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The Crystallization of Counter-Enlightenment and Philosophe Identities: Theological Controversy and Catholic Enlightenment in Pre-Revolutionary France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2008

Jeffrey D. Burson
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Extract

Recent works of modern French history have found it fashionable, when focusing on the eighteenth century from across the jagged shoals of nineteenth- and twentieth-century France, to reductively treat Francophone national identity as the dialogical interaction of two related “imagined communities.” On the one hand, as scholars such as Joseph Byrnes have unconvincingly argued, French national identity after the Enlightenment and Revolutionary eras has been shaped by the more secular “Cult of the Nation,” nourished by the Revolutionary ethos of liberté, égalité, and fraternité; on the other hand, there is the identity of France as Europe's first, most Catholic people. Such stark contrasts between opposing identities, which were in fact self-consciously nourished and cultivated by nineteenth-century writers, are overdrawn, and yet the increasingly dialogical character of French national identity in the centuries after the Revolution remains relevant to the subject of eighteenth-century historiography, for the definition of French national identity or identities is intricately intertwined with the unfolding of Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment identities that arose in various nuanced forms from the intellectual and religious history of France. Recently, provocative and timely work by Jonathan Israel, Dale Van Kley, and Darrin McMahon has taken up different aspects of these broader questions concerning why and when these competing visions may have sprung from the soil of eighteenth-century France. A remaining historiographical curiosity lingers as many historians of the French Revolution are quick to ascribe this dichotomy chiefly to the years after 1791 when the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the Oath of Allegiance made allegiance to the Revolutionary government more complicated for less Gallican, more ultramontane priests. On the other hand, historians of the French Enlightenment continue to focus on the inherently secular, scientific, and anticlerical nature of the siècle de lumières as though the Church were inevitably opposed to Enlightenment innovations after mid-century, preferring and harshly defending (as Jonathan Israel has recently and voluminously argued) a comfortable and cautious acceptance of Lockeanism and Newtonianism as the only forms of Enlightenment discourse considered acceptable and capable of synthesis with Catholic orthodoxy. Differing historical perspectives on the relationship between the Enlightenment and religion remain central to the identity of participants in the French Enlightenment at various points throughout the eighteenth century and after, and such questions continue to inform the definition of what it means to be “French” today. As such, the historical processes of Enlightenment identity formation continue to require examination; such processes—one of many lietmotifs within the complex and invaluable conversations opened by the works of Israel, McMahon, and Van Kley—will be the subject of this article. For scholars remain far from a consensus on just what it meant to be Catholic and Enlightened together in the century preceding the French Revolution.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 77 , Issue 4 , December 2008 , pp. 955 - 1002
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Copyright © American Society of Church History 2008

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11 Israel, Enlightenment Contested, 23.

12 By focusing on the conciliarist-Jansenist tradition of Catholic Enlightenment, rather than on the intersection of Jesuit, mid-century vernacular apologetical, and University of Paris theology as I do, Dale Van Kley is also attempting to view the wider religious origins of Enlightenment secularism. Note especially Kley, Van, “Religion and the Age of Patriot Reform,” Journal of Modern History 80 (June 2008): 252–295CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Thanks to Professor Van Kley for making me aware of this article in manuscript.

13 McMahon, Darrin, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

14 Ibid., 10–13.

15 Recent work by Dale Van Kley argues similarly, although unlike my own work, he continues to focus brilliantly on the internationalization of Gallican and Jansenist discourses after the expulsion of the Jesuits from Portugal, France, Spain, and Central Europe throughout the 1760s. He sees this process as the key turning point for the exportation of French religious and cultural polarities to the rest of Europe: see Kley, Van, “Jansenism and the International Suppression of the Jesuits” in Enlightenment, Reawakening, Revolution, 1660–1815, eds. Brown, Stewart J. and Tackett, Timothy, Cambridge History of Christianity 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 302–328Google Scholar.

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17 For the perils of viewing the whole of the Enlightenment through the lens of Francophone or anti-clericalism alone, see Porter, Roy, “The Enlightenment in England,” in The Enlightenment in National Context, ed. Porter, Roy and Teich, Mikuláš (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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19 The philosophical contours of the debate hardened, but socially, the Counter-Enlightenment and Enlightenment never fully polarized before the Revolution. As the life and work of Nicola-Sylvestre Bergier, the choice apologist of the General Assembly of the Clergy against both Rousseau and d'Holbach, demonstrates, social interaction through academies and journals remained throughout the eighteenth century: Bergier, Nicholas-Sylvestre, Le Déisme réfuté par lui-même: ou Examen, en forme de Lettres, des principes d'incrédulité répandus dans les divers Ouvrages de M. Rousseau. 4th ed. (Paris: Humblot, 1768)Google Scholar; Kors, Alan, D'Holbach's Coterie: An Enlightenment in Paris (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), 114–117Google Scholar; Masseau, Les Ennemis des philosophes, 161–170; Langlois, Claude, “Démographie céleste et révolution théologique chez Nicolas-Sylvestre Bergier,” Dix-huitième siècle 34 (2002): 267–276CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In defining Counter-Enlightenment “ideology,” I am here invoking a useful distinction between discourse and ideology developed by Marisa Linton in a recent article on the Enlightenment origins of the French Revolution. Linton argues that a discourse is merely “linked words” accessible “by different groups, put together in different ways,” and possessing “different consequences.” An ideology, however, “indicates a set of consciously held beliefs which are drawn together in support of a particular … stance.” Though Linton is speaking directly of political discourses and ideologies, her distinction is instructive for our intellectual history transcending political thought. Linton, Marisa, “The Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution,” in The Origins of the French Revolution, ed. Campbell, Peter R. (Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 155Google Scholar.

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23 Jansenists were originally depicted as resolute enemies of the Enlightenment. Some studies continue to exaggerate the anti-Enlightenment aspects of Jansenist theology even today: see Groethuysen, Bernard, The Bourgeois: Catholicism versus Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France, trans. Ilford, Mary ([1927] London: Cresset, 1968), 7–44Google Scholar.

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27 Condemned by the papacy, the work by Mésenguy, Exposition de la doctrine chrétienne (Paris, 1761) is an example of an extreme Cartesian defense of Christianity in favor of a Jansenist position as late as the middle eighteenth century (that is, long after the Jesuits had integrated Cartesianism and Lockean sensationalism for apologetical and scientific purposes). Many thanks to Dale Van Kley for bringing this work to my attention.

