPTER I. A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE DEATH OF JOHN CALAS.
A TREATISE ON TOLERATION.
The murder of John Calas, committed in Toulouse with the sword of justice, the 9th of March, 1762, is an event which, on account of its singularity, calls for the attention of the present age, and that of posterity. We soon forget the crowd of victims who have fallen in the course of innumerable battles, not only because this is a destiny inevitably connected with a life of warfare, but because those who thus fell might also have given death to their enemies, and did not lose their lives till after having first stood in their own defence. Where the danger and the advantage are equal, our wonder ceases, and even pity itself is in some measure lessened; but where the father of an innocent family is delivered up to the sword of error, prejudice, or enthusiasm, where the accused person has no other defence but his conscious virtue; where the arbiters of his destiny have nothing to hazard in putting him to death but the having been mistaken, and where they may murder with impunity under the sanction of a judicial process, then every one is ready to cry out, every one brings the case home to himself, and sees with fear and trembling that no person’s life is in safety in a court erected to watch over the lives of the subject, the public unite in demanding vengeance.
In this strange affair, we find religion, self-murder and parricide blended. The object of inquiry was, whether a father and a mother had murdered their own son with a view to please God, and whether a brother had murdered his brother, or a friend his friend; or whether the judges had to reproach themselves with having publicly executed an innocent father, or with having acquitted a guilty mother, brother, and friend.
John Calas, a person of sixty-eight years of age, had followed the profession of a merchant in Toulouse for upwards of forty years, and had always borne the character of a tender parent in his family and neighborhood; he was himself by religion a Protestant, as was also his wife, and all his children, one son only excepted, who had abjured heresy, and to whom the father allowed a small annuity; indeed, the good man appeared so far from being infected with that absurd zeal which destroys the bands of society, that he even approved of the conversion of his son, Louis Calas. He had for above thirty years kept in his house a maid-servant, who was a zealous Catholic, and who had brought up all his children.
Chapter guides · 2
CHAPTER VIII. WHETHER THE ROMANS ENCOURAGED TOLERATION.
Rome as an Example of Toleration
Voltaire presents Rome as a society that permitted different beliefs. He uses its legal safeguards to challenge punishment for religious opinion.
Permission without approval
Voltaire argues that Roman writers could question religion and foreign communities could keep their worship. He distinguishes allowing a belief from giving it official approval. He doubts a scandalous story about the temple of Isis, but holds that the temple stood in Rome with public consent and that Jews kept synagogues there.
Paul under Roman protection
Voltaire denies that Rome persecuted the first Christians for their faith, and he cites Paul's treatment by Roman officials as evidence. Festus insists that an accused man must face his accusers and have a chance to answer them. He protects Paul even while holding him in little respect. Voltaire contrasts this rule with the hostility of Paul's religious accusers.
Charges and evidence
Voltaire distinguishes Nero's accusation of arson from a religious charge against Christians. He also questions the authority of famous historians when they repeat unsupported stories. In the long closing note, reliable testimony about public events carries more weight for him than anecdotes without evidence.
CHAPTER XVII. A LETTER FROM A BENEFICED PRIEST TO FATHER LETELLIER, THE JESUIT, DATED THE 6th OF MAY, 1714.
The Interests behind Holy Cruelty
In a satirical letter, a priest makes mass killing sound like orderly religious work. His polite calculations expose the cruelty hidden beneath a claim to serve God.
Questions readers ask
- How long does it take to read A Treatise on Toleration?
- About 2 hr 45 min in total.
- How difficult is A Treatise on Toleration?
- Advanced. A mid-length treatise; about 3 hours of reading.
- Which translation is this?
- The With Notes by Tobias Smollett, Revised and Modernized New Translations by William F. Fleming, and an Introduction by Oliver H. G. Leigh translation from the French, first published in 1763. The text follows The Works of Voltaire, Volume IV of XLIII, Edition de la Pacification (1901).
- Can I read A Treatise on Toleration for free?
- A Treatise on Toleration is part of Nexus Premium, so reading it needs an account and a Premium subscription. The opening above and one chapter guide on this page are free to read.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- 2 chapter guides, written by the Nexus editors. One opens in full here; the rest show their opening line.
About Voltaire
Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer, polemicist, playwright, historian, and philosopher. His fiction and essays pushed against religious intolerance, censorship, arbitrary power, and philosophical systems that explain away real suffering.
“What kind of reason can face suffering without turning it into an excuse?”
Voltaire gives Nexus a sharp Enlightenment counterweight: reason as satire, conscience, and resistance to systems that explain away suffering.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. A Treatise on Toleration is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.