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though primarily ‘secular’ and ‘laic,’ was not intrinsically ‘irreligious’ or ‘anticlerical.’”125 However, faith and reason became recognized as two distinct modes of knowledge. Free will won the day against blind religious devotion and the political arena ceased to be considered as the fulfillment of a divine project. Scientific and technical progress in both the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries associated with Ambroise Paré, Copernicus, Kepler or Galileo, contributed to demonstrate that human reason was equipped with the capacity of investigation. There were no longer absolute truths. There were only convictions or hypotheses, all necessarily relative. With Descartes (1596–1650) arrived methodological doubt leading to a new orientation with man thrown into history and seeking to change its course.126

      The seventeenth century likewise left its mark on the world of ideas. Fix writes,

It has long been accepted that the great discoveries of the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century played a major role in the gradual displacement of the traditional European religious worldview by an outlook based on reason and secularism. . . . The demonstrated power of human reason to discover the fundamental natural laws governing the operation of the physical universe awakened in people a great confidence in the ability of reason to provide humankind with knowledge of other vital aspects of human experience as well.127

The eighteenth century was marked by the Enlightenment (le siècle des Lumières), known also as the Age of Reason. This period extends from the death of Louis XIV in 1714 to the French Revolution in 1789. The laicization of the State in France finds its origins in the philosophy of Enlightenment thinkers in opposition to religion and the power of the Catholic Church.128 Enlightenment philosophy created the conditions for the recognition of laïcité as a principle of a society open to freedoms and philosophical thinking, some agnostic, some atheistic, yet detached from religion.129 Many of these great thinkers were deists and not opposed to religion as such. They were hostile toward an intolerant religion which became humanly and politically unacceptable.130 Kärkkäinen provides the following caution:

With regard to a more tolerant attitude toward other religions, we should not ignore the radical transformation of intellectual climate brought about by the Enlightenment. Before the Enlightenment and the rise of classical liberalism that followed, most people took it for granted that an exclusive claim to the superiority of Christianity needed no extensive justification. The Enlightenment eradicated major pillars of orthodoxy, however, and left theology and the church to rethink major doctrines and convictions.131

In Davis’s view, “The spirit of the age may be summed up in four words—Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Encylclopæedists. In them, were to lie almost all the Revolutionary law and the prophets.”132 Whether theists like Voltaire or Rousseau, or atheists like Diderot, the philosophers shared the idea of the necessity of separation between the Church and State. Montesquieu advanced a theory on the separation of powers; Voltaire advocated for an enlightened monarchy; Rousseau chose the Republic, but they all condemned the obscurantism of the Church, symbolized by the affairs of Calas, Sirven, and Chevalier de la Barre.133

The Enlightenment cried out for the autonomy of the individual, equality, and tolerance. Luc Ferry remarks concerning the Enlightenment thinkers, that with their critique of superstition, many have considered the birth of a democratic universe as the effect of a rupture with religion.134 The publication of l’Encyclopédie (1751–1780) with 150 scholars, philosophers and specialists from a multitude of disciplines pushed the quest for knowledge and was condemned by the Church. Gaillard describes the times as a “blast of knowledge in constant movement shaking things up, like a steady tide against the cliffs of dogma. And when the insatiable thirst of change met the aspirations of the enlightened nobility, of the dynamic bourgeoisie, and of the miserable commoners, the result was the Revolution.”135

Each of the above-mentioned philosophers and others merit more attention than can be given here. Stumpf sees them as “dissident voices who challenged the traditional modes of thought concerning religion, government, and morality. Believing that human reason provides the most reliable guide to man’s destiny, they held that ‘Reason is to the philosophe what grace is to the Christian.’”136 Among these men, Barzun considers Voltaire “the Enlightenment personified and the supreme master in all genres.”137 Voltaire, born François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), did not live to see the French Revolution. Yet he is representative of Enlightenment personages who were influential in their advocacy of freedom of and freedom from religion. French was considered the diplomatic language of the eighteenth century and Voltaire’s writings were read throughout Europe. He was no friend to religion, at least as he knew it in France. As a Deist, he mercilessly attacked the established Church in France. For him the Church represented “all the traditionalism, mediævalism, intolerance, and political absolutism as it then existed in France.”138 He became the idol of free thinkers and the reference for an enlightened bourgeoisie. He considered Catholicism harmful to the nations and Christianity as the principal cause of injustice in the world.139 History records the example of Voltaire’s defense of the chevalier, Jean-François de la Barre, who was condemned to death in 1766 for refusing to remove his hat at the passing of a religious procession. The defense was in vain and the nineteen-year-old chevalier was executed, decapitated, his body burned, and for good measure a banned copy of Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary was added to the flames.140

      Walker captures well Voltaire and his genius, a man who has achieved almost mythic status:

In Voltaire, eighteenth-century France had its keenest wit. No philosopher, vain, self-seeking, but with genuine hatred of tyranny, especially of religious persecution, no one ever attacked organized religion with a more unsparing ridicule. . . . Voltaire was a true Deist in his belief in the existence of God and of a primitive natural religion consisting of a simple morality and in his rejection of all that rested on the authority of the Bible or church.141

In his Philosophical Letters Voltaire contrasts religion in France with the religious tolerance he found in England during a period of exile there. He states, “If one religion only were allowed in England, the government would very possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut one another’s throats; but, as there is such a multitude, they all live happy, and in peace.”142 What Voltaire described in England, at least in the first two statements, somewhat accurately depicts the history of religion in France as he had known it. The multitude of religions and any ensuing peace and happiness were a long way off in France. The relation of Voltaire to laïcité is debated and the term did not yet exist at the time he wrote. We have seen, however, that Gaillard speaks of embryonic laïcité originating in the sixteenth century.143 André Magnan, professor emeritus at the University of Paris and president of honor of the Société Voltaire, considers Voltaire the precursor of notions of laïcité in his thought and writings in opposition to religious fanaticism.144 Philosophy professor Christophe Paillard disagrees with the claim that Voltaire represents a step which led to the elaboration of the concept of laïcité. He argues that Voltaire never affirmed the necessity of the religious neutrality of the State. To the contrary, he affirms that Voltaire believed the State needed to exercise control over religions to prevent them from imposing themselves on peoples’ consciences.145 In any case, Paillard admits that Voltaire is situated between tolerance and laïcité, the latter word invented one hundred twenty-five years after his death.146 He concedes that Voltaire created the intellectual climate of that which Jean Baubérot conceptualizes as the “first threshold of laicization,” which one might interpret as interconfessional tolerance.147

Tolerance and incipient laïcité are related ideas in Voltaire’s search for freedom from religion. It is important, however, to understand the origin and nuances of the French word tolérance. The word comes from the Latin tolerare which initially had the sense “to bear,” “to endure,” or “to put up with” in a pejorative sense that which one could not prevent. The edicts of tolerance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, sometimes called edicts of pacification, were concessions to which the monarchy resigned itself in order to stop the bloodshed. It was not until the time of Voltaire that tolerance became a virtue, not simply resignation. Paillard develops the Voltairean concept of tolerance as a principle of mediation between

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