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31 Buffier, Traité des Premières vérités, I.i.9, 7; I.ii.17, 10; I.v.41.45, 18–19.

32 Jeffrey D. Burson, “Abdication of Legitimate Heirs: The Use and Abuse of Locke in the Jesuit Journal de Trévoux,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 2005/7 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2005), 297–327; Palmer, R. R., “The French Jesuits in the Age of Enlightenment,” American Historical Review 45:1 (October 1939), 44–46, 49, 51–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; de Viguerie, Jean, “L'Enseignement des jésuites et les progrès du déisme en France aux dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles,” Pour qu'il règne (novembre 1969), 15–16Google Scholar.

33 Buffier, Traité des Premières vérités et de la source de nos jugements, I.i.9, 7; I.ii.17, 10; I.v.41.45, 18–19; II.xviii.305, 134–135; ibid., II.xix.322–323, 139.

34 See above, n. 7, also n. 22.

35 Wade, Ira O., The Clandestine Organization and Diffusion of Philosophic Ideas in France from 1700 to 1750 (New York: Octagon, 1967), 263–273Google Scholar; Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 684–701; Shackleton, “When Did the French ‘Philosophes’ Become a Party?”

36 The d'Houtteville, abbé, La Réligion Chrétienne prouvée par les faits, nouvelle edition (s.l., s.n., 1722; Amsterdam: Henri du Sauzet, 1744)Google Scholar.

37 Houtteville, Réligion Chrétienne prouvée par les faits, 1:182, 1:260; see advertisement for “La Réligion Chrétienne, prouvée par les faits, par M. l'Abbé Houtteville de l'Académie française, nouvelle edition, quatre tomes in-12 à Paris, chez P. G. le Mercier, rue Saint Jacques, 1749,” Mercure de France (janvier 1750), 182; proofs of religion based on common-sense grounds written in France were sold in cheaper, abridged form as early as 1747, and there was even a book using proofs of religion designed for youth reviewed in 1750: see the review of “Système du Philosophe Chrétien, par M. de Gamaches de l'Académie Royale des Sciences; brochure in-octavo, prix 24 sol chés Jombert,” Mercure (février 1747), 96–97; also advertisement for “Exposition abregée des preuves historiques de la Religion Chrétienne, pour lui server d'apologie contre les sophisms de l'irréligion, ouvrage destiné à l'éducation de la jeunesse, par M. Beauzée, à Paris, chez Delaguette, rue Saint Jacques, in-12, 1747,” Mercure (janvier 1750), 182; also Mercier, Roger, Le Réhabilitation de la Nature Humaine, 1700–1750 (Villemomble: Editions La Balance, 1960), 352–360Google Scholar; compare with Everdell, Christian Apologetics in France, 27–183, 281–285; Masseau, Ennemis des philosophes, 209–273, 420–421. Certainly, Houtteville did not in every way agree with contemporary writers like Voltaire on every point. Much later in his Traité sur la tolerance, for example, Voltaire would criticize Houtteville's voluminous apologetical work for advocating religious intolerance: see Houtteville, Réligion Chrétienne prouvée par les faits, 2:4, 10.

38 The patronage, periodization, and varieties of theological appropriation of the Enlightenment will be treated extensively in my forthcoming book, Rise and Fall of Theological Enlightenment; see also Tuilier, André, L'Université de Paris, la Sorbonne, et la Revolution: Célébration du Bicentenaire de la Revolution française en Sorbonne (Paris: Sorbonne, Fondation ‘France-Libertés,’ Chancellerie des Universités de Paris, avec le concours des Archives Nationales, 1989), 58Google Scholar; compare with Jourdain, Charles, Histoire de l'Université de Paris au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècle ([1862–1866] Bruxelles: Impression Anastaltique Culture et Civilization, 1960), 390–391Google Scholar; classical studies on Old Regime French education have been completed by Chartier, Roger, Julia, Dominique, and Compère, Marie-Madeleine, The Education en France du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Société d'édition d'enseignement supérieur, 1976)Google Scholar; Julia, Dominique and Revel, Jacques, ed., Histoire sociale des populations étudiantes, vol. 2, Les Universités européens du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, Studies in History and the Social Sciences Series 18 (Paris: Editions de l'école des Hautes Etudes Science Sociales, 1989)Google Scholar; Verger, Jacques, Brockliss, Laurence W. B., Julia, Dominique, Korady, Victor, Passeron, Jean-Claude, and Vulliez, Charles, Histoire des Universités en France (Toulouse: Bibliothèque historique Privat, 1986)Google Scholar; most significant and comprehensively of late is Brockliss, L. W. B., French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: A Cultural History (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987)Google Scholar; also Hammerstein, Notker, “Epilogue: The Enlightenment,” in A History of the University in Europe, vol. 2, Universities in Early Modern Europe (1500–1800), ed. de Ridder-Symoens, Hilde (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 621–649Google Scholar.

39 O'Connor, Thomas, An Irish Theologian in Enlightenment France: Luke Joseph Hooke, 1714–96 (Dublin: Four Courts, 1995)Google Scholar.

40 Nouvelles ecclésiastiques (14 octobre 1740); O'Connor, Irish Theologian, 9, 40, 60.

41 For a discussion of Jesuit adaptation of Newton, see Israel, Enlightenment Contested, 772–781.

42 de Châtelet, Mme [Gabrielle Emilie du Châtelet-Lomont, 1706–1749], Lettre 357 à Johann Bernoulli, Paris, 6/7 septembre 1746, Les Lettres de la marquise du Châtelet, ed. Besterman, Theodore (Genève: Institut et Musée Voltaire Les Delices, 1958), 2:152–154Google Scholar; also Pearson, Roger, Voltaire Almighty: A Life in Pursuit of Freedom (New York: Bloomsbury, 2005), 109–196Google Scholar.

43 Delort, Joseph, Histoire de la detention des philosophes et des gens des lettres à la Bastille et à Vincennes précédée de celle de Foucquet de Pellisson et de Laön avec tous les documents authentiques et inédits ([1829] Génève: Slatkine Reprints, 1967), 2:190–191Google Scholar; Tuilier, Historie de l'Université de Paris et de la Sorbonne, 2:151–152; also Verger, Brockliss, Julia, et al., Histoire des Universités en France, 218–219; the course of the abbé Sigorgne was published in 1747: see Review of [Pierre] Sigorgne, Institutions Newtonniens, ou Introduction à la philosophie de Newton, 2 vol. in-8 (Paris, 1747), in Mercure (août 1747), 97–100.

