Posted on 07/01/2021 7:08:58 AM PDT by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1766, a 20-year-old French chevalier’s freethinking proclivities got him beheaded and burned for impiety in one of Bourbon France’s most notorious episodes of religious chauvanism.
Check that date again. This is 69 years after the British Isles’ last execution for blasphemy; Voltaire was alive, and already in his dotage — and the fact that young Chevalier de la Barre was reading him was proclaimed as evidence. Such a benighted proceeding with the French Revolution on the horizon calls Dickens to mind:
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness
The luckless youth and a couple of friends had pissed off a local judge, which got ugly for them when the unexplained vandalism of a town crucifix availed the opportunity for the magistrate to wield a sledgehammer against a fly.
De la Barre’s volume of Voltaire was tossed onto the pyre with him.....
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times................
“Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.”
Voltaire
Voltaire is almost prophetic.
See
Top 25 Voltaire Quotes
https://www.azquotes.com/author/15138-Voltaire
Pretty much what all religions want to do to heretics and blasphemers when they can.
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