I have made you see, Sir, that the imputations drawn from my Books as proof that I was attacking the Religion established by the laws were false. It is, however, by these imputations that I have been judged guilty and treated as such. Let us assume now that I was in fact guilty, and let us see what punishment was owed me in that situation.
Like virtue, vice has its degrees.
Being guilty of one crime does not make someone guilty of them all. Justice consists in tailoring the punishment exactly to the fault, and extreme justice is itself a wrong when it pays no heed to the reasonable considerations that ought to temper the rigor of the law.
Assuming the offense is real, it remains for us to seek what its nature is and what procedure is prescribed by your laws in such cases.
If I violated my oath of the Bourgeois, as I am accused of doing, I committed a crime against the State, and cognizance of this crime belongs directly to the Council. That is incontestable.
But if my entire crime consists in error about doctrine, this error was itself an impiety. That is a different thing. According to your Edicts, it belongs to another Tribunal to take cognizance of it in the first instance.
And even if my crime were a crime against the State, if a prior decision about doctrine must be made in order to declare it as such, it is not up to the Council to make it. It is very proper for it to punish the crime, but not to establish it. That is explicit according to your Edicts, as we shall see later.
The first thing is to know whether I violated my oath of the Bourgeois, that is to say the oath my ancestors swore when they were admitted to the Bourgeoisie. Because for myself, not having lived in the Town, and not having performed any function as Citizen, I have not sworn the oath at all. But let it go at that.
In the formulation of this oath, there are only two articles that could concern my offense. By the former, one promises, to live in accordance with the Reformation of the Holy Gospel; and by the latter, not to make, nor to allow any intrigues, machinations, or undertakings against the Reformation of the Holy Gospel.
Now far from infringing the first article, I have conformed to it with a fidelity and even a boldness that have few examples, openly professing my Religion among the Catholics, although I previously lived in theirs; and one cannot cite that lapse from my childhood as an infraction from the oath, above all since my authentic rejoining of your Church in 175425 and my reestablishment in my rights of Bourgeoisie, well known to all Geneva, and of which moreover I have proofs positive.
One could not say, either, that I have infringed this first article by the condemned Books; since in them I have not ceased to declare myself to be a Protestant. Furthermore, conduct is one thing, Writings are something else. To live in accordance with the Reformation is to profess the Reformation, although by error one could lapse from its doctrine in blameworthy Writings, or commit other sins that offend God, but which by the fact alone does not cut the offender off from the Church. That distinction, if one could dispute it in general, is present in the oath itself; since in it they separate into two articles what could make only one, if the profession of the Religion was incompatible with every undertaking against the Religion. One swears by the first to live in accordance with the Reformation, and one swears by the last not to undertake anything against the Reformation. These two articles are very distinct and even separated by many others. Thus in the meaning of the Legislator these two things are separable. Thus if I had violated this last article, it does not follow that I have violated the first.
But have I violated this last article?
Here is how the Author of the Letters Written from the Country establishes the affirmative, page 30.
“The oath of the Bourgeois imposes on them the obligation not to make, nor to allow any intrigues, machinations, or undertakings against the Reformation of the Holy Gospel. It seems that it is to intrigue and machinate against it a littleR1 to seek to prove in two such seductive Books that the pure Gospel is absurd in itself and pernicious to society. The Council was thus obliged to cast a glance upon the one whom so many vehement presumptions accused of that undertaking.”
See first how agreeable these Gentlemen are! It seems to them that they catch a glimpse of a little intrigue and machination from afar. Based on this remote semblance of a little maneuver, they cast a glance upon the one whom they presume to be its Author; and this glance is a warrant for his arrest.
