Virtue supposes liberty, as the carrying of a burden supposes active force. Under coercion there is no virtue, and without virtue there is no religion. Make a slave of me, and I shall be no better for it. The sovereign, even, has no right to use coercion to lead men to religion, which in its nature presupposes choice and liberty. My thought is subject to authority no more than is sickness or health.
In order to disentangle all the contradictions with which books on canon law have been filled, and to clarify our ideas on the ecclesiastical ministry, let us investigate, amid a thousand equivocations, what the Church really is.
The Church is the assembly of all the faithful summoned on certain days to pray in common, and at all times to do good actions.
The priests are persons established under the authority of the sovereign to direct these prayers and all religious worship.
A numerous Church could not exist without ecclesiastics; but these ecclesiastics are not the Church.
It is no less evident that if the ecclesiastics, who are part of civil society, have acquired rights which might trouble or destroy society, these rights should be suppressed.
It is still more evident that, if God has attached to the Church prerogatives or rights, neither these rights nor these prerogatives should belong exclusively either to the chief of the Church or to the ecclesiastics, because they are not the Church, just as the magistrates are not the sovereign, in either a democratic state or in a monarchy.
Finally, it is quite evident that it is our souls which are under the clergy’s care, solely in spiritual matters.
Our soul acts internally. Internal acts are thought, volition, inclinations, acquiescence in certain truths. All these acts are above coercion, and are within the ecclesiastical minister’s sphere only in so far as he must instruct, but never command.
The soul also acts externally. External actions are under the civil law. Here coercion may have a place; temporal or corporal penalties maintain the law by punishing those who infringe it.
Obedience to ecclesiastical order must consequently always be free and voluntary: no other should be possible. Submission to civil order, on the other hand, may be compulsory and compelled.
For the same reason, ecclesiastical punishments, always spiritual, reach only those here below who are convinced inwardly of their fault. Civil pains, on the contrary, accompanied by physical ill, have their physical effects, whether or no the guilty person recognizes their justice.
From this it results, obviously, that the authority of the clergy is and can be spiritual only; that the clergy should not have any temporal power; that no coercive force is proper to its ministry, which would be destroyed by force.
It follows from this further that the sovereign, careful not to suffer any partition of his authority, must permit no enterprise which puts the members of society in external and civil dependence on an ecclesiastical body.
Such are the incontestable principles of real canon law, of which the rules and decisions should be judged at all times by the eternal and immutable truths which are founded on natural law and the necessary order of society.
EQUALITY
1. It is clear that men, in the enjoyment of their natural faculties, are equal: they are equal when they perform animal functions, and when they exercise their understanding. The King of China, the Great Mogul, the Padisha of Turkey, cannot say to the least of men: “I forbid you to digest, to go to the privy, or to think.” All the animals of each species are equal among themselves. Animals, by nature, have over us the advantage of independence. If a bull which is wooing a heifer is driven away with the blows of the horns by a stronger bull, it goes in search of another mistress in another field, and lives free. A cock, beaten by a cock, consoles itself in another poultry-house. It is not so with us. A little vizier exiles a bostangi to Lemnos: the vizier Azem exiles the little vizier to Tenedos: the padisha exiles the vizier Azem to Rhodes: the Janissaries put the padisha in prison, and elect another who will exile good Mussulmans as he chooses; people will still be very obliged to him if he limits his sacred authority to this small exercise.
If this world were what it seems it should be, if man could find everywhere in it an easy subsistence, and a climate suitable to his nature, it is clear that it would be impossible for one man to enslave another. If this globe were covered with wholesome fruits; if the air, which should contribute to our life, gave us no diseases and no premature deaths; if man had no need of lodging and bed other than those of the buck and the deer; then the Gengis-Khans and the Tamerlanes would have no servants other than their children, who would be decent enough to help them in their old age.
In the natural state enjoyed by all untamed quadrupeds, birds and reptiles, man would be as happy as they. Domination would then be a chimera, an absurdity of which no one would think; for why seek servants when you have no need of their service?
If it came into the head of some individual of tyrannous mind and brawny arm to enslave a neighbor less strong than he, the thing would be impossible; the oppressed would be on the Danube before the oppressor had taken his measures on the Volga.
All men then would be necessarily equal, if they were without needs. It is the poverty connected with our species which subordinates one man to another. It is not the inequality which is the real misfortune, it is the dependence. It matters very little that So-and-so calls himself “His Highness,” and So-and-so “His Holiness”; but to serve the one or the other is hard.
A big family has cultivated fruitful soil; two little families nearby have thankless and rebellious fields; the two poor families have to serve the opulent family, or slaughter it. There is no difficulty in that. But one of the two indigent families offers its arms to the rich family in exchange for bread, while the other attacks and is defeated. The subservient family is the origin of the servants and the workmen; the beaten family is the origin of the slaves.
In our unhappy world it is impossible for men living in society not to be divided into two classes, the one the rich who command, the other the poor who serve; and these two classes are subdivided into a thousand, and these thousand still have different gradations.
