The protagonist, Candide, who literally means optimism goes through life with a philosophy that everything is happening as it should which is used to show the naiveté and passivity of the masses when it comes to putting up with the horrendous treatment of the Church. In ‘Candide’ the reader is presented to religious figures through characters like the Protestant minister, the Inquisitor, the Jesuit Baron, and the Anabaptist.
All of these figures (except of course for the Anabaptist who is shown to sacrifice himself to save the enemy and is therefore the only ‘good’ character in the story) inhumanely treat their followers justified by their interpretations of the Bible. It is the greatest irony of all that optimism in itself is something that is punished by the religious leaders as being against God, what is supposed to be ‘good’ in the world and lead by example but has rather become the most violent institution on earth.
Testing of Optimism
This state of optimism of Candide is always tested as he goes through a series of horrific events to see whether he can lose his naiveté and realize “If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others?” (Voltaire, Chapter Six). First he engages in pre-marital sexual relations with his love Cunégonde which is a sin according to the Catholic church. The first representation of a religious figure in the story is the Baron, Cunégonde’s brother who is a Jesuit priest, and strikes Candide in the face with the back of a sword. This is not because Candide took his sisters virginity but rather because he was of a different social class which clashes with the pious character the Baron is supposed to have as a priest.
Candide is chucked out of the castle never to see his loved ones ever again for having engaged in pre-marital sex. But Pangloss justifies his philosophy that everything is happening as it should in Chapter Four when sexually transmitted diseases and sex as an act itself is seen to have brought the world good through the discovery of chocolate, “if Columbus in an island of America had not caught the disease, which poisons the source of generation, and often indeed prevents generation, we should not have chocolate and cochineal" (Voltaire, Chapter Four).
The Priest and the Hypocrite
The next religious figure drenched in satire is the Protestant priest who is introduced preaching about the need to help others and when Candide asks for help the priest tries to beat him. The hypocrisy in which the religious institution is presented in this example is probably the most blatant example in the whole text. The next of course is the Inquisition which seeks to punish Pangloss for his optimistic philosophies which are giving to the townsfolk as hope after an earthquake.
The earthquake in Lisbon was actually an event that Voltaire borrowed from real life which he used to demonstrate the ridiculous auto-da-fé or act of faith where innocent people were sacrificed in order to prevent more natural disasters, “It was decided by the university of Coimbre that the sight of several persons being slowly burned in great ceremony is an infallible secret for preventing earthquakes” (Voltaire, Chapter Six). Auto-da-fé was a response to natural disasters that use to happen routinely and were organized by the Catholic church and of course Voltaire satirized this ridiculous show of faith by writing about an earthquake that happened straight after the act of faith of killing Pangloss. Why the sacrifices were picked is very important for this satire of the Inquisition also.
Universal Reasoning
Pangloss is condemned for his ideas of universal reasoning when he tries to give the survivors of the earthquake hope after tens of thousands are killed and Candide is condemned because he was “listening with an air of approval” (Voltaire, Chapter Six). Even though he is not put to death he is beaten “in cadence to the music” (Voltaire, Chapter Six), which means he was bet to the beat of live music which was being created next to him like some sort of gruesome drum.
So ultimately Candide was not only taken as a sacrifice for doing nothing (literally ‘listening’) and was punished for the amusement of others , but both reasons (like the earthquake that were true to life) show the injustice and sadistic happenings of the Church and its treatment of the people it was supposed to look after.
Conclusion
It is important to note that despite Voltaire constantly using satire to emphasize the hypocrisy and goings-on of the Catholic Church he does not condemn the follower of religion but those people who seek power through the institution of religion. It seems Voltaire does give us a slight optimistical moment through the character of Jacques as he saves his enemy despite his own life. This emphasizes the difference in the novel between how people are supposed to act like because of their social class or religious title, and how people actually are as exposed by their actions.
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