It is true that the same Author subsequently amuses himself by proving that it is out of pure kindness toward me that they issued a warrant for me. The Council, he says, could have personally summoned M. Rousseau, it could have subpoenaed him in order to hear him, it could have issued a warrant for him. . . . Of these three choices the last was incomparably the most gentle. . . . at bottom this was only a warning not to return, if he did not want to expose himself to a proceeding, or if he did want to expose himself to one to prepare his defenses well.R2
Brantome says that the executioner of the unfortunate Don Carlos, Infant of Spain, joked this way. As the Prince was crying out and wanted to struggle, Peace, My Lord, he said to him while strangling him, everything that is being done is only for your good.26
But what then are these intrigues and machinations of which they accuse me? To intrigue,27 if I understand my language, is to contrive secret intelligence for oneself; to machinate, is to engage in secret schemes, it is to do what certain people do against Christianity and against me. But I conceive of nothing less secret, nothing less hidden in the world than to publish a Book and to put one’s name on it. When I have stated my sentiment on any matter whatsoever, I have stated it openly, to the public’s face, I have named myself, and then I have remained tranquil in my retreat: it will be difficult to persuade me that that resembles intrigues and machinations.
In order to understand well the spirit of the oath and the meaning of the terms, one must transport oneself to the times when its formulation was set up and when it was essentially an issue for the State not to fall back under the double yoke that they had just shaken off. Every day they discovered some new plot in favor of the house of Savoy or the Bishops under pretext of Religion. That is clearly what the words intrigues and machinations concern, which, as long as the French language has existed have certainly never been used for the general sentiments that a man publishes in a Book in which he names himself, without plan, without object, without particular intention, and without a reference to any Government. That accusation appears so little serious to the very Author who dares to make it, that he acknowledges me to be faithful to the duties of the Citizen.R3 Now how could I be so, if I had infringed my oath of Bourgeois?
Thus it is not true that I have infringed this oath. I add that if that were true, nothing would be more unheard of in Geneva in things of that sort, than the proceeding brought against me. There is perhaps not a Bourgeois who does not infringe this oath in some point,R4 without them taking it into their heads to pick a quarrel with him for that, and much less to issue a warrant for him.
One cannot say, either, that I attack morality in a Book in which I establish with all my power the preference for the general good over the private good and in which I relate our duties toward men to our duties toward God; the only principle upon which morality can be founded, in order to be real and go beyond appearance. One cannot say that this Book tends in any way to disturb the established form of worship nor the public order since, on the contrary, in it I insist upon the respect one owes to the established forms, upon obedience to the laws in everything, even in matters of Religion, and since it is for that prescribed obedience that a Preacher of Geneva has most bitterly reproached me.
This terrible offense about which they are making such a fuss is reduced, then, admitting it to be real, to some error over faith which, if it is not advantageous to society, is at least a matter of great indifference to it; the greatest evil that results from it being tolerance for the sentiments of others, consequently peace in the State and in the world over matters of Religion.
But I ask you, you, Sir, who knows your Government and your Laws, to whom it belongs to judge, and above all in the first instance, about errors over faith that a private individual can commit? Is it to the Council, is it to the Consistory? There is the nub of the question.
First it was necessary to reduce the offense to its type. Now that it is known, the proceeding must be compared to the Law.
Your Edicts do not settle the penalty due to the one who errs in matters of faith and who publishes his error. But by Article 88 of the Ecclesiastical Ordinance, in the Chapter on the Consistory, they regulate the Order of the proceeding against the one who dogmatizes. That Article is couched in these terms.
If there is someone who dogmatizes against the received doctrine, let him be summoned to confer with him: if he falls into line, let him be supported without scandal or defamation: if he is stubborn, let him be admonished several times in order to attempt to constrain him. If one finally sees that there is need for greater severity, let him be prohibited from Holy Communion, and let the Magistrate be notified in order to provide for it.
One sees from that. 1st. That the first inquisition of this sort of offense belongs to the Consistory.
2nd. That the Legislator does not intend that such an offense be irremissible, if the one who has committed it repents and falls into line.
3rd. That he prescribes the means that ought to be followed to lead the guilty one back to his duty.
4th. That these means are full of gentleness, of consideration, of commiseration; such as it is fitting for Christians to make use of, after the example of their master, in faults that do not disturb civil society at all and only concern Religion.
