Religion and violence

A century later, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes^[1] removed the right of Protestants to hold services or even to identify themselves as such, and they were obliged to abjure^[2] , or to practise in secret (an option chosen by some, for example in the Cévennes region), or to go into exile. Then they were forced to run the risk of interdiction or arrest en route. More than 200 000 Huguenots were thrown on to the roads of Europe; they reached the United Provinces, England (and from there, the New World), Switzerland, Prussia and Brandenburg, where some of their co-religionists had preceded them as their situation had become increasingly difficult.

In spite of the Edict of Nantes, which had attempted to provide for co-existence of two religions in the same political space, in the long run opinion was unable to allow toleration of another religion considered heretical and the object of an ideological and political struggle.

Now supporters of Reform were increasingly seen as heretics who above all were proof f incomprehensible stubbornness. The differences from Roman Catholicism were minimised to the point where Catholic propaganda portrayed them simply as schismatics or people who needed to be brought to order from a disciplinary point of view. It was therefore acceptable to act against them according to Augustine^[3] 's principle from the fifth century, which was used against the donatists^[4] , the principle of compelle intrare (‘forcing them to come in'). That is exactly what Louis XIV did in 1685; on the grounds that there was no longer any reason for the Edict of Nantes, he revoked it and banned the religion throughout the realm. The pastors had either to abjure or to quit the country immediately.

With the revocation, Pierre Bayle, the Protestant son of a pastor, saw hi brother die in torment. He was one of the numerous refugees of the 1680's who settled in the United Provinces, in 1681. He was a great mind, but one difficult to penetrate, as if he chose (or had to choose) dissimulation.

He was the author of a great Dictionnaire, which prefigured the Encyclopedie of the following century, but the work which gives us most insight into the issue of religious toleration is his Commentaire Philosophique on Luke 14, 23, published under a pseudonym in 1686. It is a commentary which he calls philosophical (and not theological or exegetic) in which he never claims to be saying how the cited verse should be interpreted, but only how it should not be interpreted. He employed tight hermeneutics in the service of tolerance. For Bayle (here we are borrowing from Jean-Michel Gros), intolerance “is not the response to disorder, it is disorder.”

Bayle assays a rational hermeneutic. Let us take a given interpretation of Scripture. It may be true, but it may be false. It is therefore necessary to have criteria which allow one to distinguish between truth and falsehood. If these criteria are linked to a particular institution, such as the Roman Catholic Church, it is what is called an argument based on authority, which will convince only those who recognise that authority. There is nothing to prove that the Church is never wrong. Therefore, for Bayle, the real criterion which would allow one to affirm the truth of an interpretation is a reality superior to human example. That reality, which all would recognise, whatever their religious or cultural background, can only be reason (which he called the “natural enlightenment of the mind”). Thus, if it is a legitimate hypothesis to condemn the religion of Reform (Protestantism) because it is an innovation, it would also be legitimate to condemn any religious innovation, whatever it was... and that would make the Roman emperors right to persecute the early Christians, because it was a new religion. Furthermore, the Emperor of China (a fictive person who Bayle employed for illustration) should logically persecute Catholic missionaries because they are bringing a new religion to China. Thus Bayle pleaded for broader thinking and exhorted all to use reason, valid independently of cultural context.

Bayle did not argue for the fundamental equality of all beliefs, that they all had value. Certain beliefs were, for him, indisputably bad and must be denounced. But this was not his purpose. He argued for the right to ‘erroneous conscience', that is, mistaken beliefs. These can only be rectified by reason, never by violence. Consistent to the end, Bayle was ready to grant Mahomedans (as he called Muslims) the right to send missionaries to France, so long as the Jesuits or pastors could show them, without coercion, that their religion was false.

It is not possible here to trace the whole history of toleration in the modern West (one would have to look notably at England and Germany). But all the same one must make mention, in conclusion, of Voltaire, who joined in the public debate on what he believed was judicial error in the so-called Calas^[5] affair. In 1761 a Huguenot in his sixties in Toulouse was accused of murdering his own son who (it seemed to him) was on the point of abjuring his faith and becoming a Catholic. The man pleaded his innocence, even under torture. Nevertheless he was condemned and executed. It was believed by some that he had been condemned, not because he had murdered his son, but because he was a Huguenot. That was the ‘Calas affair'.

Voltaire, called on to intervene, gave his opinion in public, at which the case collapsed and Calas was declared innocent posthumously. In 1763 Voltaire published Traité sur la tolerance (Treatise on tolerance) in which he analysed the whole case in Toulouse and pleaded for the graceful acceptance of religious difference. One should be indulgent, he claimed, even to those who believed nonsense. Natural right requires that one respect the golden rule and that we therefore stop killing each other over questions of doctrine .

Thus we can see that Castellion's exhortation against violence in the case of religion found echoes in Bayle and then Voltaire. But from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century the road was long. While Castellion was simply unable to get his ideas a hearing (his Le Conseil à la France désolée was destroyed), and Pierre Bayle had to flee the country, Voltaire was able to exercise his influence on public opinion. The fundamental convictions of those who urged toleration were almost the same, but times had changed, so that these convictions could now be expressed publicly and could have a direct impact on society.