When the lots are drawn you come to us and say: “I am a man like you. I have two hands and two feet, as much pride as you, nay more, a mind as disordered, at least, as inconsequent, as contradictory as yours. I am a citizen of San Marino, or of Ragusa, or Vaugirard: give me my share of the land. In our known hemisphere there are about fifty thousand million arpents to cultivate, some passable, some sterile. We are only about a thousand million featherless bipeds in this continent; that makes fifty arpents apiece: be just; give me my fifty arpents.”
“Go and take them in the land of the Kaffirs,” we answer, “or the Hottentots, or the Samoyedes; come to an amicable arrangement with them; here all the shares are taken. If you want to eat, be clothed, lodged, and warmed among us, work for us as your father did; serve us or amuse us, and you will be paid; otherwise you will be obliged to ask charity, which would be too degrading to your sublime nature, and would stop your being really the equal of kings, and even of country parsons, according to the pretensions of your noble pride.”
II. All the poor are not unhappy. The majority were born in that state, and continual work keeps them from feeling their position too keenly; but when they do feel it, then one sees wars, like that of the popular party against the senate party in Rome, like those of the peasants in Germany, England, and France. All these wars finish sooner or later with the subjection of the people, because the powerful have money, and money is master of everything in a state. I say in a state, for it is not the same between nations. The nation which makes the best use of the sword will always subjugate the nation which has more gold and less courage.
All men are born with a sufficiently violent liking for domination, wealth, and pleasure, and with a strong taste for idleness; consequently, all men covet the money, the wives, or the daughters of other men; they wish to be their master, to subject the
m to all their caprices, and to do nothing, or at least to do only very agreeable things. You see clearly that with these fine inclinations it is as impossible for men to be equal as it is impossible for two preachers or two professors of theology not to be jealous of each other.
The human race, such as it is, cannot subsist unless there is an infinity of useful men who possess nothing at all; for it is certain that a man who is well off will not leave his own land to come to till yours, and if you have need of a pair of shoes, it is not the Secretary to the Privy Council who will make them for you. Equality, therefore, is at once the most natural thing and the most fantastic.
As men go to excess in everything when they can, this inequality has been exaggerated. It has been maintained in many countries that it was not permissible for a citizen to leave the country where chance has caused him to be born. The sense of this law is obviously: “This land is so bad and so badly governed, that we forbid any individual to leave it, for fear that everyone will leave it.” Do better: make all your subjects wish to live in your country, and foreigners wish to come to it.
All men have the right in the bottom of their hearts to think themselves entirely equal to other men. It does not follow from this that the cardinal’s cook should order his master to prepare him his dinner, but the cook can say: “I am a man like my master; like him I was bom crying; like me he will die with the same pangs and the same ceremonies. Both of us perform the same animal functions. If the Turks take possession of Rome, and if then I am cardinal and my master cook, I shall take him into my service.” This discourse is reasonable and just, but while waiting for the Great Turk to take possession of Rome, the cook must do his duty, or else all human society is disordered.
As regards a man who is neither a cardinal’s cook, nor endowed with any other employment in the state; as regards a private person who is connected with nothing, but who is vexed at being received everywhere with an air of being patronized or scorned, who sees quite clearly that many monseigneurs have no more knowledge, wit, or virtue than he, and who at times is bored at waiting in their antechambers, what should he decide to do? Why, to take himself off.
EXPIATION
Perhaps the most beautiful institution of antiquity is that solemn ceremony which repressed crimes by the warning that they must be punished, and which calmed the despair of the guilty by permitting them to atone for their transgressions by various kinds of penitence. Remorse must necessarily have preceded expiation, for diseases are older than medicine, and all needs have existed before relief.
It was then, before all the creeds, a natural religion which troubled man’s heart when in his ignorance or in his hastiness he had committed an inhuman action. A friend kills his friend in a quarrel, a brother kills his brother, a jealous and frantic lover even kills her with out whom he cannot live. The head of a nation condemns a virtuous man, a useful citizen. These are men in despair, if they have sensibility. Their conscience harries them; nothing is realer; and it is the height of unhappiness. Only two choices remain: either reparation, or confirmed criminality. All sensitive souls choose the first, monsters choose the second.
As soon as religions were established, there were expiations; the ceremonies accompanying them were ridiculous: for what connection is there between the water of the Ganges and a murder? How could a man repair a homicide by bathing himself? We have already remarked this excess of aberration and absurdity, of imagining that he who washes his body washes his soul, and wipes away the stains of evil actions.
The water of the Nile had later the same virtue as the water of the Ganges, and to these purifications other ceremonies were added, which were even less to the point. The Egyptians took two goats, and drew lots for which of the two should be cast down, charged with the sins of the guilty. The name of “Hazazel,” the expiator, was given to this goat. What connection, I ask you, is there between a goat and a man’s crime?
It is true that God later permitted this ceremony to be sanctified among the Jews, our fathers, who took over so many Egyptian rites; but doubtless it was the repentance, and not the goat, which purified the Jewish souls.