5th. That finally the last and greatest penalty that he prescribes is drawn from the nature of the offense, as that always ought to be, by depriving the guilty person of the Holy Communion and the communion of the Church, which he has offended, and which he wants to continue to offend.
After all that, the Consistory denounces him to the Magistrate who then ought to provide for it; because the Law, allowing only a single Religion in the State, the one who persists in wanting to profess and teach another one ought to be cut off from the State.
One sees the application of all the parts of that Law in the form of the procedure followed in 1563 against Jean Morelli.
Jean Morelli, an inhabitant of Geneva, had written and published a Book in which he attacked the ecclesiastical discipline and which was censured at the Synod of Orléans. The Author, complaining very much about this censure and having been summoned by the Consistory of Geneva for this same Book, did not want to appear there and took flight. Then, having come back with the permission of the Magistrate in order to be reconciled with the Ministers, he disregarded to speak with them and to go to the Consistory, until being cited anew, he finally appeared, and after long disputes, having refused every sort of satisfaction, he was handed over and cited to the Council, where, instead of appearing, he had an excuse in writing presented by his wife, and once again took flight from the Town.
Proceedings were finally held against him, that is against his Book, and since the sentence delivered on this occasion is important, even concerning its terms, and little known, I am going to transcribe it here in its entirety. It may have its utility.
R5“We, Syndics Judges of criminal cases in this City, having heard the report of the venerable Consistory of this Church concerning the proceedings held against Jean Morelli, an inhabitant of this City, inasmuch as he has now abandoned this City for the second time and instead of appearing before us and our Council when he was remanded to it, has shown himself to be disobedient; with these and other just causes guiding us, sitting as a Tribunal in the place of our Ancestors, according to our ancient customs, after good participation in Council with our Citizens, having God and his Holy scriptures before our eyes and invoking his Holy name in order to make upright judgment, say: in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Through this, our definitive sentence, which we offer here in writing, we have decided with mature deliberation to proceed further as in a case of contempt against the said Morelli: above all, in order to warn all those concerned to be wary of his Book so as not to be misled by it. Being then duly informed about the reveries and errors that are contained in it, and above all that said Book tends to create schisms and disturbances in the Church in a seditious manner, we have condemned it, and do condemn it as a harmful and pernicious Book, and to make an example of it have ordered and do order that one copy be burned presently. Forbidding all Booksellers to keep any or present any for sale, and all Citizens, Bourgeois, and Inhabitants of this Town of whatever class they might be to buy or have any to read. Commanding all those who would have any to bring them to us, and those who would know where there are some, to reveal that to us in twenty-four hours, on pain of being rigorously punished.
“And you, our Lieutenant, we order to put our present sentence into due and complete execution.”
Pronounced and executed on Thursday the sixteenth day of September one thousand five hundred sixty-three.
“Thus signed by P. Chenelat.”
Sir, you will find observations of more than one kind to make at their time and place about this document. For the present, let us not lose sight of our object. That was the procedure at the judgment of Morelli, whose Book was burned only at the end of the trial, with no talk of Executioner or stigmatization, and against whose person a warrant was never issued, although he was obstinate and in contempt.
Rather than that, everyone knows how the Council proceeded against me at the moment the Work appeared and without any mention even being made of the Consistory. To receive the book by mail, to read it, to examine it, to submit it for judgment, to burn it, to issue a warrant against me, all that was a matter of eight or ten days. One could not imagine a more expeditious proceeding.
I assume here that I fit the legal case, the sole case in which I am punishable. For otherwise, by what right would faults be punished that attack no one and about which the Laws have stated nothing?
Was the Edict observed, then, in this matter? You other People of good sense would imagine in examining it that it was violated gratuitously in all its parts. “The Said Rousseau,” say the Remonstrators, “has not been called before the Consistory, but the magnificent Council has first proceeded against him. He ought to have been supported without scandal, but his Writings have been treated in a public judgment as reckless, impious, scandalous. He ought to have been supported without defamation. But he has been stigmatized in the most defamatory manner, his two Books having been lacerated and burned by the hand of the Executioner.