44 Castel, Louis Bertrand, L'Optique des couleurs fondée sur les simples observations, & tournée sur-tout à la practique de la peinture, de la Teinture & des autres arts colorists (Paris: Briasson, 1740), 1–6Google Scholar, 408–447; Castel was on very good terms with Montesquieu throughout the 1720s, and as late as the publication of L'Esprit des lois, Castel wrote stirring tributes to Montesquieu's genius in their private correspondence (1748–1749): see Bastid, Paul, “Montesquieu et les Jésuites,” in Actes du Congrès Montesquieu réuni à Bordeaux de 23 au 26 mai 1955 pour commémorer le deuxième centenaire de la mort de Montesquieu (Bordeaux: Delmas, 1956), 313Google Scholar.

45 “Lettre de Monsieur Baron Doyen de la Faculté de Médecine de Paris, au sujet d'un thèse qui a pour titre An à functionum integritate mentis sanitas soutenüe le huitième janvier 1733 aux écoles de médecine, 4 avril 1733,” AN, MS. MM 257, fols. 104–106; “Sequitur tenor relationis factae à S. M. Bonnedame, et Decreti Saluberrimae facultatis, 8 avril 1737,” AN, MS. MM 257, fols. 189–191; also Frank, Robert G. Jr., “Thomas Willis and His Circle: Brain and Mind in Seventeenth-Century Medicine,” in The Languages of Psyche: Mind and Body in Enlightenment Thought: Clarke Lectures 1985–1986, ed. Rousseau, G. S. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 107–147Google Scholar; Moravia, Sergio, “From Homme machine to Homme sensible: Changing Models of Man's Image,” Philosophy, Religion and Science in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Yolton, John W., Library of the History of Ideas 2 (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1990), 474–489Google Scholar.

46 Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, l'évêque de Mirepoix, was in charge of the feuille des benefices and saw to the appointment of Christophe de Beaumont as archbishop of Paris in 1746: McManners, Jonathan, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 2:481–482Google Scholar. When Beaumont was appointed archbishop of Paris, the Nouvelles ecclésiastiques proclaimed that his only qualifications were his good looks and his unswerving devotion to the Jesuits. Beaumont was also a personal friend of the Jesuit Guillaume-François Berthier, editor in chief of the Journal de Trévoux after 1745. John N. Pappas, Berthier's Journal de Trévoux and the Philosophes, 165, 171–202, 213–223; Nouvelles ecclésiastiques. (14 octobre 1740): 171; Brockliss, French Higher Education, 254–257; for the theology thesis of Sieur Lavaur implied that natural religion “sufficed for obtaining natural beatitude”: see Nouvelles ecclésiastiques (20 novembre 1741): 186–187.

47 Hudson, David, “The Regent, Fleury, Jansenism, and the Sorbonne,” in French History 8:2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994): 145, 148Google Scholar; for “purifying” the “citadel” and “sanctuary,” see Le Rouge, Antoine eulogizing the Faculty Syndic Romigny, in Nouvelles ecclésiastiques, 14 octobre 1740: 171Google Scholar.

48 Campbell, Power and Politics, 197; The popularization of the political and theological ideologies of Jansenism, like an infectious disease, remained virtually untreatable despite constant harassment by the court, the bishops, and the Jesuits, and constant ridicule by men of letters. As late as 1739, twenty printers and booksellers remained within the Latin Quarter and continued the illegal trade in Jansenist pamphlets and literature. Five of the University of Paris's eleven collèges du plein exercice, as well as three important parishes in the Latin Quarter were still suspected of harboring Jansenist sympathies. The 1739 output of the Latin Quarter in Paris was in addition to the already 11,000 books and pamphlets published by Jansenist supporters throughout France as a whole from 1713–1730: see Campbell, Power and Politics, 203; Julia, “L'affaiblissement de l'Eglise gallicane,” in Du Roi Très Chrétien à la laïcité républicaine, 24.

49 For Méseguy, see above n. 27; [Claude Mey], “Remarques sur une thèse soutenue en Sorbonne le samedi 20 octobre 1751, par M. l'abbé de Loménie de Brienne presidé par M. Buret Professeur Royal en Théologie,” BN, Joly de Fleury 292 fol. 291, pp. 1–3.

50 The Aristotelian axiom that “Nothing is in the intellect which was not first in the senses.”

51 [Mey], “Remarques sur une thèse soutenue en Sorbonne,” BN, Joly de Fleury 292 fol. 291, pp. 1–3; Mey is likely to have had some connection to the Jansenists of the Nouvelles ecclésiastiques, since this journal rather shamelessly plugged the supposed sagacity and orthodoxy of these “Remarques” in NN. EE., 17 mars 1752: 46–47.

52 Tombeau de la Sorbonne, in Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, ed. Besterman, 24:25.

53 Dale Van Kley, “Factoring Religion in the Century of Lights or Refracting the Enlightenment in Religions” (Atlanta: American Society of Church History Session 2 at the American Historical Association Annual Meeting, 5 January 2007).

54 McManners, Church and Society in Eighteenth Century France, 2:481–509.

55 Though well outside the scope of this article, a working definition of Molinism is in order, insofar as Molinist versus Augustinian theologies of grace are really at the heart of the strictly theological quarrels separating Jesuits from Jansenists. Deriving from the sixteenth-century Neo-Scholastic, Luis de Molina, Molinism held that individual free will to do good works was both possible and necessary to salvation. When an individual truly willed to do a good work, and asked God's grace, God would then grant grace sufficient to its accomplishment such that the deed would be credited to the believer as righteousness. This Molinist position was contested even among Jesuits, but to the Jansenists who clung to Augustine's notion that all good works required God's efficacious grace in order to be truly willed and accomplished, the Jesuits were freely demonized as Molinists: Brockliss, French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 254–255.