We are told that Jason, having killed Absyrthe his stepbrother, came with Medea, more guilty than he, to have himself absolved by Circe, queen and priestess of Aea, who ever after passed for a great sorceress. Circe absolved them with a sucking-pig and salt cakes. This may be a fairly good dish, but it could hardly pay for Absyrthe’s blood or render Jason and Medea more respectable people, unless they avowed a sincere repentance while eating their sucking-pig.
Orestes’ expiation (he had avenged his father by murdering his mother) was the task of stealing a statue from the Tartars of the Crimea. The statue must have been very badly made, and there was small profit in such a business. Since those days men have done better. They invented the mysteries, whereby the guilty might receive absolution by undergoing painful ordeals, and by swearing that they would lead a new life. It is from this oath that new members of any organization came to be called, among all nations, by a name which corresponds to initiates—qui ineunt vitam novam, those who began a new career, who entered into the path of virtue. The Christian catechumens were called initiates only when they were baptized.
It is certain that in these mysteries one was cleansed of one’s sins only by the oath of virtue. The hierophant in all the Greek mysteries, when dismissing the assembly, pronounced two Egyptian words, “Koth, ompheth ,” watch, be pure—which proves at once that the mysteries came originally from Egypt, and that they were invented only to make men better.
Sages in all times did what they could, then, to inspire virtue and keep human frailty from utter despair; but there are crimes so horrible that no mystery afforded expiation for them. Nero, although he was emperor, could not get himself initiated into the mysteries of Ceres. Constantine, according to Zosimus, could not obtain pardon for his crimes: he was stained with the blood of his wife, his son and all his kindred. It was in the interest of humanity that such great transgressions should remain without expiation, so that absolution should not encourage similar deeds, and so that universal horror might sometimes check villainy.
The Roman Catholics have expiations which are called “penances.”
By the laws of the barbarians who destroyed the Roman Empire, crimes were expiated with money. This was called compounding—componat cum decem, viginti, triginta solidis. It cost two hundred sous of that time to kill a priest, and four hundred for killing a bishop; so that a bishop was worth precisely two priests.
Having thus compounded with men, one compounded with God, when confession was generally established. Finally, Pope John XXII, who made money out of everything, prepared a tariff of sins.
The absolution of incest cost four Tournois livres for a layman—ab incestu pro laico in foro conscientiae turonenses quatuor. For the man and the woman who have committed incest—eighteen livres four ducats and nine carlins. This is not just. If one person paid only four livres, the two owed only eight livres.
Sodomy and bestiality are put at the same rate, with the inhibitory clause to title XLIII: this amounts to ninety Tournois livres twelve ducats and six carlins: cum inhibitione turnonenses 90, ducatos 12, carlinos 6, etc.
It is very difficult to believe that Leo X was so imprudent as to have this impost printed in 1514, as has been asserted; but it must be considered that at that time no spark was visible of the conflagration which reformers kindled later, that the court of Rome slumbered on the people’s credulity, and neglected to cover its exactions with the lightest veil. The public sale of indulgences, which followed soon after, makes it clear that this court took no precaution to hide the turpitudes to which so many nations were accustomed. As soon as complaints against the Church’s abuses burst forth, the court did what it could to suppress the book; but it could not succeed.
If I dare give my opinion of this impost, I must say that the various editions are not reliable; the prices are not at all proportionate: and these prices do not agree w
ith those which are given by d’Aubigné, grandfather of Madame de Maintenon, in the Confession de Sanci. He rates virginity at six gros, and incest with a mother or sister at five gros—a scale which is obviously ridiculous. I think that there was in fact a tariff established in the Datary’s office, for those who came to Rome to be absolved, or to bargain for dispensations; but that the enemies of Rome added a good deal to it in order to render the tariff more odious.
What is quite certain is that these imposts were never authorized by any council; that it was an enormous abuse invented by avarice, and respected by those whose interest it was not to abolish it. The buyers and the sellers were equally satisfied, so hardly anyone protested, until the troubled days of the reformation. It must be admitted that an exact knowledge of all these imposts would be of great service to the history of the human mind.
FAITH
(We have long been uncertain whether or not we should print this article, which we found in an old book. Our respect for St. Peter’s see restrained us. But some pious men having convinced us that Pope Alexander VI had nothing in common with St. Peter, we at last decided to bring this little piece into the light, without scruple.)
One day Prince Pico della Mirandola met Pope Alexander VI at the house of the courtesan Emilia, while Lucretia, the holy father’s daughter, was in childbed. No one in Rome knew who the child’s father was—the Pope, or his son the Duke of Valentinois, or Lucretia’s husband, Alphonse of Aragon, who was supposed to be impotent. The conversation was at first very sprightly. Cardinal Bembo records a part of it.
“Little Pic,” said the Pope, “who do you think is my grandson’s father?”
“Your son-in-law, I imagine,” answered Pic.
The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library) Page 11