“The Edict has therefore not been observed,” they continue, “both with regard to the jurisdiction that belongs to the Consistory and relative to the Said Rousseau, who ought to have been called, supported without scandal or defamation, admonished a few times, and who could not be judged except in the case of obstinate stubbornness.”
That, no doubt, is as clear as day to you and to me too. Well, no. You are going to see how these people who know how to show the Sun at midnight know how to hide it at noon.
The usual skill of sophists is to heap up many arguments in order to cover their weakness. To avoid repetitions and gain time, let us divide those in the Letters Written from the Country. Let us confine ourselves to the most essential, let us leave aside those I have refuted above, and in order not to alter the others at all, let us relate them in the Author’s terms.
It is according to our Laws, he says, that I ought to examine what was done with respect to M. Rousseau. Very well, let us see.
The first Article of the oath of the Bourgeois obligates them to live in accordance with the Reformation of the Holy Gospel. Now I ask, is it living according to the Gospel to write against the Gospel?
First sophism. To see clearly whether that is my case, put back into the minor clause of this argument the word Reformation which the Author removes from it, and which is necessary for his reasoning to be conclusive.
Second sophism. In this article of the oath it is not a question of writing in accordance with the Reformation, but of living in accordance with the Reformation. As has been seen above, a distinction is made between these two things in the oath itself. And it has been seen also whether it is true that I have written either against the Reformation or against the Gospel.
The first duty of the Syndics and Council is to maintain the pure Religion.
Third sophism. Their duty is certainly to maintain the pure Religion, but not to pronounce on what is or is not the pure Religion. The Sovereign has certainly charged them with maintaining the pure Religion, but it did not on that account make them judges of doctrine. It is another body that it charged with this task, and it is this body they must consult on all matters of Religion, as they have always done since your Government has been in existence. In the case of an offense in these matters, two Tribunals are established, one to establish it, the other to punish it. That is evident in the terms of the Ordinance. We will return to that below.
The imputations examined above follow, and for that reason I will not repeat them. But I cannot forbear from transcribing here the article that ends them. It is strange.
It is true that M. Rousseau and his partisans claim that these doubts do not really attack Christianity, which with that exception he continues to call divine. But if a Book, characterized the way the Gospel is in the works of M. Rousseau, can still be called divine, let someone tell me then the new meaning attached to this term? In truth, if it is a contradiction, it is shocking. If it is a joke, agree that it is quite out of place in such a subject.R6
I understand. Spiritual form of worship, purity of heart, works of charity, confidence, humility, resignation, tolerance, the forgetting of insults, forgiving of enemies, the love of one’s neighbor, universal brotherhood, and the union of the human race through charity are so many inventions of the devil. Would that be the sentiment of the Author and his friends? One would say so judging by their arguments and above all by their works. In truth, if it is a contradiction, it is shocking. If it is a joke, agree that it is quite out of place in such a subject.
Add that joking on such a subject is so much to the taste of these Gentlemen that, according to their own maxims, it should, if I had done it, have caused me to find favor with them.R7
After the exposition of my crimes, listen to the reasons for which they have so cruelly outdone the rigor of the Law in pursuit of a criminal.
These two Books appear under the name of a Citizen of Geneva. Europe bears witness to its scandal. The first Parlement of a neighboring realm prosecutes Emile and its Author. What will the government of Geneva do?
Let us stop a moment. I believe I perceive some lie here.
According to our Author the scandal of Europe forced the Council of Geneva to deal severely against the Book and the Author of Emile, following the example of the Parlement of Paris: but on the contrary, it was the warrants of these two Tribunals that caused the scandal of Europe. The Book had been in public in Paris for only a few days when the Parlement condemned it28R8; it had not yet appeared in any other country, not even in Holland, where it was printed; and there was only an interval of nine days between the warrant of the Parlement of Paris and that of the Council of GenevaR9; just about the time that was needed to have notice of what was happening at Paris. The frightful uproar that was made in Switzerland about this affair, my expulsion from the home of my friend, the attempts made at Neuchâtel and even at the Court to deprive me of my last refuge, all that came from Geneva and the environs, after the warrant. It is known who the instigators were, it is known who the emissaries were, their activity was unprecedented; it is not their fault that I was not deprived of fire and water in all of Europe, that a piece of earth was not left to me as a bed, a stone for a headrest. Let us then not transpose things here, and let us not give as the motive for the warrant of Geneva the scandal that was its effect.
