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Voltaire was a Deist of the Enlightenment era, thus believing there to be a creator God, but that this God took no further interest in his creation, performed no miracles and offered no reward after death.

On the Christian thesis that Peter was in Rome, Voltaire observed, "How bad must things be if to prove that this Peter was in Rome, one must claim that a letter ascribed to him, dated from Babylon, was actually written in Rome. . . . Following this interpretation a letter dated from St. Petersburg must have been written in Constantinople."

Voltaire was at odds with the Catholic Church and the Catholic secular authorities over religious coercion. Jean Calas, a Huguenot and a rich businessman in Toulouse, was accused of having murdered his own son to prevent him from converting to Catholicism. He was tried and found guilty, then had his back, arms, and legs broken before being strangled. Voltaire successfully campaigned to have the verdict annulled by the Parliament of Paris.

Voltaire wrote a Treatise on Tolerance about the Calas case, but the Church put it on its Index of Forbidden Books three years after its publication.

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