56 McClure, Ellen, Sunspots and the Sun King: Sovereignty and Mediation in Seventeenth-Century France (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

57 For the prehistory of the Gallican church factionalism of the 1730s–1750s discussed in the previous two paragraphs, see Dale Van Kley, “The Religious Origins of the French Revolution, 1560–1791,” in The Origins of the French Revolution, ed. Campbell, 161–181; for the Sorbonne faculty and its seventeenth-century history, see the pioneering work of Gres-Gayer, Jacques, “The Magisterium of the Faculty of Theology in the Seventeenth Century,” Theological Studies 53 (1992): 424–450CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gres-Gayer, , “The Unigenitus of Clement XI: A Fresh Look at the Issues,” Theological Studies 49 (1988): 259–282CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Gres-Gayer, , “Tradition et modernité: la réforme des études en Sorbonne, 1673–1715,” Revue d'histoire de l'église de France, 88 no. 221 (juillet–décembre 2002): 343–389Google Scholar.

58 Masseau, Les Ennemis des philosophes, 19, 23; compare with Wilson, Diderot, 156–157; de Messières, René, “L'Encyclopédie et la crise de la Société au milieu du XVIIIème siècle,” French Review 24 (October 1950): 395Google Scholar; Robert Darnton, “Philosophers Trim the Tree of Knowledge: The Epistemological Strategy of the Encyclopédie,” in The Great Cat Massacre, ed. Darnton, 201–205; Vernière, Spinoza et la pensée française avant la Révolution, 2:560–564; Proust, Diderot et l'Encyclopédie, 276–277; Tarin, Diderot et la Révolution française, 46; Diderot's, first prospectus for the Encyclopédie was summarized favorably in the Mercure de France (December 1740), 108–126Google Scholar; Berthier, , “Article 19,” in Journal de Trévoux (January 1751): 302–327Google Scholar; republished in Discours préliminaire des éditeurs de 1751 et articles de l'encyclopédie introduits par la querelle avec le Journal de Trévoux, ed. Martine Groult (Paris and Genève, 1999), 33–42; compare with Pappas, Berthier's Journal de Trévoux and the Philosophes, 171–172.

59 My forthcoming book on the abbé de Prades and the theological origins of Enlightenment will study, for the first time, the intellectual sociability and the works of the abbé Jean-Martin de Prades in the context of larger movements of Theological Enlightenment within the Church: see Burson, The Rise and Fall of Theological Enlightenment. I am also working on a manuscript that studies the work of Prades's so-called “accomplice,” the abbé Claude Yvon: see de Prades, Jean-Martin, “Jerusalem coelesti, Quis est ille, cujus in faciem Deus inspiravit spiraculum vitae? (A la Jerusalem céleste, Quel est celui, sur la face duquel Dieu a répandu le soufflé de vie?): Thèse soutenue en Sorbonne le 18 novembre 1751,” in Apologie du Monsieur l'abbé de Prades, I (Amsterdam: Marc Michel Rey, 1752)Google Scholar; Combes, Jean-François, “La singulière destiné de l'abbé Jean-Martin de Prades,” Journal d'études: Jean-Martin de Prades, 1782–1982 (Castelsarrasin, 1982): 87–93Google Scholar; Combes-Malavialle, Jean-François, “L'abbé de Prades hier et aujourd'hui,” Bulletin de la Société archéologique du Tarn-et-Garonne, 113 (1988): 97–114Google Scholar; Combes-Malavialle, , “Vues nouvelles sur l'abbé de Paris.” Dix-huitième siècle 20 (1988): 377–397CrossRefGoogle Scholar; David, Jean-Claude, “L'affaire de Prades en 1751–1752 d'après deux rapports de police,” in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 245 (Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation at the Taylor Institutions, 1986), 359–371Google Scholar; Israel's Contesting Enlightenment, 850–862 similarly addresses the importance of the Affaire de Prades, though he exaggerates the extent of Prades's own indebtedness to Locke and Newton, neglects to consider the nuanced and compromised position of the Sorbonne vis-à-vis the Jesuits, and fails to consider the philosophical depth of the Jesuits' own engagement with Locke, Malebranche, and much of what he defines earlier as the Radical Enlightenment itself.

60 Spink, John, “L'Affaire de J.-M. de Prades,” Dix-huitième siècle 3 (1971): 150–180CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spink, “The Clandestine Book Trade in 1752: The Publication of the Apologie de l'abbé de Prades,” in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature Presented to Robert Niklaus, ed. Fox, Waddicor, and Watts, 243–256.

61 Dale Van Kley's work on the expulsion of the Jesuits suggests that there was a recession of theological conflict over Unigenitus once the Jansenists had conspired with the philosophes to demolish the Jesuit order in France. One dissertation by Agnes Ravel concerns the dévot party. See as cited in Van Kley, “The Religious Origins of the French Revolution,” in Origins of the French Revolution, ed. Campbell, 325–328, 328; see also Kley, Van, The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits from France, 1757–1765 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

62 “Sacrae facultatis theologiae Parisiensis commentarii opera et studio M. Herissani actuarii facultatice, 1 March 1752,” BN, MS. MM 257, fols. 392–393; Hooke was reinstated into the faculty six months after abbé de Prades (June 1754), though he never regained his chair; Luke-Joseph Hooke would participate in the Sorbonne's censure of Rousseau's Emile in 1764 and would carry on a correspondence with Samuel Johnson and other English Enlightenment figures until his death. He died in 1796, having attacked the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1790. See O'Connor, An Irish Theologian in Enlightenment France, 70, 188–189.

63 Mémoires du Duc de Luynes sur la cour de Louis XV, 1735–1758, 8 mars 1752; 8 février 1753, (Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, Fils, et Compagnie, Libraires, 1863), 11:437–438; 12:324.

64 Ibid., 8 mars 1752, 11:437–439.

65 The abbé de Brienne seems to have been unnerved by this short brochure attacking his thesis again, even after the paranymph. His treatment by Mirepoix, and even by Maupeou and Joly de Fleury, could not be a more striking contrast to that which greeted Prades by these same men. Brienne went to “the home of M. the old Bishop of Mirepoix, who assured him that he did not need to be the least bit concerned, and that his propositions were very correct.” In addition, the duc du Luynes adds, “M. the première president, and to M. le procureur générale … strongly assured him [Brienne] that he could be at peace, and they counseled him to keep silent on this work, which would die away by itself.” Not long after, the abbé de Brienne received his doctorate from the Sorbonne, and left for Rouen where he became Grand Vicar: see ibid., 8 mars 1752, 11:439.

