Candide: Voltaire's Attack On The Catholic Church

Throughout history, individuals have always questioned the world around them and wondered what the best possible source of existence is. During the Enlightenment, a period in which many thinkers questioned the authority of existing traditional structures, a division occurred between new, radical schools of thought that sought to explain the issues present in life, and the long-established institutions that defined life up to that moment, including monarchies and the Catholic Church. As a result of these new thinking processes that violated traditional understanding of the world, established offices such as the Catholic Church and monarchies across Europe lost power from attacks by philosophers. Through his novel Candide, Voltaire, a prominent

In Candide, Voltaire launches attacks on the Catholic Church, through his witty examples, hidden meanings and interesting characters who bring about problems that are present throughout the Church hierarchy. In one such example, Voltaire uses the Baron, Cunegonde’s brother, as a testament to the problems present in the Catholic Church at the time. In one such instance, the Baron describes his promotion through the ranks of the Church through his good looks, and his supposed relationship with a priest. “As you know, my dear Candide, I was very handsome; I became even handsomer, so the Reverend Father Croust, the abbot of the house, took a great liking to me, and some time later I was sent to Rome”(Voltaire 52). Voltaire uses the Baron as a pungent example of the wrongs committed by some seemingly dishonest and corrupt individuals who do not properly serve their church, and seeks to give the reader a look at the inefficiency with which one of Europe’s most influential institutions was run. An exception to Voltaire’s satirical pen was James the Anabaptist, a member of the highly unpopular Anabaptists of his time period (Union County College). James was presented as a respectable, pious and kind human being who was spared from the strange occurrences that Voltaire left for Catholic ministers in Candide. By sympathizing with the persecuted Anabaptists of the time period, Voltaire shows his support for groups that were suppressed by the Church, and breaks from the common thought that prevailed in his time