Voltaire

Jesuit education and the early literary scene

François-Marie Arouet was born November 21, 1694, in Paris. His father was a minor notary; his mother died when he was 7. From 1704 to 1711 he attended the Collège Louis-le-Grand, the Jesuit school in Paris that was then one of the most rigorous educational institutions in Europe. The Jesuit curriculum emphasized Latin, rhetoric, logic, and the classical canon at a level that produced documented childhood records of the kind Cox's methodology rewarded.

Arouet showed literary talent in school and was already writing satirical verse in his teens. His father wanted him to become a lawyer; he was sent to the law school of the University of Paris in 1711 and to a clerkship in The Hague in 1713. He resisted the legal career and was rapidly drawn into Parisian literary circles.

His early Parisian period produced poetry, plays, and political verse - some of it explicitly anti-royalist. In 1717, age 22, he was imprisoned in the Bastille for nearly a year over a satirical poem mocking the Regent, Philippe d'Orléans. He used the imprisonment to complete his first tragedy, Œdipe (1718), which became a major Paris-stage hit on its release.

The English exile (1726-1729) and the philosophical turn

In 1726 Voltaire was briefly imprisoned in the Bastille a second time after a dispute with the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot (Rohan had insulted him publicly; Voltaire had returned the insult with characteristic wit; Rohan had had Voltaire beaten by hired thugs; Voltaire had challenged Rohan to a duel; the Rohan family had Voltaire arrested). After his release he was exiled to England.

The English exile (1726-1729) was a turning point in Voltaire's intellectual development. He encountered the political institutions of post-1688 England (constitutional monarchy, religious toleration, parliamentary opposition) and the scientific work of Isaac Newton and John Locke. He learned English well enough to read the major figures in the original.

On his return to France he published the Lettres philosophiques (Philosophical Letters or Letters Concerning the English Nation, 1734), a comparative account of English vs. French political and intellectual institutions that was a thinly-veiled attack on French absolutism. The book was condemned by the Paris parlement and ordered burned. Voltaire fled Paris for the Château de Cirey in eastern France, where he lived with Émilie du Châtelet for the next decade and a half.

Cirey, Berlin, and Ferney

The Cirey years (1734-1749) were Voltaire's most scientifically productive. With Émilie du Châtelet - a remarkable mathematician and physicist in her own right - he wrote treatises on Newtonian physics, an Essay on the Customs and Spirit of Nations (a pioneering work of comparative cultural history), and substantial dramatic and lyric output. The intellectual partnership with du Châtelet was central to his Cirey-era work; she translated Newton's Principia into French (her translation, with commentary, is still the standard French version) and was a more rigorous physicist than Voltaire himself was.

After du Châtelet's death in 1749, Voltaire accepted Frederick the Great's long-standing invitation to join the Prussian court at Potsdam. The Berlin period (1750-1753) was personally difficult; Voltaire and Frederick fought, often publicly, and Voltaire eventually had to leave Berlin under difficult circumstances. He took refuge in Geneva and then bought the estate of Ferney just over the French-Swiss border in 1758.

Voltaire lived at Ferney for the next 20 years - effectively a small canton that he ran personally. He developed local industries (watchmaking, silk-weaving), built houses for refugees from religious persecution, and conducted his enormous correspondence (his Ferney letter-output exceeded 200 letters per month at peak). The Ferney years are also when he wrote Candide (1759), the Dictionnaire philosophique (1764), and many of his best-known shorter polemical works.

The Calas affair and the political polemic period

In 1762 Voltaire took up the cause of Jean Calas, a French Huguenot Protestant who had been wrongly convicted and executed for the murder of his son (the son had actually committed suicide). Voltaire campaigned for three years to have the verdict overturned - publishing pamphlets, conducting his own investigation, marshalling public opinion - and in 1765 Calas was posthumously exonerated by royal command.

The Calas affair established Voltaire as the leading European voice for religious toleration and judicial reform. He undertook similar campaigns in subsequent years for the Sirven family (1764-1771), for the Chevalier de la Barre (executed for blasphemy, 1766), and for several other victims of French ecclesiastical and judicial abuse. The combined campaigns are sometimes credited with substantially advancing the legal status of French Protestants and the broader French acceptance of religious toleration.

The Traité sur la tolérance (Treatise on Tolerance, 1763) and the Dictionnaire philosophique (1764) are the central published works of this political-polemic period. The Dictionary in particular is one of the founding documents of European secularism; its short, accessible entries on religious, political, and historical topics were designed to be circulated through informal channels and read in private.

Return to Paris and death (1778)

In February 1778, after 28 years of exile, Voltaire returned to Paris for the rehearsal of his last play, Irène. He was 83 years old and in declining health. The return triggered an enormous public reception; he was made an honorary member of the Académie Française and his play was performed before the Queen and a packed house. He attended a session of the Académie where his audience reportedly stood for him for over an hour.

He died on May 30, 1778, in Paris, days after the play's premiere. Because of his anti-clerical reputation he was denied burial in consecrated ground in Paris; his nephew arranged for the body to be transported to a Champagne abbey for burial. In 1791, after the French Revolution, his remains were returned to Paris and placed in the Panthéon.

Voltaire's position in the French intellectual canon is unusual. He is read in French schools across multiple subjects (literature, philosophy, history) and is among the most-cited single figures in the history of the French language. His correspondence (in the Besterman edition) runs to 51 volumes and is the most extensive surviving correspondence of any 18th-century European intellectual.

Timeline

• 1694Born François-Marie Arouet in Paris.
• 1704Begins education at the Collège Louis-le-Grand at age 10.
• 1717Imprisoned in the Bastille for nearly a year over a satirical poem.
• 1718Premiere of Œdipe; adopts the pen name Voltaire.
• 1726Second Bastille imprisonment; exiled to England.
• 1729Returns to France.
• 1734Publishes Lettres philosophiques; flees Paris for Cirey.
• 1749Émilie du Châtelet dies.
• 1750Joins Frederick the Great's court at Potsdam.
• 1753Leaves Berlin under difficult circumstances.
• 1758Buys the estate of Ferney near the Swiss border.
• 1759Publishes Candide.
• 1762Begins Calas affair campaign.
• 1764Publishes Dictionnaire philosophique.
• 1778Returns to Paris after 28 years' absence; dies May 30 at age 83.
• 1791Remains transferred to the Panthéon.

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