Vol. 1 - History of the Catholic Church from Renaissance to French Revolution

but in nearly every country of Europe; D'Alembert (1717-83) and
Diderot (1713-84), the two men mainly responsible for the
/Encyclopedie/; Helvetius (1715-1771), and the Baron d'Holbach, who
sought to popularise the irreligious views then current among the
nobility by spreading the rationalist literature throughout the mass
of the poorer classes in Paris.

But the two writers whose works did most to undermine revealed
religion in France were Francois Marie Arouet, better known as
Voltaire (1694-1778), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). The
former of these was born at Paris, received his early education from
the Jesuits, and was introduced while still a youth to the salon of
Ninon de Lenclos, frequented at this time by the principal literary
opponents of religion and morality. His earliest excursions into
literature marked him out immediately as a dangerous adversary of the
Christian religion. He journeyed in England where he was in close
touch with the Deist school of thought, in Germany where he was a
welcome guest at the court of Frederick II. of Prussia, and settled
finally at Ferney in Switzerland close to the French frontiers.
Towards the end of his life (1778) he returned to Paris where he
received a popular ovation. Poets, philosophers, actresses, and
academicians vied with one another in doing honour to a man who had
vowed to crush /L'Infame/, as he termed Christianity, and whose
writings had done so much to accomplish that result in the land of his
birth. The reception given to Voltaire in Paris affords the most
striking proof of the religious and moral corruption of all classes in
France at this period. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born at Geneva and
reared as a Calvinist. Later on he embraced the Catholic religion,
from which he relapsed once more into Calvinism, if indeed in his
later years he was troubled by any dogmatic beliefs. His private life
was in perfect harmony with the moral tone of most of his works. He
had neither the wit nor the literary genius of Voltaire, but in many
respects his works, especially /Le Contrat Social/, exercised a
greater influence on the France of his own time and on Europe
generally since that time than any other writings of the eighteenth
century. His greatest works were /La Nouvelle Heloise/ (1759), a novel
depicting the most dangerous of human passions; /Emile/, a
philosophical romance dealing with educational ideas and tending
directly towards Deism, and /Le Contrat Social/, in which he
maintained that all power comes from the people, and may be recalled
if those to whom it has been entrusted abuse it. The /Confessions/
which tell the story of his shameless life were not published until
after his death.

To further their propaganda without at the same time attracting the
notice of the civil authorities the rationalist party had recourse to
various devices. Pamphlets and books were published, professedly
descriptive of manners and customs in foreign countries, but directed
in reality against civil and religious institutions in France. Typical
examples of this class of literature were the /Persian Letters/ of
Montesquieu, /A Description of the Island of Borneo/ by Fontanelle,
/The Life of Mohammed/ by Henri de Bouillon Villiers, and a /Letter on
the English/ from the pen of Voltaire. The greatest and most
successful work undertaken by them for popularising their ideas was
undoubtedly the /Encyclopedie/. The professed object of the work was
to give in a concise and handy form the latest and best results of
scholarship in every department of human knowledge, but the real aim
of the founders was to spread their poisonous views amongst the people
of France, and to win them from their allegiance to the Catholic
Church. In order to escape persecution from the government and to
conceal their real purposes many of the articles were written by
clerics and laymen whose orthodoxy was above suspicion, and many of
the articles referring to religion from the pen of the rationalistic
collaborateurs were respectful in tone, though a careful reader could
see that they did not represent the real views of the author.
Sometimes references were given to other articles of a very different
kind, where probably opposite views were established by apparently
sound arguments. The originator of the project was D'Alembert, who was
assisted by Diderot, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Condillac, Buffon, and
D'Holbach. The work was begun in 1750, and in spite of interruptions
and temporary suppressions it was brought to a successful conclusion
in 1772. The reviewers and the learned world hailed it with delight as
a veritable treasure-house of information. New and cheap editions of
it were brought out for the general public, and in a remarkably short
time the influence of the Encyclopaedists had reached the lowest strata
of French society. Many of those in authority in France favoured the