Abbé—Originally an abbot, elected by monks to direct their abbey, there were several types of abbés by the eighteenth century in France. The type encountered perhaps most frequently was a “secular cleric” who had received the minor orders; a sort of honorary title. This type of “abbé” has no equivalent in English.

Albigensian, or Cathar, Crusade (1209–1229)—The Cathar sect, based on gnostic teachings, had sprung up two centuries earlier in and around the town of Albi in the south of France. They claimed that their beliefs, which gave more importance to women and the role of Mary Magdalene as a spiritual leader, dated from the earliest Christian times, a view now regarded as substantially correct. They had been declared heretical several times, when Pope Innocent III offered all their lands to French nobles willing to lead a “crusade” against them in 1209. Tens of thousands were slaughtered, their towns burned to the ground. Spearheaded by St. Dominic and his Dominicans, this genocide is often considered the beginning of the Inquisition.

Ananias and Sapphira—A couple in Acts 5 of the Bible who sold their land to lay the money at Peter's feet but who lied to hold back a little for themselves. When Peter rebuked them, they both magically dropped dead, causing great fear all around, it is said.

Annates—The lands and its revenues accorded to an ecclesiastic are called a benefice and the whole of the first year's profits, called annates, were given to the papal treasury, also known as the “First Fruits” (Latin primitiae), a concept that dates back to earlier Greek, Roman, and Hebrew religions.

Antonines—Voltaire references to the Antonins seems to refer to what is now called the Nerva-Antonine dynasty of Roman Emperors who ruled from 96 to 192 CE: Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antonius Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Verus, and Commodu. The first five are commonly referred to as “the Five Good Emperors” who ruled with wisdom and virtue.

Balthasar Gérard (1575–1584)—Assassinated the Dutch independence leader William I of Orange after Philip II, the King of Spain, had offered a large reward for it. He was sentenced to be quartered and disemboweled alive following several days of equally hideously appalling tortures.

Bishop of Rome—The pope, who was originally a bishop like all the other bishops.

Bonze—A now-obsolete Western term for Bikkhu, a male Buddhist monk.

Canon Law—The body of laws determined by a given church authority (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, etc.) to govern its members.

Carpocratians—An early Gnostic sect accused of libertinism by early Church fathers such as Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria. None of their own writings subsist, however.

Charles XII—The subject of Voltaire's first history book, Charles XII was King of Sweden from 1697 to 1718. He defended the Swedish Empire from a triple alliance of Denmark-Norway, Saxony-Poland-Lithuania, and Russia, led by Peter the Great. Charles’ death effectively put an end to the Swedish Empire.

Chevalier de La Barre—Jean-François de La Barre (1745–1766). An impoverished French nobleman condemned for not taking off his hat before a religious procession and possibly singing impious songs, tortured and beheaded at the age of nineteen. Voltaire tried to rehabilitate his memory in several writings, in vain. Condorcet relates the story near the end of his extract in the Appendix.

Colao—A title given ministers in the Chinese Empire, sometimes translated as a “mandarin.”

Consubstantiality—Refers to the belief that the three persons of the Christian Trinity (God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Ghost) are all one. The term was coined by Tertullian (160–225) and has the same meaning as the Greek term “homoousios” favored by Athanasius and ratified at the Nicene Council in the fourth century.

Convulsionaries—The convulsionnaires evolved from among the more fanatical members of the Jansenists who vied bitterly with the Jesuits in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They tortured themselves, some to the point of having themselves crucified with nails, in the belief that their convulsions provoked “prophetic visions.”

Dom Calmet—Benedictine monk and well-known Biblical scholar. His twenty-three-volume Literal Commentary on all the Books of the Old Testament and the New Testament, composed from 1706 to 1716, was often consulted by Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet who both knew the author personally.

The Decalogue—The Ten Commandments.

Damiens—Robert-François Damiens (1715–1757). A French servant who stabbed French King Louis XV, probably because of the Catholic clergy's refusal to grant the holy sacraments to Jansenists. Though he intentionally inflicted only a slight wound in warning, as he said, he was drawn and quartered in a highly public execution, the legal punishment for regicide.

Dervish—A member of a Muslim religious group, noted for a fast spinning dance done as a part of worship.

Écu—Can refer to one of several French coins, usually gold. The first écu was minted in 1266. They disappeared during the French Revolution, though the term was still employed by the people for the five-franc silver coins. Its purchasing power before the Revolution was roughly equivalent to twenty-five US dollars in 2006.

