The Works of Voltaire, Vol. IV of XLIII.: Romances, Vol. III of III, and A Treatise on Toleration. — John Shaqi
The Works of Voltaire, Vol. IV of XLIII.: Romances, Vol. III of III, and A Treatise on Toleration.Voltaire
Philosophy
The Works of Voltaire, Vol. IV of XLIII.: Romances, Vol. III of III, and A Treatise on Toleration.
Voltaire
Voltaire, 1694-1778 -- Translations into English
After this a monitory was published, which was as erroneous as the
former step. Nay, matters were carried still farther; Mark Antony
Calas had certainly died a Calvinist, and as such, if he had laid
violent hands on himself, his body ought to have been dragged on a
hurdle; whereas it was interred with the greatest funeral pomp in the
church of St. Stephen, notwithstanding the curate entered his protest
against this profanation of holy ground.
There are in Languedoc four orders of penitents, the white, the blue,
the gray, and the black, who wear a long capuchin or hood, having a
mask of cloth falling down over the face, in which are two holes for
the sight. These orders wanted the Duke of Fitz-James to become one
of their body, but he refused them. On the present occasion the white
penitents performed a solemn service for Mark Antony Calas as for a
martyr; nor was the festival of a real martyr ever celebrated with
greater pomp by any church: but then this pomp was truly terrible.
Beneath a magnificent canopy was placed a skeleton, which was made to
move by springs; this skeleton was to represent Mark Antony Calas,
holding in one hand a branch of palm, and, in the other, the pen
with which he was to sign his abjuration of heresy; or rather, as the
sequel proved, the death-warrant of his father.
And now nothing more remained to be done for this wretch who had been
his own murderer but the office of canonization; the people, already
to a man, looked on him as a saint; some invoked him, some went to
pray at his tomb, some besought him to work miracles, while others
gravely recounted those he had already performed; a monk pulled out
one or two of his teeth, in order to have some lasting relics; an
old woman, more pious than the rest, but unhappily troubled with a
deafness, declared that she had heard the sound of bells very plainly
at his interment; and a priest was cured of an apoplectic fit, after
taking a stout emetic; protocols were drawn up of these stupendous
miracles, and the author of this account has in his possession an
affidavit to prove that a young man of Toulouse had his brain turned,
on having prayed several nights successively at the tomb of the new
saint, without having been able to obtain the miracle he requested of
him.
Among the order of the white penitents there were some magistrates of
justice; the death of John Calas seemed then inevitable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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