The foremost Parlement of a neighboring Kingdom prosecuted Emile and its Author. What will the Government of Geneva do?
The answer is simple. It will do nothing, it ought not to do anything, or rather it ought to do nothing. It would overturn all judicial order, it would defy the Parlement of Paris, it would dispute its competence by imitating it. It was precisely because a warrant was issued for my arrest at Paris that one could not be at Geneva. The offense of a criminal certainly has a place and a unique place; he can no more be guilty of the same offense in two States at the same time than he can be in two places at the same time, and if he wants to appear in response to the two warrants, how do you want him to divide himself? In effect, have you ever heard it said that a warrant was issued against the same man in two countries at the same time for the same deed? This is the first example of it, and probably this will be the last. In my misfortunes I will have the sad honor of being in all respects a unique example.
The most atrocious crimes, even murders, are not and ought not to be prosecuted before any Tribunals other than those of the places in which they have been committed. If a Genevan killed a man, even another Genevan, in a foreign country, the Council of Geneva would not be able to appropriate cognizance of this crime to itself: it could hand over the guilty man if he was laid claim to, it could solicit his punishment, but unless the judgment along with the documents of the proceeding was voluntarily remitted to it, it would not judge it, because it does not belong to it to take cognizance of an offense committed in the territory of another Sovereign, and because it cannot even give orders for the information necessary to establish it. There is the rule and there is the answer to the question. What will the Government of Geneva do? These are the simplest concepts of public Right that it would be shameful for the lowest Magistrate to be ignorant of. Will it always be necessary for me to teach at my own expense the elements of jurisprudence to my Judges?
Following the Authors of the Remonstrances, it ought to have limited itself to prohibiting sale in the Town provisionally.R10 That is, in fact, all that it could legitimately do to satisfy its animosity; that is what it had already done for the New Heloise, but seeing that the Parlement of Paris did not say anything, and that a similar prohibition was not made anywhere, it was ashamed of it and very quietly withdrew it.R11 But wouldn’t such a weak disapproval be accused of being secret connivance? But the Council of Geneva has been accused for a long time of a rather unsecret connivance with other, much less tolerable Writings, without being overly troubled about this judgment. No one, they say, could have been scandalized by the moderation they would have practiced. The public outcry teaches you how scandalized they are by the contrary. In good faith, if it had been a question of a man as disagreeable to the public as M. Rousseau was dear to it, wouldn’t what they call moderation have been accused of being indifference, of an unpardonable luke-warmness? It would not have been such a great evil as all that, and one does not give such decent names to the harshness they are practicing toward me for my Writings, nor to the support that they are lending to those of someone else.
Continuing to assume me to be guilty, let us assume further, that the Council of Geneva had the right to punish me, that the procedure had been in conformity to the Law, and that nevertheless, without even wanting to censure my Books, it had received me peacefully arriving from Paris; what would decent people have said? Here it is.
