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Voltaire's critical views on religion led to his belief in separation of church and state and religious freedom, ideas that he had formed after his stay in England. In August 1736, Frederick the Great , then Crown Prince of Prussia and a great admirer of Voltaire, initiated a correspondence with him. [ 73 ]
Voltaire first addresses religion in Letters 1–7. He specifically talks about Quakers (1–4), Anglicans (5), Presbyterians (6) and Socinians (7). In the Letters 1–4, Voltaire describes the Quakers, their customs, their beliefs, and their history. He appreciates the simplicity of their rituals.
The author, Voltaire. The Dictionnaire philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary) is an encyclopedic dictionary published by the Enlightenment thinker Voltaire in 1764. The alphabetically arranged articles often criticize the Roman Catholic Church, Judaism, Islam, and other institutions.
Voltaire attacked faith in a Christian God and the superstitions in the teachings of the Catholic Church, raising an element of doubt over many old practices of the Judeo-Christian tradition. He attempted to convince his readers that there were certain beliefs and teachings in Christianity which simply did not stand up to the test of reason.
Freethinking, a term describing those who stood in opposition to the institution of the Church, and the literal belief in the Bible, can be said to have begun in England no later than 1713, when Anthony Collins wrote his "Discourse of Free-thinking," which gained substantial popularity. This essay attacked the clergy of all churches and was a ...
Candide, ou l'Optimisme (/ k ɒ n ˈ d iː d / kon-DEED, [5] French: ⓘ) is a French satire written by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment, [6] first published in 1759. . The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best (1759); Candide: or, The Optimist (1762); and Candide: Optimism (1947)
Looting of a church during the Revolution, by Swebach-Desfontaines (c. 1793). The aim of a number of separate policies conducted by various governments of France during the French Revolution ranged from the appropriation by the government of the great landed estates and the large amounts of money held by the Catholic Church to the termination of Christian religious practice and of the religion ...
O. R. Taylor's critical edition of La Henriade [5] devotes a full volume to an introduction, accounting for the germination of the idea and its publication history, the contextual theory of the epic and sources both literary and in recent history and contemporary events, and the nineteenth-century decline in the poem's popularity. Taylor ...