A Judicial Murder Of The 18th Century

Press, Volume C, Issue 29626, 23 September 1961, Page 3

A Judicial Murder Of The 18th Century

Voltaire and the Calas Case. By Edna Nixon. Gollancz. 224 pp.

When Marc-Ahtoine Calas committed suicide by hanging himself on October 13, 1761, he involved his family in a frightful series ot calamities. Religion lay at the root of the trouble. With the exception of a younger son, Louis, a convert to Roman Catholicism, the Calas family were Huguenots. Their position, even in the enlightened eighteenth century was not a happy one, particularly in Toulouse, which had long had a reputation for intolerance. When the father, Jean Calas, discovered what his son had done, his first thought was to avoid the barbarity with which the corpse would be treated, according to the laws of that time concerning suicide. “Let no one know,” he cried, “that he has died by his own hand.” But too many people, visitors and friends, were in the house at the time. The law was almost immediately invoked, and it was at once apparent that the elder Calas’s attempt at deception had given an extremely unfavourable colour to the event.

It was soon alleged' that the Huguenot parents had, in fact, murdered their son. A motive was quickly found; for, if Louis had already abjured his father’s religion, why should not Marc-Antoine have been on the point of doing so as well? This view was adopted without delay in official circles, as was made plain when the body, instead of being handed over to the hangman, was accorded a Catholic burial. There was also a magnificent Requiem Mass in the Cathedral, “for the repose of the soul of a martyr.” “The place was smothered in white drapery. In the centre of the edifice an enormous catafalque had been erected, and reared upon it was a skeleton (borrowed from an obliging surgeon) holding in one hand a palm, emblem of martyrdom, and in the other a placard inscribed, “Abjuration of Heresy’.” The author explains that the effect of this horrific display upon a superstitious people, already in a state ot ferment, was to convince everybody that the affair was indeed a case of murder; that the accused belonged to a set of assassins; and that

hordes of Protestants were about to make an armed incursion into Toulouse. The trials that ensured left much to be desired. They have been described as a parody of justice, an opinion that can hardly be disputed. The upshot was that Jean Calas was broken on the wheel and died after protracted torture, steadfast in protesting his innocence. The rest of the Calas family was scattered; some virtually imprisoned, some enjoying only a precarious freedom.

Voltaire comes into the affair when he heard all about the case from one Dominique Andibert, a Protestant merchant who had been in Toulouse shortly after the execution of Calas. Andibert was convinced that Calas was an innocent man and that some of the officials who had brought about his death thought so too, if they had been brave enough to examine their conscience. Andi* bent’s tale fired the indignation of Voltaire. He resolved to intervene. It was a prodigious task he undertook; “for against the immense allied forces of the judiciary and the clergy he had only his pen, his power over public opinion and his influence with a certain number of eminent persons.” Nevertheless, three years to a day after the sentence of death had been pronounced on Jean Calas a posthumous judgment reversed the original verdict. Calas remains for all time the victim of a judicial murder. “The Wheel” could not have been turned back. Voltaire then went on to seek damages for the unfortunate family, and here too he achieved some success.

Mrs Nixon has written well concerning a celebrated case which began just two hundred years ago. Its ramifications are now made clear for English readers. It is true that F. H. Maugham devoted a volume to the trial some thirty years ago; but, before that, except for the references in John Morley’s life of -Voltaire and Mark Pattison’s rather partisan essay in the “Westminster Review,” there was little discussion of the affair in England. Mrs Nixon presents Voltaire in a more favourable light His incessant activity was matched by his steadiness. “The fertility of his invention, his inexhaustible

fund of expedients to meet every difficulty, were never more conspicuous than in this cause, into which he threw himself with all his soul.”