Walker captures well Voltaire and his genius, a man who has achieved almost mythic status:
In Voltaire, eighteenth-century France had its keenest wit. No philosopher, vain, self-seeking, but with genuine hatred of tyranny, especially of religious persecution, no one ever attacked organized religion with a more unsparing ridicule. . . . Voltaire was a true Deist in his belief in the existence of God and of a primitive natural religion consisting of a simple morality and in his rejection of all that rested on the authority of the Bible or church.141
In his Philosophical Letters Voltaire contrasts religion in France with the religious tolerance he found in England during a period of exile there. He states, “If one religion only were allowed in England, the government would very possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut one another’s throats; but, as there is such a multitude, they all live happy, and in peace.”142 What Voltaire described in England, at least in the first two statements, somewhat accurately depicts the history of religion in France as he had known it. The multitude of religions and any ensuing peace and happiness were a long way off in France. The relation of Voltaire to laïcité is debated and the term did not yet exist at the time he wrote. We have seen, however, that Gaillard speaks of embryonic laïcité originating in the sixteenth century.143 André Magnan, professor emeritus at the University of Paris and president of honor of the Société Voltaire, considers Voltaire the precursor of notions of laïcité in his thought and writings in opposition to religious fanaticism.144 Philosophy professor Christophe Paillard disagrees with the claim that Voltaire represents a step which led to the elaboration of the concept of laïcité. He argues that Voltaire never affirmed the necessity of the religious neutrality of the State. To the contrary, he affirms that Voltaire believed the State needed to exercise control over religions to prevent them from imposing themselves on peoples’ consciences.145 In any case, Paillard admits that Voltaire is situated between tolerance and laïcité, the latter word invented one hundred twenty-five years after his death.146 He concedes that Voltaire created the intellectual climate of that which Jean Baubérot conceptualizes as the “first threshold of laicization,” which one might interpret as interconfessional tolerance.147
Tolerance and incipient laïcité are related ideas in Voltaire’s search for freedom from religion. It is important, however, to understand the origin and nuances of the French word tolérance. The word comes from the Latin tolerare which initially had the sense “to bear,” “to endure,” or “to put up with” in a pejorative sense that which one could not prevent. The edicts of tolerance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, sometimes called edicts of pacification, were concessions to which the monarchy resigned itself in order to stop the bloodshed. It was not until the time of Voltaire that tolerance became a virtue, not simply resignation. Paillard develops the Voltairean concept of tolerance as a principle of mediation between the ancient notion of State religion, Cujus regio, ejus religio [whose realm, whose religion], and the present conception of the laïque State. He contends that Voltaire, more than anyone else, made tolerance a positive and universal value to the point of imposing it on public opinion as the cardinal virtue of an enlightened spirit.148 Denis Lacorne describes the tolerance advanced by Voltaire and others in the context of terrorist attacks which have afflicted Europe for several years:
The great emancipating project for the freedom of conscience and the freedom of expression, inaugurated in the sixteenth century and generalized in the century of the Enlightenment, continues to be fought throughout the world. . . . The very conceptions of tolerance have evolved from one century to another up until now, but their final object remains the same: tolerance is that which leads to religious pluralism, whatever may be the nature of relations between Churches and the State.149
The tolerance found in the edicts of tolerance of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, was viewed negatively by “princes and peoples who were unable to conceptualize tolerance as an ‘amicable coexistence’ of religious communities separated by strong doctrinal differences.”150 Lacorne explains how tolerance in a pejorative sense was transformed from a pragmatic inconvenience to what he calls the tolérance de Modernes. This modern tolerance produced rights and new freedoms—freedom of conscience, the free exercise of religion, the freedom of expression and by extension the freedom to blaspheme.151 The struggle for these freedoms would eventually lead to the Law of Separation in 1905. Today, in the context of religion, and particularly in the context of radical Islam, “this tolerance has its limits and the ultimate limit is fanaticism.”152
The influence of Enlightenment thinking contributed at least indirectly to the development of laïcité and the eventual separation of Church and State. Dusseau argues that its firstfruits are found in philosophers’ ideas as well as in political practices of the French monarchy.153 When Enlightenment philosophy imprinted its mark on the movement of ideas, there was an intense clash with the all-powerful Church in its total alliance with the absolute monarchy.154 The ideals of tolerance, equality, and autonomy could not exist alongside religious constraints imposed by a State Church. These ideals would ferment and lead to the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century.
Revolution
Ducomte considers that the French Revolution marks the starting point of the laicization of French society and her institutions. The term laïcité was not yet in use at the time. Its substantive form appeared as a neologism in the nineteenth century in the context and struggle of removing the Church’s influence over public education. Laïcité however gave a name to a reality which already long existed beginning with the French Revolution and the attempts to free the State from all confessional control.155
The French Revolution has been described as “the most far-reaching political and social explosion in all European history.”156 It was more than an event. It was a series of events which played out for a tumultuous decade. The period extends from 1789 to 1799 with the introduction of a constitutional monarchy and the inception of the disestablishment of the official and dominant Church. “The Revolution, for those who made it, was the construction of a new political order symbolised by the terms liberty, equality, and (later) fraternity.”157 The arrival of the Revolution must be viewed as a break with the past model of governance (Ancien Régime) with its societal divisions and the mingling of Church and State in the affairs of the citizenry. Michel Vovelle has characterized the Ancien Régime by three interlocking themes. Economically, in its mode of production, the nation was dominated by the feudal system; its class structure revolved around a three-tiered hierarchy; its political system was one of absolutism, the divine right of kings consecrated by the Church.158 “Absolute monarchy legitimated by divine right was replaced by the sovereignty of the people with power vested in their elected representatives.”159
The Revolution would be interrupted with the coup d’état and rise to power of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799 followed by his ascension as hereditary emperor in 1804. He became the founder of the First Empire which lasted until his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, then exiled on the island of Saint Helena until his death in 1821. However, the ideals of the Revolution would return in force and compete with counter-revolutionary forces for the next century. Davis quotes approvingly French historian Ernest Lavisse to describe this period:
No country has ever influenced Europe as France did between 1789 and 1815. Impelled by two dreams—the dream of a war against kings on behalf of the people, and the dream of the foundation of an empire of the Cæsarian or Carolingian type—the French armies overran the continent, and trampled underfoot as they went, much rank vegetation which has never arisen again.160
He further states, “There is not a single civilized man on the earth today whose life, thought, and destinies have not been profoundly influenced by what happened in or near France during those five and twenty years of action, wrath, and fire.”161 Davis’s remarks may sound like hyperbole to those in the twenty-first century as he writes from his early twentieth-century perspective. However, the influence of the French Revolution on future generations cannot be denied. The Revolution’s significance undoubtedly goes far beyond the nation of France and has been studied and considered an essential