66 See “Procès verbale de l'assemblée de messeigneurs les archévêques et évêques tenue à Paris, en l'année 1752, concernant les enterprises de Paris sur la jurisdiction ecclésiastique,” Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne, MS. 258 (St. Sulpice Ms. II, 71), 10–11, 16–17.

67 de Vayer de Paulmy, René Louis, d'Argenson, marquis, Journal et Mémoires, ed. Rathery, J. B., 17 mars 1753 (Paris: Mme. Ve. Jules Renouard, 1865), 7:427Google Scholar; Barbier, E. J. F., Journal historique et anecdotique du régne de Louis XV, mars 1753 (Paris: Jules Renouard et Compagnie, 1851), 3:450Google Scholar; “Mémoire de la Faculté de Théologie de Paris depuis 1751 jusqu'à 1786,” AN MS. M 71 fol. 195, 4–7.

68 Barbier, Journal historique, mars 1753, 3:450–452; marquis d'Argenson, Journal et Mémoires, 5–6 avril 1753, 3:445–446.

69 O'Connor, Irish Theologian in Enlightenment France, 53.

70 “On y menace les Rois, on y calomnie les magistrates.” See “Extrait des Registres du Parlement du 3 mars 1755,” BN, MS. Anisson-Duperron 22093 fol. 6; “Arrest de la cour de Parlement qui condamne un ecrit intitulé Réflexions sur la notoriété de droit & de fait à être lacéré & brûlé par l'exécuteur de la Haute-Justice du juin 1755,” BN, MS. Anisson-Duperron 2093 fols. 26–27.

71 Van Kley, Dale K., The Damiens Affair and the Unraveling of the Ancien Regime, 1750–1770 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), 126–140Google Scholar.

72 “Thèses de Sorbonne denoncées au Parlement par les Gens de Roy le 6 mai 1755,” and “Copies des positions repréhensibles dans les 34 thèses avec la copie des observations après y sous-jointes,” “Avis et Mémoires sur les affaires publiques,” BN MS. Joly de Fleury 311, fols. 80–206; also “Mémoire de la Faculté de Théologie de Paris depuis 1751 jusqu'à 1786,” AN, MS. M 71 fol. 195, pp. 7–8; also “Extrait des Registres de Parlement du 6 mai 1755,” BN MS. Joly de Fleury 311 fols. 290–291.

73 Only a renewed Declaration of Silence on 2 September 1754 ended the standoff by leaving the king's doctrinal position ambivalent while tacitly recognizing Parlement's ability to prosecute just the most public refusals of the sacrament as violations of secular order. But in response, Parlement resumed its prosecutions with abandon, launching a second, more decisive coup against the Sorbonne's ability to lean on the Beaumont and the dévots: ibid.

74 O'Connor, Irish Theologian in Enlightenment France, 53–55.

75 On the relationships between bishops, regular clergy, and the seminaries in France, see the fascinating work by C. Ronald Miller, “The French Seminary in the Eighteenth Century” (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America, 1988).

76 McManners, Church and Society in Eighteenth Century France, 2:518.

77 “La philosophie n'était pas la partie brillante de l'éducation des Jésuites. Je ne sais ce qu'on y apprenait dans la seconde année, mais dans la première, l'idée toujours conforme à son objet, le future contingent, le concours simultané et quelques conclusions subsidiaries contre le jansénisme, formaient la majeure partie des instructions qu'on nous donna. Le latin en était mauvais et la méthode fort sèche.” See Mémoires de l'abbé Baston, chanoine de Rouen, 3 vols. (Paris: Alphonse Picard et Fils, 1897), 1:30; see also Mémoires de l'abbé Millot (1726–1785), ed. Leonce Pingaud, Nouvelle revue retrospective 8 n. s. (January–June 1898) (Paris: Bureaux de la Nouvelle revue retrospective, 1898): 73–80.

78 Tuilier, L'Université de Paris, la Sorbonne, et la Revolution: Célébration du Bicentenaire de la Revolution française en Sorbonne, 58; Jourdain, Histoire de l'Université de Paris au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècle, 390–391 (page references to reprint edition); Chartier, Roger, Julia, Dominique, and Compère, Marie-Madeleine, Education en France du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Société d'édition d'enseignement supérieur, 1976)Google Scholar; Dominique Julia and Jacques Revel, ed., Histoire sociale des populations étudiantes, vol. 2, Les Universités européens du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, Studies in History and the Social Sciences Series 18 (Paris: Editions de l'école des Hautes Etudes Science Sociales, 1989); Verger, Jacques, Brockliss, L. W. B., et al. , Histoire des Universités en France (Toulouse: Bibliothèque historique Privat, 1986)Google Scholar; Brockliss, L. W. B., French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: A Cultural History (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987)Google Scholar; Hammerstein, “Epilogue: The Enlightenment,” in A History of the University in Europe, vol. 2, Universities in Early Modern Europe (1500–1800), ed. Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, 621–649. O'Connor, Irish Theologian in Enlightenment France, 55–56; Miller, “The French Seminary in the Eighteenth Century,” 62–83, 138, 196, and N.B., 223, where he writes, “Surveillance by local parish priests, certificates of attestation and recommendations required of returning seminarians by bishops and seminar superiors suggest a desire on the part of the ecclesiastical leaders to create a uniform clerical culture … more closely controlled by the church's hierarchy … the seemingly urgent efforts put forth in clerical education after mid-century may also reflect fears that the church was increasingly being penetrated by dangerous ideals and attitudes emerging out of the Enlightenment.” The collaboration between many bishops and the Jesuits was close indeed, and the extent of this closeness is evinced by the defense of the Jesuits given by the Assembly of the Clergy in response to the king's requested investigation of their doctrine and constitutions leading to their expulsion. See “Bulles, lettres des papes, actes du clergé de France, et témoignages de plusieurs hommes célèbres en faveur des jésuites,” in Antoine Joachim de Cerutti, Apologie de la doctrine morale des jésuites ou exposé de la conduite que les pères de la compagnie de Jésus ont toujours tenue dans l'énseignement de la morale, et sentimens qu'ils ont professés sur le precépte de l'amour de Dieu, sur le péché philosophique et sur le probabilisme de l'Institut des Jésuites (Avignon: Seguin Aîné, 1828), 8.

