Religious Satire in Voltaire's Candide

During Voltaires lifetime, traditional social institutions and government systems held power. Arguably the more or less honored of those was the Catholic Church, which was considered sacred and above the state in overcome and importance. Although Voltaire was a deist, he despised the Church clergy for its corruption, impiousness, and hypocrisy. Having been sexually intention by teachers while attending a Jesuitical school, he harbored a special hatred towards the Jesuits. Yet his abhorrence of faith extended past Catholicism. Voltaire condemned Protestant clergy in a great deal the said(prenominal) path as Catholic priests. Furthermore, although in theory Voltaire believed in phantasmal equality, he held strongly anti-Semitic views, even trade Jews atrocious in his Dictionary of Philosophy. Muslim clerics were described in much the same way. Clearly, Voltaire hated all religious institutions and customs. In his most satirical and important work, Candide, he incessantly mocks not alto haveher the Catholic Church, but to a fault Protestants, Jews, and Muslims. Voltaires sharpest criticism was order at the Catholic Church. His relationship with the Church was one of constant opposition (Candide, Religion, pg. 13), and in Candide, he attacks all aspects of its social complex body part and doctrines. When Pangloss explains how he contracted syphilis, he states that Paquette received this drink from a very learned Franciscan monk...who owed it to a marquise...

who caught it from a Jesuit (Candide, Chapter 4, pg. 48). This passage, apart from being a parody of script genealogies, illustrates the want of celibacy of respectable Church members, contrary to their birth doctrines. Voltaire shows the ! promiscuousness of the Catholic clergy in several other instances, such(prenominal) as through with(predicate) the Grand Inquisitor who hypocritically has a mistress, Cunegonde. The author also introduces the daughter of a Pope, who fails to help her place of her hardships. In Chapter Ten, Cunegondes jewels ar stolen by a venerable Franciscan who slept... If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: OrderEssay.net

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