Affaire Calas
“The murder of Calas, committed with the sword of justice, on March 9, 1762, is one of the most remarkable events that deserve the attention of our age and posterity” (Voltaire, Treatise on Tolerance).
“The Calas affair is a founding event of legal modernity and the idea of tolerance. The Calas affair makes Voltaire a forerunner of the engaged intellectual” (P. Dumouchel and B. Melkevik).
Copy preserved in its contemporary binding.
Octavo, 643 pp. Half red morocco, pink marbled paper boards, spine with raised bands decorated with gilt fillets and fleurons, title piece in Havana morocco, red edges. Period binding.
199 x 121 mm.
Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet known as. [Calas Affair]. Collection of various documents on the unfortunate affair of the Calas family. [1762-1765].
Collection of 14 documents, including 4 by Voltaire, representing more than half of Voltaire’s contributions to this case.
The final document is the supreme judgment of rehabilitation dated March 9, 1765.
Bengesco, I, 1675, 1677,1 and 1678,2; The printed works of Voltaire at the B.N., 3944, 3949, 3953.
Regarding the Calas Affair, Voltaire writes to a friend, Fyot de La Marche: “I am beside myself; it moves me as a human being, and even a little as a philosopher. I want to know which side fanaticism's horror lies on.”
As Voltaire cries out, Calas was “legally sacrificed by fanaticism.”
To alert public opinion and obtain a retrial, Voltaire assembled a dossier.
Olry Terquem establishes an explicit link between the Raphael Lévy affair (1669), the Calas affair (1762), and the Chevalier de la Barre affair (1766): “We have brought together here, he writes, the accounts of the three latest judicial murders that took place in France in the name of religion: a Jew in the seventeenth century! No one is moved by it; the event remains unknown! A Protestant and a Catholic in the eighteenth century! But Voltaire and his friends were there, the time had come; the limit had been reached, it overflowed in '89.”
For Terquem, the injustice suffered by the Chevalier de La Barre and Calas leads directly, through its vileness, to the French Revolution. (P. Birnbaum, The Raphael Lévy Affair, An Accusation of Ritual Murder in Metz in 1669).
“The Calas affair is a founding event of legal modernity and of the idea of tolerance. A founding event, because Voltaire created the Calas Affair by making an individual’s tragedy a philosophical and political issue. He transformed a local legal case into a societal question, which he brought to the attention of the enlightened public in France and Europe. He brought from the shame and secrecy of criminal justice the case of a man condemned to death to publicly exonerate a victim of fanaticism and religious intolerance. Voltaire had the courage to undertake the rehabilitation of Calas despite the many difficulties of the affair and the inertia, not to say the hostility, of the judicial institution. But above all, he had the genius to turn this rehabilitation into a fight, a cause for reason, justice, and tolerance. The Calas Affair gave Voltaire the opportunity to consider tolerance in terms of practical philosophy, to oppose it to religious intolerance, to prevent fanaticism, and to guarantee freedom.” (Tolerance, Pluralism and History, P. Dumouchel and B. Melkevik).
This unprecedented process makes the Calas Affair the prototype for an appeal to the “court of public opinion” and Voltaire, a pioneer of the engaged intellectual.
Copy preserved in its contemporary red half-morocco binding.
The Mémoire of Donat Calas by Voltaire includes a handwritten correction altering the text, which was incorporated in subsequent editions dating from 1762.
The Mémoire à consulter, and consultation for Lady Anne-Rose Cabibel, widow Calas, & her children, contains 4 handwritten corrections.