79 Van Kley, The Damiens Affair, 126–140; according to McManners, Mirepoix died on 13 August 1755: see McManners, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France, 2:499–500; Rogister, John, Louis XV and the Parlement of Paris, 1737–1755, Studies Presented to the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions 74 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 176–180Google Scholar; de Nolhac, Pierre, Versailles et la Cour de France: Madame de Pompadour et la Politique (Paris: Louis Conard, 1930), 51–59Google Scholar.

80 Jourdain, Histoire de l'Université de Paris au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècle, 394–395.

81 McManners, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France, 2:503–508; Nolhac, Versailles et la cour de France, 58–59, 69–71, 82–91; Van Kley, Damiens Affair, 140–154.

82 Van Kley, Damiens Affair, 150–154.

83 Henri, Simon Nicolas, Linguet, Histoire impartialle des jésuites depuis leur établissement jusqu'à leur première expulsion, 2 vols. (Paris, s. n., 1768), X. xxvi, 2:397–400Google Scholar; Van Kley, Damiens Affair, 155–162; Gordon, Douglas H. and Forrey, Norman L., The Censoring of Diderot's Encyclopédie and the Re-Established Text (New York: Columbia University Press, 1947), 18Google Scholar.

84 “Arrêt definitif contre les jésuites du novembre 1763,” BN, MS. Joly de Fleury 1614 fols. 156–157; “Arrêt de la Cour de Parlement qui juge l'appel comme d'abus interjetté par M. de Procureur general, des bulles, brefs, constitutions, & autres règlemens de la Société soi-disans Jésuits & à tous autres, de porter l'habit de la société, de vivre sous l'obéissance au général, & aux constitutions de ladite Société, & entretenir aucune correspondence directe ou indirecte avec la general & les supérieurs de cette société; enjoint aux soi-disans Jésuites de vuider les maisons de ladite société; leur fait defenses de vivre en commun, réservant d'accorder à chacun d'eux sur leur requite, les pensions alimentaires, necessaries, etc. (6 août 1762),” BN, MS. Joly de Fleury 1609, fols 280–301, N.B. fol. 284 (p. 10); “Observations sur la forme du government de la société,” BN, MS. Joly de Fleury 1609 fol. 9; “Observations sur l'extrait de l'Histoire de Jules César, Journal de Trévoux, mars article XXVIII [n.d. 1759?],” BN, MS. Joly de Fleury 1609 fol. 12.

85 Van Kley, The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits from France, 1757–1765, 4–5, 230–235; Voltaire, Précis du siècle de Louix XV, in Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire 14, ed. Beuchot, 399–400.

86 See in “Article: 41: Medecine de l'esprit, où l'on traite des dispositions & des causes Physiques, qui, en consequence de l'union de l'âme avec le corps, influent sur les operations de l'esprit, &c. par Antoine le Camus,” Journal de Trévoux (mai 1753): 883–886, 899–901; “Article 66: Medecine de l'esprit par Camus, suite de l'article 41 au moins d'avril,” Journal de Trévoux (août 1753): 1392, 1395; “Article 30: On Explication physique des sens, des idées, des mouvements, tant volontiers qu'involontiers, traduite de l'Anglois de M. Hartley par M. l'Abbé Jurain,” Jounal de Trévoux (juin 1756): 703–713, 725.

87 Two additional factors may have tended toward less engagement with the philosophes: first, the new pope, Clement XIII, who replaced Benedict XIV in 1758, was generally less indulgent toward Enlightenment writers in France; second, with the death of Boyer, the old bishop of Mirepoix, on 13 August 1755, the feuille des benefices fell to the cardinal-archbishop of Bourges, uncle of Dominique de la Rochefoucauld, who led the moderate party in the 1755 General Assembly of the Clergy. The elder La Rochefoucauld tended to appoint moderate Jansenists to choice benefices in France: see McManners, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France, 2:502–503, 507–508.

88 The internationalization of a more moderate reformism among Jansenists and Gallicans, at the expense of the more invasive doctrinal haggling over Unigenitus and Augustininianism characteristic of the 1750s, has recently been analyzed in a thought-provoking article by Dale Van Kley. See Van Kley, “Classical Republicanism in Clerical Garb: Gallican Memories of the Early Church and the Project of Primitivist Reform, 1719–1791,” Past and Present (forthcoming). I am indebted to Professor Van Kley for graciously allowing me to read early drafts of this article.

89 Van Kley, The Expulsion of the Jesuits from France, 232–233; Masseau, Les Ennemis des philosophes, 24; Jean le Rond d'Alembert, “Troisième et dernière lettre à M. ***, conseiller au parlement de ***, pour server de supplement à l'ouvrage: Sur la destruction des Jésuites” in Oeuvres & correspondence complètes d'Alembert, ed. Charles Henry (Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1967), 27–34; on increased popularity of the philosophes and secularization of dominant issues to the detriment of theological concerns after 1763, see Maza, Sara, Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Célèbres of Pre-Revolutionary France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 65Google Scholar; Masseau, Ennemis des philosophes: l'antiphilosophie au temps des lumières, 158–159; for the theologically moderating influence of Lazarist seminaries in the second half of the eighteenth century, see Miller, “The French Seminary in the Eighteenth Century,” 68.

90 Masseau, Les ennemis des philosophes, 24.

91 Claude Adrien d'Helvétius, De l'Esprit, vol. 1, Oeuvres completes (Paris: Mme. Ve LePetit, 1818), I, 1–12; II.i, 4–6 (henceforth cited Helvétius, De l'Esprit, I, 1–12; II.i, 4–6).

92 Helvétius, De l'Esprit I.ii, 15.

93 Ibid., II.i, 43; II.vi, 71–76.

94 Ibid., II.xxiv, 217–218.

95 Ibid., II.vi, 74.

96 As Didier Masseau phrases it, “A lire ces condemnations, on a le sentiment, que chaque instance est acculée à la surenchère repressive, comme si le moindre retard risquait de passer pour un signe de faiblesse et d'inéfficacité”: see Ennemis des philosophes, 133.

