Voltaire - A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 05

The same spirit of fanaticism cherished the rage for distant conquests: scarcely had Europe repaired its losses when the discovery of a new world hastened the ruin of our own. At that terrible injunction, "Go and conquer," America was desolated and its inhabitants exterminated; Africa and Europe were exhausted in vain to repeople it; the poison of money and of pleasure having enervated the species, the world became nearly a desert and appeared likely every day to advance nearer to desolation by the continual wars which were kindled on our continent, from the ambition of extending its power to foreign lands.

Let us now compute the immense number of slaves which fanaticism has made, whether in Asia, where uncircumcision was a mark of infamy, or in Africa, where the Christian name was a crime, or in America, where the pretext of baptism absolutely extinguished the feelings of humanity. Let us compute the thousands who have been seen to perish either on scaffolds in the ages of persecution, or in civil wars by the hands of their fellow citizens, or by their own hands through excessive austerities, and maceration. Let us survey the surface of the earth, and glance at the various standards unfurled and blazing in the name of religion; in Spain against the Moors, in France against the Turks, in Hungary against the Tartars; at the numerous military orders, founded for converting infidels by the point of the sword, and slaughtering one another at the foot of the altar they had come to defend. Let us then look down from the appalling tribunal thus raised on the bodies of the innocent and miserable, in order to judge the living, as God, with a balance widely different, will judge the dead.

In a word, let us contemplate the horrors of fifteen centuries, all frequently renewed in the course of a single one; unarmed men slain at the feet of altars; kings destroyed by the dagger or by poison; a large state reduced to half its extent by the fury of its own citizens; the nation at once the most warlike and the most pacific on the face of the globe, divided in fierce hostility against itself; the sword unsheathed between the sons and the father; usurpers, tyrants, executioners, sacrilegious robbers, and bloodstained parricides violating, under the impulse of religion, every convention divine or human – such is the deadly picture of fanaticism.

If this term has at present any connection with its original meaning it is exceedingly slight.

" Fanaticus " was an honorable designation. It signified the minister or benefactor of a temple. According to the dictionary of Trévoux some antiquaries have discovered inscriptions in which Roman citizens of considerable consequence assumed the title of " fanaticus ."

In Cicero's oration " pro domo sua ," a passage occurs in which the word " fanaticus " appears to me of difficult explanation. The seditious and libertine Clodius, who had brought about the banishment of Cicero for having saved the republic, had not only plundered and demolished the houses of that great man, but in order that Cicero might never be able to return to his city residence he procured the consecration of the land on which it stood; and the priests had erected there a temple to liberty, or rather to slavery, in which Cæsar, Pompey, Crassus, and Clodius then held the republic. Thus in all ages has religion been employed as an instrument in the persecution of great men. When at length, in a happier period, Cicero was recalled, he pleaded before the people in order to obtain the restoration of the ground on which his house had stood, and the rebuilding of the house at the expense of the Roman people. He thus expresses himself in the speech against Clodius ( Oratio pro Domo sua , chap. xl): " Adspicite, adspicite, pontifices, hominem religiosum… monete eum, modum quemdam esse religionis; nimium esse superstitiosum non oportere. Quid tibi necesse fuit anili superstitione, homo fanatice, sacrificium, quod aliænæ domi fieret invisere? "

Does the word " fanaticus ," as used above, mean senseless, pitiless, abominable fanatic, according to the present acceptation, or does it rather imply the pious, religious man, the frequenter and consecrator of temples? Is it used here in the meaning of decided censure or ironical praise? I do not feel myself competent to determine, but will give a translation of the passage:

"Behold, reverend pontiffs, behold the pious man… suggest to him that even religion itself has its limits, that a man ought not to be so over-scrupulous. What occasion was there for a sacred person, a fanatic like yourself, to have recourse to the superstition of an old woman, in order to assist at a sacrifice performed in another person's house?"

Cicero alludes here to the mysteries of the Bona Dea , which had been profaned by Clodius, who, in the disguise of a female, and accompanied by an old woman, had obtained an introduction to them, with a view to an assignation with Cæsar's wife. The passage is, in consequence, evidently ironical.

Cicero calls Clodius a religious man, and the irony requires to be kept up through the whole passage. He employs terms of honorable meaning, more clearly to exhibit Clodius's infamy. It appears to me, therefore, that he uses the word in question, " fanaticus " in its respectable sense, as a word conveying the idea of a sacrificer, a pious man, a zealous minister of a temple.

The term might be afterwards applied to those who believed themselves inspired by the gods, who bestowed a somewhat curious gift on the interpreters of their will, by ordaining that, in order to be a prophet, the loss of reason is indispensable.

The same dictionary of Trévoux informs us that the old chronicles of France call Clovis fanatic and pagan. The reader would have been pleased to have had the particular chronicles specified. I have not found this epithet applied to Clovis in any of the few books I possess at my house near Mount Krapak, where I now write.

We understand by fanaticism at present a religious madness, gloomy and cruel. It is a malady of the mind, which is taken in the same way as smallpox. Books communicate it much less than meetings and discourses. We seldom get heated while reading in solitude, for our minds are then tranquil and sedate. But when an ardent man of strong imagination addresses himself to weak imaginations, his eyes dart fire, and that fire rapidly spreads; his tones, his gestures, absolutely convulse the nerves of his auditors. He exclaims, "The eye of God is at this moment upon you; sacrifice every mere human possession and feeling; fight the battles of the Lord" – and and they rush to the fight.

Fanaticism is, in reference to superstition, what delirium is to fever, or rage to anger. He who is involved in ecstasies and visions, who takes dreams for realities, and his own imaginations for prophecies, is a fanatical novice of great hope and promise, and will probably soon advance to the highest form, and kill man for the love of God.

Bartholomew Diaz was a fanatical monk. He had a brother at Nuremberg called John Diaz, who was an enthusiastic adherent to the doctrines of Luther, and completely convinced that the pope was Antichrist, and had the sign of the beast. Bartholomew, still more ardently convinced that the pope was god upon earth, quits Rome, determined either to convert or murder his brother; he accordingly murdered him! Here is a perfect case of fanaticism. We have noticed and done justice to this Diaz elsewhere.

Polyeuctes, who went to the temple on a day of solemn festival, to throw down and destroy the statues and ornaments, was a fanatic less horrible than Diaz, but not less foolish. The assassins of Francis, duke of Guise, of William, prince of Orange, of King Henry III., of King Henry IV., and various others, were equally possessed, equally laboring under morbid fury, with Diaz.