“They have closed their eyes, they should have. What could they do? To employ rigor on this occasion would have been barbarism, ingratitude, even injustice, since genuine justice repays evil with good. The guilty man loved his Fatherland tenderly, he deserved well from it; he honored it in Europe, and while his compatriots were ashamed of the name Genevan, he gloried in it, he rehabilitated it among foreigners. He previously gave useful advice, he wanted the public good, he was mistaken, but he was pardonable. He gave the greatest praises of the Magistrates, he sought to restore the confidence of the Bourgeoisie in them; he defended the Religion of the Ministers, he deserved some return on behalf of everyone. And with what countenance would they have dared to deal severely for some errors with the defender of the divinity, with the apologist of Religion which is so generally attacked, when they tolerated, when they permitted even the Writings that are the most odious, the most indecent, the most insulting to Christianity, to good morals, the most destructive of all virtue, of all morality, the very ones that Rousseau believed he ought to refute? One would have looked for the secret motives for such a shocking partiality; one would have found them in the zeal of the accused for liberty and in the Judges’ plans to destroy it. Rousseau would have passed for the martyr of the laws of his fatherland. Upon putting on the mask of hypocrisy on this occasion alone, his persecutors would have been accused of making light of Religion, of making it into the weapon of their vengeance and the instrument of their hatred. In sum by means of that haste to punish a man whose love for his fatherland is his greatest crime, they would have only made themselves odious to good people, suspect to the bourgeoisie and despicable to foreigners.” That, Sir, is what they could have said; there is all the risk the Council would have run in the assumed case of offense, by abstaining from taking cognizance of it.
Someone was right to say that either the Gospel or the Books of M. Rousseau should have been burned.
The convenient method that these Gentlemen always follow against me! If they must have proofs, they multiply assertions and if they must have testimony, they make Somebody or other speak.
This one’s apothegm has only one meaning that is not preposterous and this meaning is a blasphemy.
For isn’t it blasphemy to assume that the Gospel and the collection of my Books are so similar in their maxims that they mutually replace each other, and that one could indifferently burn one as superfluous, provided that one preserved the other? Doubtless, I have followed the doctrine of the Gospel as closely as I could; I have loved it, I have adopted, extended, explained it without pausing over the obscurities, the difficulties, the mysteries, without turning myself away from what is essential: I attached myself to it with all the zeal of my heart; I became indignant, I cried out at seeing that Holy doctrine so profaned, debased by our so-called Christians, and above all by those who make a profession of teaching it to us. I even dare to believe, and I pride myself on it, that none of them spoke more worthily than I did about true Christianity and about its Author. On that I have the testimony, even the applause of my adversaries, not of those in Geneva, in truth, but of those whose hatred is not at all a fury, and from whom passion has not removed every feeling of equity. There is what is true. There is what proves it: my response to the King of Poland, and my letter to M. d’Alembert, and Heloise, and Emile, and all my Writings, which breathe the same love for the Gospel, the same veneration for Jesus Christ. But that it follows from that that I can approach my Master in anything and that my Books can take the place of his lessons, that is what is false, absurd, abominable. I detest this blasphemy and disavow this recklessness. Nothing can be compared to the Gospel. But its sublime simplicity is not equally within the grasp of everyone. Sometimes in order to put it there it is necessary to expose it under many lights. This sacred Book must be preserved as the rule of the Master, and mine as the commentaries of the Student.
Up to this point I have treated the question in a slightly general manner; let us now bring it closer to the facts, by means of the parallel of the proceedings of 1563 and 1762, and of the reasons they give for their differences. As this is the decisive point in relation to me, I cannot, without neglecting my cause, spare you these details, perhaps unpleasant in themselves, but of interest, in many respects, for you and for your Fellow Citizens. This is another discussion that cannot be interrupted and that will form a long Letter by itself. But, Sir, a little more courage; this will be the final one of this sort in which I will converse with you about myself.
Notes
R1 This a little, so humorous and so different from the serious and decent tone of the remainder of the Letters, since it has been cut out of the second edition, I abstain from going in search of the claw to whom this little tip, not of an ear, but of a fingernail, belongs.
R4 For example, to not leave the Town in order to go to live elsewhere without permission. Who asks for that permission?
R5 Excerpt from the proceedings brought and held against Jean Morelli. Printed in Geneva by Francois Perrin, 1563, page 10.
R8 That was an arrangement made before the Book appeared.
R9 The warrant of the Parlement was issued June 9 and that of the Council, the 19th.
R11 It must be agreed that if Emile ought to be prohibited, Heloise at least ought to be burned. Above all its notes are of a boldness that the profession of faith of the Vicar certainly does not approach.