Edict of Nantes—An edict issued by King Henri IV of France in 1598 extending tolerance and civil rights to French Calvinist Protestants, known as Huguenots, to end the Catholic-Protestant religious wars that had afflicted France (and all Europe) for the previous half century. Louis XIV revoked it in 1685.

Esdras—An earlier form of “Ezra,” the prophet, used in the Catholic and Hebrew Bibles.

François I—French king who ruled during the Renaissance from 1515 to 1547, contemporary to King Henry VIII of England.

Grimm—Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm (1723–1807), Born in Germany, he moved to Paris at the age of twenty-five and became a journalist and critic of the arts, writing in French. A member of Baron d'Holbach and Diderot's atheistic inner circle, a contributor to the Encyclopedia but best-known for his bimonthly newsletter, the Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique, published from 1753 to 1790.

Guebres, Ghebers, Parsis—Fire worshippers; descendants and followers of the ancient Persian religion reformed by Zoroaster. The name Guebre was given them by the Arabian Muslim conquerors, according to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and is now applied to fire worshippers generally.

Henri II—King of France from 1547 till his death in 1559. Married to Catherine de Medici when both were fourteen, but famous for his twenty-five year liaison with Diane de Poitiers, his widowed mistress and former governess, twenty-one years his elder. Killed in a jousting tournament, he had struggled to suppress the ever-increasing Protestant Reformation in France.

Henri III—The last of the Valois kings of France who reigned during the Catholic-Protestant wars. He was murdered by Jacques Clément who opposed his religious tolerance.

Henri IV—Protestant cousin of Henri III, and the first of the Bourbon kings of France. He converted to Catholicism, the dominant religion in France, famously saying that Paris was “worth a mass” but issued the Edict of Nantes granting tolerance for Protestants. Though much beloved by the people for his compassion and good humor, there were several attempts on his life, both from Protestants who considered him a traitor and Catholics who considered him a usurper. He was murdered in the end by a Catholic zealot, François Ravaillac. Voltaire wrote an epic poem about him called La Henriade, which was highly popular for a century and widely translated.

Huguenot—A member of the Protestant Reformed Church of France, which was inspired by Calvin in the 1530s. Roughly half a million Huguenots fled from France to Protestant countries and colonies during the religious wars and persecutions.

Hussite, or Bohemian, Wars—Five crusades launched by the pope from 1420 to 1431 against the Hussites, followers of Jan Hus, who denounced the corruption of the Church and Papacy and promoted the reformist ideas of English theologian John Wycliffe. Centered in Prague, the conflicts soon engulfed Bohemia, Moravia, Poland, Lithuania, and most of central Europe. Most of Bohemia was ravaged, and Hus was burned at the stake for heresy.

Ixion—A king in Greek legend who engendered the Centaurs—called ixionadie, after him—with a cloud in the form of Hera. It is one of Voltaire's pet jokes that the Old Testament in his day listed ixion among the forbidden foods, along with griffin (or gryphon), another legendary creature.

Jansenism—A Calvinistic movement within the Catholic Church that emphasized original sin, human depravity, predestination, the necessity of divine grace, and the denial of free will. Its most famous adherent was Blaise Pascal, and its theological center was the Port Royal convent in Paris. The Jesuits had Jansenist teachings condemned as heretical several times, and both groups battled each other incessantly throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Jacques Clément (1567–1589)—Dominican lay brother and member of the Catholic League who regarded Protestantism as heresy and who murdered French King Henri III. Though his body was quartered and burned, he was praised by Pope Sixtus V, who considered canonizing him.

La Brinvilliers—Marie Madeleine Dreux d'Aubry (1630–1676). A French marquise convicted of poisoning her own father, both brothers, for attempts on her husband and possibly her sister, and who very likely poisoned a number of inmates at a charity hospital she visited, presumably to perfect her art. She appeared so pious at her execution that the crowd wanted her sainted. Madame de Sévigny, Alexandre Dumas père, and A. Conan Doyle, among others, wrote about her.

Lama—A title similar to guru in Tibetan Buddhism, applied to the Dalai Lama, for example.

Laokium—Followers of Laokium, or the sect of Tao-se. More details on this and other Chinese sects can be found at: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Dictionary_of_All_Religions_and_Religious_Denominations/Chinese.

