Religion and violence

Ten years later, in the summer of 1563, Castellion became the talk of Geneva. The Consistoire^[1] seized a book entitled Le Conseil à la France désolée (in the sense of ‘ruined' or ‘ravaged'). It had been published anonymously without its place of publication, but it was immediately correctly attributed to Castellion, who was living in Basel. The Consistoire proceeded to condemn the book as ‘mischievous' (in other words, ‘bad') and full or errors.

In his Life of Calvin, Théodore de Bèze^[2] described this tract as the work of an ambitious man who advised everyone simply to believe what they wanted and thereby open the door to the worst of heresies. But let us, rather, examine the text of Le Conseil à la France désolée.

At a moment when France was in flames (the massacre of Vassy^[3] was still very recent), Castellion was attempting to bring calm. He acted like a doctor giving a diagnosis before prescribing a treatment for an illness. For France, he observed, was sick; her children were killing each other, the roads were full of dead bodies, the rivers red with blood. For Castellion, the cause of the sickness was none other than the “forcing of conscience” (one would speak today of the ‘constraint' of conscience). All parties, perhaps believing themselves to be doing good, wanted to constrain others to strengthen their faith. There were very few who, like Castellion, stayed above the fray and recognised each group by the name they gave themselves: the Catholics on one side (not the ‘Papists^[4]' ), the evangelicals on the other (not ‘Huguenots^[5]' ).

Castellion was thus proposing reconciliation. The golden rule (do not do to others that which we would not have them do to you) invited each person to put themselves in the other's place and give them credit for feelings that they had themselves. I am convinced that I know the truth? But the other is also. The humanist thus urges; “Examine your own conscience and do not force it on others.”

Castellion argued in effect that God never required that the conscience of others should be constrained by force. The holy people of the Bible did not, and if you wanted to extract an argument for imposing your faith by violence in the Scriptures, you would be like the drunk who followed the example of Noah^[6] or the liar who invoked the story of Jacob^[7] to justify himself. In short, there are not thirty-six solutions to the problem of religious violence; you convince others by force (which is, moreover, impossible, according to Castellion's own formula, that of killing a man's thoughts by means of a halberd: “To think that you can turn a conscience by force is as great a folly as to try to kill a man's thoughts with a sword or halberd”), or you crush everyone (but then Christianity would be as Christian as a wolf is a ewe lamb), or you resolve to “allow the two religions to be free.”

Castellion was well aware of the problem that this would pose: the risk of leaving the field open to heretics. The Church (whether Catholic or Protestant) would need to take action against them, but its arms should be limited to a response varying in degree from an admonishment to excommunication^[8]. In other words, the heretics should not be put to death (as Castellion had written ten years earlier after the execution of Servet). If the heretic used only words, he should be beaten only with words.... Much better, he noted mischievously, because one often risks making a mistake and condemning the good Christian as a heretic. During the first Christian generation, if they had had to execute those who they judged heretical, Peter would have killed Paul and their disciples would have had their throats cut.

If Castellion had been listened to, he would have spared France thirty years of civil war. But he was absolutely inaudible; impossible in 1562 to understand the plea of an intellectual who called into question the issue of truth and heresy.

There were few echoes, then, in the sixteenth century it was not until the contemporary era (the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) that the import and interest of Castellion's text (several editions of which are available today) were rediscovered. Far from having lost its force, Castellion's ‘mischievous' little book may be considered, along with Pierre Bayle^[9] 's Commentaires phlosophiques (1686) and Voltaire 's Traité sur la tolerance (1763) as an important step in the history of toleration. It is sufficient to think of Bayle and Voltaire^[10] in order to measure, in retrospect, the contribution of Castellion to the battle against religious fanaticism.