Jean Calas

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Jean Calas
The great Calas, engraving by Daniel Chodowiecki

Jean Calas (born March 19, 1698 in Lacabarède , Département Tarn , † March 10, 1762 in Toulouse ) was a French Protestant who was the victim of a judicial murder . He was accused of strangling his eldest son, who hanged himself in the family home, to prevent him from converting to Catholicism. The "Calas Affair" became known throughout Europe thanks to Voltaire , who campaigned for his posthumous rehabilitation in a journalistic way, including the text Traité sur la tolérance (1763) .

Life

The arrest of Calas.

The affair probably began on October 13, 1761 because Calas (who had recently completed a law degree but had not been admitted to the final exam as a Protestant) wanted to spare the deceased from being buried as a suicide and had stated that he had found him strangled . However, since it was known that he would have liked to prevent the transfer of another of his four sons, the suspicion quickly arose that this time, in a similar situation, he had resorted to extreme measures. When Calas, after the family had also been interrogated, reported the truth, he was not believed. Rather, a confession in the desired sense was extracted from him under torture . Although he had canceled it immediately, which sentenced him Parlement of Toulouse because of murder to death by wheels and subsequent combustion on the pyre . The judgment was carried out on March 9, 1762, with Calas again desperately pleading his innocence. His son had previously received a Catholic burial, transfigured as a martyr .

The gruesome death of Calas, plaited on the wheel in Toulouse on March 9, 1762

Voltaire first heard the official version and was outraged that a father had been willing to murder his son out of religious fanaticism . But after another son of Calas had presented the facts to him personally, he took up the case and managed to resume the trial in 1764. Calas was acquitted posthumously in 1765 and the king provided the family with 36,000 livres in compensation.

Voltaire's handwriting with the famous phrase " Écrasez l'infâme " at the end of the document.

literature

Fiction
Non-fiction
  • Gilbert Collard : Voltaire, l'affaire Calas et nous . Éditions Belles Lettres, Paris 1994, ISBN 2-251-44034-8 .
  • Alex Coutet: Jean Calas. Roué vif et innocent . Édipro, Hendaye 2003, ISBN 2-9510411-7-9 .
  • Janine Garrisson: L'affaire Calas . Fayard, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-213-62131-4 .
  • Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey (Ed.): Voltaire, Die Affäre Calas Insel-Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-458-17481-3 .
  • Wilhelm Mangold: Jean Calas and Voltaire. A contribution to the history of the struggle for tolerance . Luckhardt Publishing House, Kassel 1861.
  • Voltaire: “Traité sur la Tolérance” à l'occasion de la mort de Jean Calas, 1763 . Primento Digital Publ., Cork 2015, ISBN 978-2-335-04812-4 (unchanged reprint of Paris 1887 edition)
    • German: Günther Mensching : "About tolerance", caused by the execution of Johann Calas in 1762 . In the S. (Ed.): Voltaire, Law and Politics . Syndicate, Frankfurt / M. 1986, ISBN 3-434-46075-6 , pp. 84-256 (EA Frankfurt / M. 1978).
    • German: Albert Gier , Chris E. Paschold: Voltaire, The Tolerance Affair . In: Diess. (Ed.): The tolerance affair . Manholt, Bremen 1993, pp. 31–111, ISBN 3-924903-47-6 .
  • the Correspondance-Voltaire (German) website contains further literature and two pages specifically on the Jean Calas case: http://www.correspondance-voltaire.de/html/tolerance.html

filming

Web links

Commons : Jean Calas  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Calas, Jean
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French Protestant, victim of a judicial murder
DATE OF BIRTH March 19, 1698
PLACE OF BIRTH Lacabarède , Tarn department
DATE OF DEATH March 10, 1762
Place of death Toulouse