I , , J-

CHAPTER 9 What became of Cunegonde, Candide, the Grand

Inquisitor and a Jew

NOTES

1. the Babylonian Captiuity: Jerusalem was captured in 596 Be by Nebuch,ldnezzar, King of Babylon; the Jewish king together with his court were taken in captivity to Babylon.

, 111oidores: Old Portuguese gold currency; moidores arc replaced by pistoles (.1 French term for the Spanish esclldo) in chapters 10

and 22.

3. the Holy Hermand,ld: The Holy Brotherhood of the Inquisition, a semi-religious order with police powers, active in eighteenrh­century Spain.

4- Al'acena: An invented name.

CHAPTER TO

In what distress Candide. Clinegonde and the old woman arriue in Cadiz. and of their embarkatioN

I. everyone has all equal right to them: Here and elsewhere (chapters 15 and 16) Pangloss's utopian socialism p~Hrots the ,uguments of Rousseau's Discoltrs sur l'origine de /,im?galite (Discourse Oil the Origins of Inequality, 1755), whose proposal thilt all men <lrc equal in a state of natllrl', and that social inequalities are artificial. had heen ironized by Voltaire: 'I have received, tvlonsieur, your new work against the human species ... Never has so much wit been expended in an effort to make hrutes of us all. Reading your book makes one feel like crawling on all fours' (letter to Rousseau, 30 August 1755).

, marauedi: A Spanish copper coin of little value. 3. Benedictine prior: The Benedictines were thought to be very

wealthy. 4. Luccna . .. Chillas ... Lebrija ... Cadiz: The names are real.

hut the itinerary is fantastical. Cadiz was the centre of trade with Spanish America. Voltaire invested he,wily in this trade. In 1756 he had invested part of his capital in the fitting-out of a ship to transport Spanish troops from Cadiz, to quell a Paraguayan Indian uprising. supposedly hacked by the Jesuits (the ship was named the Pascal, after their Jansenist enemy). Candide, CUl1cgonde and the old wom<lll embark 011 a ship effectively owned by Voltaire.

5. S,m Sacrl.l11lellto: Eighteenth-century Paraguay covered a far greater area than today, much of it controlled by Jesuit missions.

NOTES [33

In [750 the Spanish government ceded the town of San Sacra­mento - situated inside the mission settlements - to Portugal; the Indians rebelled against the prospect of passing under Portuguese rule, and the Jesuits were held responsible (in Voltaire's manu­script, 'who were accused of having incited' reads: 'who had incited'). In 1755 Spain and Portugal sent an expedition to repress the uprising, ~1nd guerilla activity continued for several years; Candide becomes - briefly - a commanding officer on such an expedition.

6. another world: 'If all is welL how can the followers of Leibniz concede that one world could be better than another? This idea of a hetter world, is it not proof in itself that all is not well?' (Voltaire, letter to Elie Bertrand, 18 February 1756).

7. sel'enty-two qlwrterings: Voltaire had at first written 'seventy­one', but this number of heraldic quarterings on a coat of arms was considered insufficient in Westphalia (chapter I, note I).

CHAPTER II

The old woman's story

I. the daughter of Pope Urban X and the Princess of Palestrina: A non-existent Pope. Voltaire had originally written 'Clement xrr, an actual and recent Pope. According to his secretary W'agniere, he intended to add the following footnote, which appeared only in posthumous editions of Candide: 'Note the extreme discretion of our author at this point! Until now there has never been a Pope Urban X. He is afraid to attribute a bastard daughter to an existent Pope. What circumspection! What delicacy of con­science!' Palestrina was an Italian principality, near Rome, which produced a Pope named ... Urban VIII.

2. A1assa-Carrara: A smallltalian duchy~ in Tuscany. 3. Gaeta: An Italian port, north of Naples. 4. Sale: A Moroccan port, near Rahat, and in the eighteenth cen­

tury a notorious centre of piracy targeted at Christian vessels. It is likev.rise a corsair from Sale that swoops in Daniel Defoe's (1660-173 I) Robinson Crusoe ( 1719).

5. in articulo mortis: 'At the point of death". Only priests are author­ized to give absolution, but in their despair the soldiers have lost all sense of the proprieties ;1I1d are demanding Christian absolutions of a Muslim pirate.

6. Knights of Ma/t,1: An order of soldier-monks based in !vlalta, whose mission was to defend Christian pilgrims against the infidel.