Lettre de Cachet—Letters with the royal seal, or cachet, were orders directly from the king that could not be appealed. Often used to order imprisonment or expulsion without trial in the Old Régime.

Louis (the coin)—In the preface to Voltaire en son temps, the Voltaire Foundation in Oxford estimated that one louis was roughly the equivalent of twenty-four pounds sterling in 1987. One franc and one pound were equivalent sums in the eighteenth century.

Louis IX (aka St. Louis)—French king who reigned from 1226 till his death in 1270. He led the seventh and eighth Crusades, had some twelve thousand copies of the Talmud and other Jewish books burned at the bidding of Pope Gregory IX and is the only French king who was canonized (in 1297). He is often considered the ideal Christian monarch, and countless cities around the world are named St. Louis or San Luis in his honor. His hair shirt and scourge are on display in the Treasures of Notre-Dame de Paris.

M.—The abbreviation for Monsieur in French.

Madame du Châtelet—Gabrielle Émilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du Châtelet (1706–1749); a mathematician and physicist, she was best known for her translation and corrections of Newton's Principia mathematica (on gravity)—still the standard translation in French. She and Voltaire became romantically involved in 1733 and lived together till her death, with the assent of her good-natured husband, a military commander rarely home.

Marabout—A dervish in Muslim Africa, believed to have supernatural power.

Parlement—French Parliaments were the Appeal Courts, the highest of the judicial institutions, and not legislative bodies like in England. However, laws and edicts from the Crown did not become official till the parlements gave their assent by publishing them. Members bought or inherited their office and ruled primarily for the benefit of their own class. There were thirteen parlements in France in Voltaire's day, although references to just “Parlement” meant the Parlement of Paris, which was the oldest and had the largest jurisdiction.

Parsis—See Guebres.

Pentateuch—The first five books of the Bible, traditionally attributed to Moses: i.e., Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

Philosophes—The French word for philosophers, but used in English it has come to mean specifically the French Enlightenment writers.

Platonist—A follower or disciple of Plato.

St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre—August 24, 1572, was in fact only the starting date of a Catholic-Protestant butchery, which began in Paris, then spread to twenty other provinces in France. Estimations of the death toll range from five to thirty thousand.

St. Genevieve (423–512 CE)—The patron saint of Paris, said to have diverted Attila the Hun from attacking the city by leading a prayer marathon. When Childeric I besieged and conquered Paris in 464, she acted as intermediary, collecting food and getting prisoners released. Her relics were carried in procession yearly and in times of crisis.

Simon Barjona—The original name of Peter, Jesus’ apostle. The popes claim to be his successors.

Simony—The buying or selling of church offices or powers. The name is taken from Simon Magus (Acts 8:18), who tried to buy the power of conferring the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Simony became widespread in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

Sophism—An argument apparently correct in form, but invalid; especially one used to deceive.

Sorbonne—The Sorbonne University or college, founded in 1257 by Robert de Sorbon, is one of the oldest universities in Europe. In the eighteenth century, and ever since Medieval times like most universities, it taught mainly theology. It provided the censors used by the Old Régime.

St. Medard—A church in the Latin Quarter in Paris where the Convulsionaries gathered to perform their “miracles” in its cemetery.

Talapoin—A name given the Buddhist monks of Burma and Thailand by the Europeans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, according to the Larousse dictionary.

Thales (624–546 BCE)—A pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and one of the Seven Sages, author of Thales’ Theorem. Bertrand Russell said Western philosophy began with Thales, who attempted to explain natural phenomenon without mythology and was hailed as the first true mathematician for using geometry to calculate the height of pyramids and the distance of ships. He was also the first known to use deductive reasoning, define principles, and set forth hypotheses.

Tobias—One of the five books of the Latin Vulgate Bible the Protestant Bibles did not retain.

Transubstantiation—The belief that the bread and wine given at Communion become the body and blood of Jesus Christ when blessed.

Treaty of Westphalia—A series of treaties signed in 1648 to put an end to the Thirty Years’ War and to the Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the Dutch Republic. Calvinism was given legal recognition and the right of princes to determine the religion of their states was recognized, the options being Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism.

Zend-Avesta—A slight misnomer for the Avesta due to some eighteenth-century accounts. The Avesta contains the sacred texts of the Zoroastrians, composed in the Avestan language.