by Voltaire
29. Provincial Letters: See n. 14 above.
30. Port-Royal: A Jansenist abbey near Paris which became the centre of Jansenist activity, until it was destroyed on orders from Louis XIV in 1712.
31. Le Tellier: Michel Le Tellier (1643–1719), the Jesuit confessor of Louis XIV from 1709, and a ruthless enemy of the Jansenists.
32. the Worthiest Archbishop… France: Cardinal de Noailles (1651–1729), whom Le Tellier accused of having Jansenist sympathies.
33. condemned in Rome: Le Tellier’s Défense des nouveaux chrétiens (1687–90), dealing with converted Christians in China and Japan, was placed on the Papal Index in 1700 for its readiness to syncretize the Catholic faith with local Oriental beliefs.
34. Desfontaines: Author of the Voltairomanie (1738), a fierce attack on Voltaire.
35. Paraguay grass: Reference to tea from Paraguay, where the Jesuits had established a theocratic state.
36. Année littéraire: The editor was Élie Fréron (1718–76), one of Voltaire’s bitterest enemies.
Dialogue between a Savage and a Graduate
1. the War of Acadia, which you do know about: The Seven Years War, during which the French lost their North American empire; this included Acadia, now Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
2. Unigenitus: See above, ‘Pot-Pourri’, n. 27.
Dialogue between Ariste and Acrotal
1. Acrotal: The name means ‘high-placed’; he represents the opponents of the Encyclopédie.
2. Ramus: Pierre de La Ramée (1515–72), a famous scholar, was murdered during the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre; cf. ‘Lord Chesterfield’s Ears’, n. 27.
3. Charron: Pierre Charron (1541–1603), author of De la sagesse (1601), a work designed to exploit philosophy in defence of the Catholic faith.
4. Montaigne: Michel de Montaigne (1533–92), the renowned essayist and sceptic.
5. Bayle… inhabitants: Pierre Bayle (1641–1706), philosopher exiled in Rotterdam from 1680 because of his Protestant convictions.
6. one of our great ministers… doing: This is thought to be Louis XIV’s war minister, the marquis de Louvois (1641–91).
7. priest: The Abbé Étienne de Condillac (1715–89), whose ‘Lockean’ Traité des sensations appeared in 1754.
Wives, Submit Yourselves to Your Husbands
1. Abbé de Châteauneuf: François de Châteauneuf (1645–1708), diplomat and godfather of Voltaire, who had introduced him into the libertine Société du Temple.
2. Montaigne: See above, ‘Dialogue between Ariste and Acrotal’, n. 4.
3. Plutarch: Greek historian and biographer (c. AD 46-c. 120). The Lives contain 46 portraits of eminent Greeks and Romans.
4. “Wives… husbands”: Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians, 5: 22; Epistle of Paul to the Colossians, 3: 18.
5. “All power… beard”: Moliéres L’Ecole des femmes, Act III, sc. 2. This remark is made by Arnolphe, whose obsessive vanity is ridiculed throughout by the playwright.
6. a German princess: Empress Catherine the Great of Russia (1729–96), born in Stettin and originally Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst.
7. Porte: The (Sublime) Porte was the name given to the Turkish government in Constantinople.
Dialogue between the Cock and the Hen
1. Pythagoras: See above, ‘An Indian Incident’, n. 1.
2. Porphyry: Greek philosopher and neo-Platonist (c. AD 232-c. 305).
3. Descartes: René Descartes (1596–1650) had argued in his Discours de la méthode (1637) that animals were fundamentally different from human beings, in that we were possessed of reason where they were simply machines (Part V).
Conversation between Lucian, Erasmus and Rabelais, in the Elysian Fields
1. Lucian: Greek author (c. AD 117—c. 180).
2. Erasmus: Dutch humanist and a leading Renaissance writer (c. 1466–1536), author of the celebrated satire In Praise of Folly (1509).
3. Getes and Massagetes: Both these tribes were Scythian; they migrated from the Russian steppes to the Black Sea region c. 800 BC.
4. Rabelais: (c. 1494-c. 1533); French writer, whose Pantagruel and Gargantua present a lively, comic and sometimes vulgar view of the whole spectrum of the society in which he lived.
5. Brutus: Lucius Junius Brutus who, according to traditional accounts, led the Romans to overthrow the Tarquin monarchy and found the Roman Republic (c. 500 BC).
6. barbarians: Voltaire uses the term ‘Welches’, which for him represented all that was intolerant and bloodthirsty in the French nation. (The Discours aux Welches (1764) is one of his most virulent satires.) The contrast which he goes on to point out between this murderous tendency and the French love of frivolity is a common theme in his writings at this time.
7. Rabelais’s chapter about the Arse-Wipers: Gargantua, Bk. I, ch. XIII.
* When fakirs wish to see the celestial light, which is very common amongst them, they fix their eyes upon the end of their nose [Voltaire].
* 1 Kings 13, 2 Chronicles 15 [Voltaire’s note].
* Miracle reported in The Life of St Francis Xavier [Voltaire’s note].