97 Mandement de Monseigneur l'Archévêque de Paris portant condemnation d'un livre qui a pour titre, De l'Esprit (Paris: Simon, 1758), 28 pp., BN, MS. Joly de Fleury 352, fol. 18; for the earliest Jansenist response, see Smith, D. W., Helvétius: A Study in Persecution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 67–68Google Scholar; Masseau, Ennemis des philosophes, 132; Berthier had devoted seventy pages to criticizing the materialist tendencies of De l'Esprit in the September, October, and November 1758 issues of Journal de Trévoux. See Censer, Jack R., The French Press in the Age of Enlightenment (London: Routledge, 1994), 89–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; a formal papal condemnation also followed in 1759: Damnatio et prohibitio operas, cui titulus: De l'esprit: à Paris chez Durand, in-4, 1758, Clemens Papa XIII (Romae: Ex Typographia reverendae camarae apostolicae, M.DCC.LIX), 4 pp., BN, MS. Anisson-Duperron 22094, fol. 6.

98 Rogister, J. M. J., “Louis-Adrien Lepaige and the Attack on De l'esprit and the Encyclopédie in 1759,” The English Historical Review, 92, no. 364 (July 1977): 526Google Scholar.

99 Ibid., 530–531.

100 The topic warrants further study, but the same dynamic may have been at work when, in 1762, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was condemned by Beaumont, the Parlement of Paris, and the Sorbonne for his sentiments in the Emile. Yvon upbraids Rousseau for attacking Archbishop Beaumont for issuing his Mandement against Emile only because the Parlement of Paris acted first. If Beaumont's behavior in 1751–1752 and 1757–1759 is any indication of his response to Rousseau, then there may be a kernel of truth in Rousseau's attack: see Yvon, Claude, Lettres à Monsieur Rousseau, pour server de repose à sa lettre contre le mandement de Monsieur l'archévêque de Paris (Amsterdam: Marc-Michel Rey, 1763), 109Google Scholar. The campaign that culminated in the suppression and expulsion of the Jesuits from 1762–1764 can, in this sense, be directly linked to the 1758 attack on Helvétius in the Nouvelles ecclésiastiques and the Parlement of Paris. Lepaige's article cast renewed aspersion on the Jesuits' own heritage of theological enlightenment as prominent bishops who were not favorable to the Jesuits revisited the controversies surrounding works by Berruyer and Hardoun that had been dormant for some time. See Mandement et Instruction pastorale de Monseigneur l'évêque de Soissons, portant condemnation I. du Commentaire Latin du Fr. Hardouin de la Compagnie de Jesus sur le Nouveau Testament; II. des trois parties de l'Histoire du Peuple de Dieu … par le P. Isaac-Joseph Berruyer de la Compagnie de Jesus; III. De plusieurs libelles publiées pour la defense de la second partie de cette histoire (Paris: Desaint & Saillant, 1759), 16 pp., BN, MS. Anisson-Duperron fol. 14. This Archepiscopal mandement condemned Berruyer's original edition of Histoire du people de Dieu in 1728, as well as all subsequent editions (1728, 1733), abridgements (1753, 1754), and even Berruyer's defense of his own work in 1755 and 1759.

101 Mémoires sur la Librairie et la liberté de la Presse (Paris, 1809; Geneva: Slatkine Reprint, 1969), 351–352; Arrest de la Cour de Parlement, portant condemnation de plusieurs livres & autres ouvrages imprimés (22 janvier 1759) (Paris: Simon, 1759), 31 pp., BN, MS. Anisson-Duperron 22094 fol. 1ff.

102 Gordon, Forrey, Censoring of Diderot's Encyclopédie, 19; this elevation of social utility as the single most important moral and epistemological criterion is, in fact, a decisive turning point separating the earlier French Enlightenment characteristic of the regency period to the 1750s from the later, more anticlerical and secular variant that became salient after 1758–1763. See Wade, Ira O., The Intellectual Development of Voltaire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969), 773–774Google Scholar; compare with Wade, Ira O., The Structure and the Form of the French Enlightenment, 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), 1:50–52Google Scholar. Yet, Voltaire remained consistently albeit fideistically open to the possibility of revealed religion until well into the 1750s, and even thereafter his writings are ambivalent. Only with the 1750s is truth and enlightenment defined as whatever the human mind comprehends, and whatever does not detract from the progress of that comprehension. The very definition of metaphysics, itself, becomes synonymous with the use of any particular body of knowledge in advancing human understanding. See [Diderot], “Métaphysique,” in Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts, et des métiers (Neufchastel: Samuel Faulche, 1765), 10:440.

103 Even a partial list of the works mentioned in the Sorbonne's censure is sufficient to demonstrate the sweeping breadth of this campaign against “impiety”: 1) Hobbes's De l'Homme, 2) Diderot's Pensées philosophiques, 3) Locke's Essai sur l'entendement humaine, 4) the marquis d'Argens's Mémoires secrètes de la république de lettres, 5) Code de la Nature, 6) La Mettrie's L'Homme machine, his Essai sur la bonheur, and the Discours préliminaire to his collected works, 7) Collins's Ecrit sur la liberté, 8) Hume's Essais philosophiques sur l'entendement humain, 8) the French translation of Spinoza's Tractatus Theolo-politicus, 9) Montesquieu's Lettres persanes and Esprit des lois, 10) Toussaint's Les Moeurs, 11) Machiavelli's Le Prince. See BN, MS. Anisson-Duperron 22094, fol. 10ff.

104 Determinatio Sacrae Facultatis Parisiensis super libro cui titulus De l'Esprit/Censure de la Faculté de Théologie de Paris, contre le livre qui a pour titre, De l'Esprit (Paris: Jean-Baptiste Garnier, 1759), 79 pp., BN, MS. Anisson-Duperron 22094, fol. 10ff; Masseau, Ennemis des philosophes, 139–141.

105 Determinatio Sacrae Facultatis Parisiensis, BN, MS. Anisson-Duperron 22094, fol. 10ff, pp. 1–11.

106 L'abbé [Gabriel-François] Coyer, “Lettre au R. P. Berthier sur le matérialisme” [1758], in Oeuvres completes de m. l'abbé Coyer, 4 vols. (Paris: La Veuve Duchesne Librairie, 1782), 1:309–358.

107 Grimm, Diderot, Raynal, Meister, Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique, revue sur les texts originaux comprenant outré ce qui a été publié à diverses époques les fragments supprimés, conserves à la Bibliothèque Ducale de Gotha et à l'Arsenal à Paris, avec notices, notes, table générale par Maurice Tourneux, 16 vols. (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1878; repr. Nendeln/Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1968), 238–241.

