A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2 by J. M. Robertson

of Diderot; but other philosophes of less note entered from time to time; [1064] Marmontel was elected in 1763; and when in 1764 the Academy's prize for poetry was given to Chamfort for a piece which savoured of what were then called "the detestable principles of Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Helvétius," and in 1768 its prize for eloquence went to the same writer, the society as a whole had acquired a certain character for impiety. [1065] In 1767 there had occurred the famous ecclesiastical explosion over Marmontel's philosophic romance Bélisaire, a performance in which it is somewhat difficult to-day to detect any exciting quality. It was by a chapter in praise of toleration that the "universal and mediocre Marmontel" [1066] secured from the Sorbonne the finest advertisement ever given to a work of fiction, the ecclesiastics of the old school being still too thoroughly steeped in the past to realize that a gospel of persecution was a bad warcry for a religion that was being more and more put on the defensive. Only an angry fear before the rising flood of unlicensed literature, combining with the long-baffled desire to strike some blow at freethinking, could have moved the Sorbonne to select for censure the duly licensed work [1067] of a popular academician and novelist; and it should be remembered that it was at a time of great activity in the unlicensed production of freethinking literature that the attack was made. The blow recoiled signally. The book was of course promptly translated into all the languages of Europe, selling by tens of thousands; [1068] and two sovereigns took occasion to give it their express approval. These were the Empress Catherine (who caused the book to be translated by members of her court while she was making a tour of her empire, she herself taking a chapter), and the Empress Maria-Theresa. From Catherine, herself a freethinker, the approbation might have been expected; but the known orthodoxy and austerity of Maria-Theresa made her support the more telling. In France a small literary tempest raged for a year. Marmontel published his correspondence with the syndic of the Sorbonne and with Voltaire; and in all there appeared some dozen documents pro and con, among them an anonymous satire by Turgot, Les xxxvii verités opposées aux xxxvii impiétés de Bélisaire, "Par un Bachelier Ubiquiste," [1069] which, with the contributions of Voltaire, gave the victim very much the best of the battle.