Positive Liberty

It is a bizarre and curious fact that an odd subset of Christians cannot seem to allow non-believer to die without recanting their disbelief. Virtually every famous non-believer in history has had breathless deathbed recantation tales told of them. In this column at the Worldnutdaily, Greg Laurie repeats one of the most famous regarding Voltaire, one of the earliest examples of this phenomenon.

Immediately after his death, fantastic stories began to circulate about Voltaire’s alleged recantation. In some versions of the story, he asked for the last rites and was given them; in other versions, he cried out in shame at his unbelief and was hysterical in fear of going to hell. So famous were these stories that David Hume, another famed unbeliever, made sure to have a prominent writer at his deathbed to document every moment in order to avoid what had happened to Voltaire.

Here’s is Laurie’s amusing version:

History tells the story of the renowned atheist, Voltaire, one of the most aggressive antagonists of Christianity. He wrote many things to undermine the church, and once said of Jesus Christ, “Curse the wretch. In 20 years, Christianity will be no more. My single hand will destroy the edifice it took 12 apostles to rear.”

Needless to say, Voltaire was less than successful. And on his deathbed, a nurse who attended him was reported to have said, “For all the wealth in Europe, I would not see another atheist die.”

The physician, waiting up with Voltaire at his death, said that he cried out with utter desperation, “I am abandoned by God and man. I will give you half of what I am worth if you will give me six months of life. Then I shall go to hell and you will go with me, oh, Christ, oh, Jesus Christ!”

This is a modified version of the lie told by Abbe Barruel, a Jesuit priest most famous for the sheer raving lunacy of his conspiracy theories (he is one of the primary historical sources for the Illuminati/freemasonry conspiracies so popular among the extreme far right). The part at the end about crying out for Jesus Christ is likely Laurie’s own preferred fiction, but it does not appear in Barruel’s version.

The physician, Dr. Tronchin, who was a close friend of Voltaire’s, never said anything even remotely like this. But another of his physicians, Dr. Burard, wrote a letter in 1819 in which he denied completely such stories:

I feel happy in being able, while paying homage to truth, to destroy the effects of the lying stories which have been told respecting the last moments of Mons. de Voltaire. I was, by office, one of those who were appointed to watch the whole progress of his illness, with M.M. Tronchin, Lorry, and Try, his medical attendants. I never left him for an instant during his last moments, and I can certify that we invariably observed in him the same strength of character, though his disease was necessarily attended with horrible pain. (Here follow the details of his case.) We positively forbade him to speak in order to prevent the increase of a spitting of blood, with which he was attacked; still he continued to communicate with us by means of little cards, on which he wrote his questions; we replied to him verbally, and if he was not satisfied, he always made his observations to us in writing. He therefore retained his faculties up to the last moment, and the fooleries which have been attributed to him are deserving of the greatest contempt, It could not even be said that such or such person had related any circumstance of his death as being witness to it; for at the last, admission to his chamber was forbidden to any person. Those who came to obtain intelligence respecting the patient, waited in the saloon, and other apartments at hand. The proposition, therefore, which has been put in the mouth of Marshal Richelieu is as unfounded as the rest.

It is true that the local priests visited Voltaire’s deathbed several times in his last few days hoping to convert him, but none were successful. Another account, from Voltaire’s personal secretary, Wagniere, speaks of the last such visit:

Two days before that mournful death, M. l’Abbe Mignot, his nephew, went to seek the Cure of St. Sulpice and the Abbe Gautier, and brought them into his uncle’s sick room; who, on being informed that the Abbe Gautier was there, “Ah, well!” said be, “give him my compliments and my thanks.” The Abbe spoke some words to him, exhorting him to patience. The Cure of St. Sulpice then came forward, having announced himself, and asked of M. de Voltaire, elevating his voice, if he acknowledged the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ? The sick man pushed one of his hands against the Cure’s calotte (coif), shoving him back, and cried, turning abruptly to the other side, “let me die in peace (Laissez-moi mourir en paix).” The Curd seemingly considered his person soiled, and his coif dishonored, by the touch of the philosopher. He made the sick- nurse give him a little brushing, and then went out with the Abbe Gautier.

This is a myth, just as surely as the Lady Hope story of Darwin’s deathbed recantation is a myth. But that’s not even the biggest lie in the article. The biggest lie is the notion that Voltaire was an atheist; he most emphatically was not. In fact he wrote often and prominently against atheism. He devoted a chapter of his Philosophical Dictionary to a discussion of atheism and atheists and he argues strongly for the existence of a god (though obviously not the Christian God, which he mocked bitterly):

Had men reasoned, consequently, Epicurus and his apostle Lucretius must have been the most religious assertors of the Providence which they combated; for when they admitted the void and the termination of matter, a truth of which they had only an imperfect glimpse, it necessarily followed that matter was the being of necessity, existing by itself, since it was not indefinite. They had, therefore, in their own philosophy, and in their own despite, a demonstration that there is a Supreme Being, necessary, infinite, the fabricator of the universe. Newton’s philosophy, which admits and proves the void and finite matter, also demonstratively proves the existence of a God.

Thus I regard true philosophers as the apostles of the Divinity. Each class of men requires its particular ones; a parish catechist tells children that there is a God, but Newton proves it to the wise.

Voltaire was a deist. Today we would say that there is little functional difference between a deist and an atheist, but in those days there was a very big difference. The leading deists of the day, like Voltaire and Thomas Paine, argued nearly as vociferously against atheism as they did against Christianity. The notion that Voltaire was an atheist survives only because of sheer ignorance.

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