7. Muley Ismae/: Emperor of Morocco, who reigned ruthlessly for

134 NOTES

over fifty years, and whose sons (two, not fifty) engaged in a protracted struggle for power after h is death in 1727.

8. without anyone omitting . .. as required by Mahomet: Voltaire, like Bayle before him, denies any connection between religious protocol and ethical conduct.

9. ache sciagura d'essere sellza cogliolli: -Oh, what a misfortune to be without halls!'

CHAPTER I2

The misfortunes of the old woman, continued

I. some are sent of/to gouem prol'inces: An allusion to the Neapoli­tan castrato Farinelli (17°5-82), celebrated for his voice and subsequently for his role as advisor to the Spanish kings Philip V and Ferdinand VI. Paul Valery (J 871-1945) remarked on the frequency \"lith which Jesuits and eunuchs appear in eighteenth­century satire - Jesuits as a punishment for having educated most of the writers concerned, hut why so many eunuchs? 'I wonder is there a secret and profound reason for the almost obligatory presence of these figures, so cruelly separated from so many things, and in some sense cut off from themselves?' (Preface to the Baron de Montesquieu's (1689-1755) Lettres persanes (Persian Letters, Paris, 1926)).

2. to conclude a treaty ... Christi.l1l pOluers: This refers to the negotiations by certain enemies of France, such as Portugal, to

ally themselves \'vith Muley Ismael at the outset of the War of Spanish Succession (1701-13). Voltaire's target is Christians arming ~loors against other Christians, and more generally, the economic basis of modern warfare. Cf. The Age of Louis XIV, chapter 18.

3. Ceuta: An African port opposite Gibraltar. 4. the Dey of that province: Algeria was a dependency of the

Sultan of Constantinople, whose representative was the Dey, or governor.

5. It is ver), common in Africa: Epidemics of the 'Black Death' (bubonic plague) continued to ravage the Mediterranean dur­ing the eighteenth century, notably in Nlarseilles in 1720, and Messina in 1743.

6. janissaries: Slaves, prisoners. or captured Christians who serve as mercenary infantrymen under the command of the aga.

7. the Russians luho luere besieging it: Peter the Great had captured the port of Azov from the Turks after a protracted siege (1695-7). which gave Russia an outlet on the Black Sea.

NOTES

S. Macotian Marshes: The Roman name for the sea of Azov. a swampy lake outside the city.

9. imam: A ~1uslim cleric. 10. Cut off one buttock . .. you will be rescued: Voltaire came across

references to buttock-eating in a history of the Celtic peoples published in 174 I. \vhich in turn cites St Jerome, according to whom the Scots would feast on the buttocks of young boys. and the breasts of young girls, when they had no game to eat. (Cf. the entry 'Anthropophages'. Philosophical Dictionary.

PP·3 S-40 ).

I I. boyar: Russian minor nobility, repressed and abolished by Peter the Great, in I 69S, after a conspiracy was discovered {'the petty intrigue at Court' mentioned beIO\v). The leaders were tortured by being broken on the wheel. (Cf. Voltaire's Histoire de !a Russie SOltS Pierre Ie Grand (History of the Russian Empire, 1759). chapters Rand 10).

12. carrying a farde!: The old woman appears to be recalling Hamlet's soliloquy on suicide ('Who would these fardels bear?' III. i, 75).

J 3. three negroes, foltr Englishmen, four Geneuans and a German professor named Robeck: Negroes: an allusion to the high suicide rate among negro slaves. Englishmen: the English were thought in the eighteenth century to be especially prone to melancholy and suicide. Genevans: added to the list in 1761. probably as a jibe at Rousseau, \\I'hose La Nouuelle Heloise (The New Eloise, 176J, with its two letters on suicide, nos. 2J-2) Voltaire had read in the interim. Robeck: Johann Robeck. a Swede, wrote a treatise advocating suicide in J736, before follmving his own example and drowning himself in the rivcr Weser at Bremcn in J739. The debate about suicide had an important place in eighteenth-century philosophy and letters, because it acutely focused issues of Christian morality and human contradiction; Voltaire had no doctrinal objections to suicide and he debated the question on several occasions.

CHAPTER 13

Hozu Candide was obliged to part from the lovely Cum?gonde and fronl the old woman

I. and although this luhite lie ... the Moderns: A biblical allusion inserted in I76I: Abraham and Isaac, being less scrupulous than Candide, mendaciously passed their wives off as sisters (Genesis J 2:] ]-20, 26); this was a favourite example in the Voltairean and deist polemic against the morality of the Bible; it was the