108 Proust, Jacques, Diderot et l'Encyclopédie (Paris: Armand Colin, 1967), 296–298Google Scholar; compare with Shackleton, Robert, “When did the Philosophes Become a Party,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, vol. 60 (1977): 197Google Scholar; Messières, “L'Encyclopédie et la crise de la Société au milieu du XVIIIème siècle,” French Review 24 (October 1950): 393.

109 “Letter of Turgot to l'abbé Millot à Paris 2 September 1762,” in Mémoires de l'abbé Millot (1726–1785), ed. Pingaud, in Nouvelle revue retrospective 8 n. s. (January–June 1898): 164–165; see also estimation of André Latrelle, that “the church utilized ‘le bras seculier’ inconsistently and ineffectually in trying to stamp out incrédulité” in Latrelle, L'Eglise Catholique et la Révolution Française: Le pontificat de Pie VI et la crise Française (1775–1799) (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1946), 2:21–22.

110 Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines (1746), in Oeuvres philosophiques de Condillac, 2 vols. (Paris, 1746; Paris: Dufart, 1795/Année 3), Part I, Sec. 1, Chap. i. 6–8, 1:5–10.

111 O'Neal, John C., The Authority of Experience: Sensationist Theory in the French Enlightenment (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 22, 246Google Scholar; also O'Neal, John C., Changing Minds: The Shifting Perception of Culture in Eighteenth-Century France (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2002), 95–96Google Scholar.

112 Babelon, André, introduction to Diderot, Correspondance inédite publiée d'après les manuscrits originaux (Paris: Librairie Gallimard, Editions de la nouvelle révue française, 1931), 1:48–49Google Scholar.

113 [Diderot], “Lettre à mon frère du décembre 1760,” in Oeuvres de Denis Diderot publiées sur les manuscrits de l'auteur, 15 vols., ed. Jacques-André Naigeon (Paris: Deterville, an VIII [1800]), 1:413, 1:416, 1:420.

114 Diderot adapts his article on the Crusades from the Histoire ecclésiastique of abbé de Fleury and recounts, first, the gory details of the Peasants' Crusades, concluding in the end that the depopulation of Europe and the ruin of church discipline and of agriculture during the Middle Ages were all the result of these bloody wars against heresy: see “Croisades,” in Encyclopédie (Paris: Briasson, David, Le Breton, Durand, 1754), 4:502–505; Proust, Diderot et l'Encyclopédie, 297–298. Elsewhere, Diderot writes, “Pourqui donc ne prenez-vous pas pour une faussété, une supposition que vous ne pouvez appliquer à aucune question métaphysique, physique, politique, et morale, sans obscurcir?” See “Lettre 54 àu Damilaville (12 septembre 1765),” in Correspondance inédite, 279; a similar transformation of d'Alembert's religious views appears evident beginning between 1752–1765. Perhaps reflecting on the “inquisition” spoken of by the marquis d'Argenson and Barbier, d'Alembert recommended, “Que les souverains m'éprisent et ignorant les disputes de religion; elles ne deviendront ni turbulentes ni funestes. Qu'ils favorisent les progrès de la raison, et ces disputes deviendront ridicules … Aux interest de la seule religion veritable … doit tender, autant qu'il est possible, à détruire et à saper les autres, non par la force, mais par le raisonnement et la persuasion.” le Rond d'Alembert, Jean, “Fragment sur la veritable religion” in Oeuvres et correspondences inédites, ed. Henry, Charles (Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1967), 1, 3Google Scholar.

115 Proust, Diderot et l'Encyclopédie, 303–305; 313–323.

116 Jones, Colin, The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon, 1715–99 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 173Google Scholar.

117 Gordon, Forrey, Censoring of Diderot's Encyclopédie, 17.

118 Lough, The Contributors to the Encyclopédie, 23.

119 “Lettre 20 à Voltaire, 19 février 1758,” in Correspondance générale II, vol. 19, Oeuvres complètes de Diderot, ed. J. Assézat et Maurice Tourneux (Paris: Garnier, 1876), 451.

120 “Lettre 28 à Voltaire, 20 septembre 1762,” in ibid., 464–465.

121 Anitus promises Drixa that he will do away with Socrates because the object of Drixa's affections, Sophronime, is one of Socrates's disciples. Similarly, Aglaé, the object of the unrequited affections of Anitus, is also attached to Socrates. Naked self-interest and personal grudges become, for Voltaire, the sole reasons for the persecution of “philosophie”: see Voltaire, Socrate: Ouvrage dramatique en trois actes traduit de l'anglais de feu M. Thomson par feu Fatema, comme on sait (1759), Act I, Scene 2, 5, 7, in Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, nouvelle édition, ed. Beuchot (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1877), 5:366–379.

122 Ibid., Act II, Scene 6, 5:380.

123 Gordon, Forrey, Censoring of Diderot's Encyclopédie, 24.

124 [Voltaire], “Philosophe,” in Encyclopédie (Paris: Briasson, David, Le Breton, Durand, 1765), 12:511–515; see also Voltaire, “Introduction aux Questions sur l'Encyclopédie par les amateurs,” in Oeuvres completes, ed. Beuchot (Paris: Garnier, 1878), 17:3–5.

125 Voltaire, “Bornes de l'esprit humain,” in Dictionnaire philosophique, édition présentée et annotée par Alain Pons (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 106–107.

126 Ibid., 54–55.

127 Ibid., 55.

128 Ibid., 55.

129 See similar discussion of eighteenth-century apologetics in Hisayasu Nakagawa, “J.-J. Rousseau et J.-G. Pompignan: La ‘Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard’ et ‘De la religion civile’ critiqués par l'Instruction pastorale”; Didier Masseau, “La position des apologistes conciliateurs”; Straudo, Arnoux, “L'abbé Gauchat, un apologiste des Lumières” in Dix-huitième siècle 34 (2002): 67–76; 121–130; 277–288Google Scholar.

130 Everdell, Christian Apologetics in France, 1730–1790, 104–125.

131 Ibid., 140–141, 152–153, 194.

132 Burson, “Abdication of Legitimate Heirs,” in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (2005/7), 297–325.

133 Jacob, Margaret C., Strangers Nowhere in the World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

134 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 12.