- Martin Luther laid the foundations of the Protestant Reformation in October 1517, when he wrote his "95 Theses" in response to the sale of indulgences during the construction of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
- The opposition between Catholics and Protestants will be growing during the modern era. It led to a period of religious wars, which began in 1562 and ended in 1598 with the signing of the Edict of Nantes by Henri IV. This edict of tolerance grants - among other things - the right of worship for Protestants in France.
- In October 1695, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes with the Edict of Fontainebleau, leading to the exile of thousands of Protestants abroad.
1762-1765
Characters
John Calas
François-Marie Arouet alias Voltaire
Procedure
Jean Calas is a trader and fabric merchant from Toulouse. In October 1791, he found his son hanged in his store. To avoid family dishonour, he initially conceals Marc-Antoine's suicide. The trial takes place against a background of religious discord:the parliament of Toulouse, a strongly Catholic city, accuses Jean Calas of having killed his son in order to avoid his conversion to Catholicism, a rumor spread by the neighbors of the family. Marc-Antoine is considered a true martyr:he is buried after a Catholic funeral which brings together thousands of people.
Despite the testimony of the priest which invalidates Marc-Antoine's desire to get closer to the Catholic religion, Jean Calas was strangled and burned in the public square on March 10, 1762. During his ordeal, he continued to assert his innocence.
Consequences
- Voltaire took up the Calas Affair and published his Treatise on Tolerance in 1763 . Convinced of the innocence of Jean Calas after an investigation with the family and the lawyer of the executed, he thinks that intolerance, inherited from the Reformation and the wars of religion, explains the injustice of the trial of the Calas family. .
- Thus, the actions of Voltaire (he made the Calas affair known to his friends in France but also in Europe, and invoked the King's Council for example) led the affair to be retried, and Jean Calas was rehabilitated on March 9, 1765, thus closing this miscarriage of justice.
- The Calas affair symbolizes the rivalries between Catholics and Protestants in France. We had to wait for the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 for the recognition and assurance of freedom of worship in France.