Toleration and other essays — Key Ideas to Explore

Rhetorical Strategy and Persona

Voltaire adopts a striking rhetorical device in the excerpt addressed to Romans: he writes as an outsider explaining their own history to them. The speaker claims an unnamed priest informed him that the pope 'cannot find either the time or the will to relieve your misery,' reducing papal authority to self-interest. This ventriloquism allows Voltaire to criticize without direct assertion, blending irony with apparent naivety. The tone shifts between mock deference—'It was explained to me'—and sharp indictment, as when he calls the papacy 'a kind of commendatory abbey, which each abbot ruins while he lives.' Such passages show Voltaire using conversational framing to deliver polemical content, a technique that recurs throughout the essays.

Historical Argument as Polemic

Voltaire grounds his critique in specific historical events, though his selection serves his argument rather than balanced analysis. He traces Rome's decline to Constantine's transfer of the empire to 'the bounds of Thrace,' painting the emperor as a murderer who 'abandoned the ancient religion' for Christian support. The destruction of the altar of Victory is blamed on 'fanaticism' and figures like St. Ambrose, whom Voltaire notes 'passed from the bar to the bishopric of Milan without being a deacon.' These details are not neutral; they are marshaled to show Christianity as a corrupting force. The excerpts do not reveal whether Voltaire engages with counterarguments, but his method is clear: history is a courtroom, and he is the prosecutor.

Targets of Satire: Relics and Popular Piety

Voltaire reserves particular scorn for devotional objects and practices he deems idolatrous. In a single sentence, he lists 'the prepuce and navel of Jesus, or the milk, and hair, and shift, and petticoat of his mother' alongside liquefying blood of saints and statues of Antony of Padua. The catalog is deliberately absurd, juxtaposing sacred claims with mundane items. He contrasts these with the altar of Victory, which he calls 'merely the noble device of the Roman Empire, the symbol of virtue.' This dichotomy—Roman civic symbols as virtuous, Christian relics as 'disgusting'—reveals Voltaire's preference for classical over ecclesiastical authority. The excerpts do not show him addressing Protestant or non-Christian traditions, focusing instead on Catholic practices as emblematic of irrationality.

Readers should note that these essays are occasional pieces, not systematic treatises. Voltaire's targets are specific—clerical power, relic worship, Constantine's legacy—and his arguments rely on rhetorical force as much as evidence. McCabe's introduction positions Voltaire as a liberator, but the text itself is combative and selective. Approach it as a period piece in the history of free thought, noting where Voltaire's historical claims serve his polemical ends.

I remember sitting with Voltaire's arguments long after midnight, the anger softening into something like relief—that doubt could be a quiet companion. It reminded me of another evening, and another book’s measured calm. Miracles and Supernatural Religion — Context and Discussion offered that same slow exhale, where questioning felt less like war and more like breathing.