Wang Runze and Wang Hanwei | the construction of facts, public rationality and media bias: the reversal of public opinion in France's first rehabilitated unjust case, the "Caras case"

The author | Wang Runze Wang Hanwei

Executive Summary

In 1761, the case of Callas took place in France, and in a complex social environment, the facts of the case were repeatedly constructed: the Church of Toulouse believed that it was a murder for religious reasons, and this conclusion was judicially recognized; Voltaire saw it as a suicide that had nothing to do with religion. Although Voltaire's factual construction eventually reversed public opinion, there were many details in the process of its construction, and strangely, this hardly attracted any criticism. The paper cuts from the perspective of the media, arguing that Voltaire has adopted a more space-oriented medium than the Toulouse church, jumped out of the absolute space dominated by religion, expanded the scope of discussion on the subject of the case, thus conforming to the concept of "tolerance", covering up the omissions in the factual judgment through value guidance, thus establishing his own factual judgment as an authority, constituting the key to his realization of the reversal of public opinion.

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The case of Kallas Voltaire is tolerant and public opinion is reversed

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The Callas case was an unjust case in Toulouse, France, in 1761, in which Jean Calas, a Protestant businessman, was framed for killing his eldest son and subjected to a wheel-beating execution. Voltaire then campaigned for the case for several years before being rehabilitated in 1765. The case was seen as the first wrongful case to be rehabilitated in French history, and the reversal of the judiciary meant to a considerable extent a change in the perception of the facts: whether it was the Karras family, the Toulouse District Court and the Church, or Voltaire, their respective expressions of the case were not uniform. Voltaire, as an important public cultural figure in Europe at that time, reconstructed the facts of the case under the circumstances that the judicial trial had already been carried out, and carried out targeted dissemination to the elite circles in France and even the whole of Europe, refuting the existing evidence, setting up the image of victims, calling for public reason, shaping the tolerance consensus, and establishing the plot framework and specific details of the Karras case while reversing the judgment, but there are still doubts about its factual narrative, which is the basis of this article.

The Secret Inquisition: The Public Opinion Basis of the Calas Death Sentence

Jean Calas was a cloth merchant in Toulouse, and by 1761 his business had been in business for more than forty years. He lived with his wife, eldest son, Marc-Antoine Calas, and second son, Pierre Calas, on a three-story building in the city's business district, the first being the store and the upper two floors inhabited. Both Mark and Pierre worked in their father's store. The third son, Louis Calas, converted to Catholicism four years ago and also lives in Toulouse; The youngest son, Donatus Calas, and two daughters are not at home; In addition, although it was a Protestant family, its maid, Jeanne Vigière, was Catholic. On October 13, the day of the crime, Gaubert Lavaisse, the son of a prominent local lawyer, visited his home.

At seven o'clock in the evening, Mark was the first to leave dinner while the others went to another room to chat, thinking Mark had gone to play billiards. By ten o'clock in the evening, Pierre sent Levies downstairs. On the first floor, the two saw Mark's body hanging from the doorbeam. Pierre hurriedly summoned his father to unravel the body, and then Pierre and Lévis went to the doctor at the behest of Jean Calas, and the couple began to rescue their son, while the others present were asked to remain silent. But when the neighbors heard Pierre and Levis's call and saw the two rushing out, they spontaneously gathered outside the door of Kallas's house. Doctors arrived and confirmed that Mark had been strangled for two hours.

(i) Public opinion murder: the collusion between the church and the judiciary in the construction of facts

The Toulouse judiciary arrived on the scene quickly upon learning the news. After questioning the crowd and conducting a search of the store, everyone in the room was ordered to be detained and taken directly to the town hall, which used to interrogate prisoners. Because of Christian doctrine and the laws of the time, Christian suicide was an unjust manifestation that would not only bring shame to entire families, but most importantly, their property would be confiscated and their bodies dragged down the streets. To avoid Mark's suicide being confirmed, the Kallas family agreed to claim that the body was found on the floor.

After the Kallas family carried out a negative fact construction, thus eliminating the possibility of suicide, the judicial staff began to analyze and determine the suspected murderer, and finally determined that the Kallas family conspired to kill Mark. The Kallas and Lavis were then arrested and separated into separate cells before Magistrate David de Beaudrigue issued a warrant for the arrest of the five.

In order to gather more evidence, the Toulouse judiciary chose to call witnesses at the time and posted a list of issues inviting witnesses to testify throughout Toulouse – a notice sponsored by the Church. The involvement of ecclesiastical forces has made the case no longer a purely judicial matter, and the tendency to religious persecution has gradually increased, and the proclamation requires potential insiders to either speak what they know or be expelled from the church—even if what they hear is hearsay. This led to the spread of many rumors against Kalass, which eventually led to the idea that the Kallas family had killed Mark the next day in order to prevent him from being converted. When the judiciary ordered Mark to be buried in the Catholic Martyrs' Cemetery, the claim became increasingly accepted.

Mark's funeral was then carried out by the White Good Church, an important local Catholic organization, who regarded Mark as a "saint" throughout Toulouse:

The members of the White Society held a solemn religious ceremony for Marc Antoine as they did with martyrs. Never before has there been such a grand pomp and circumstance when congratulating a true martyr on the Day of Remembrance; But this kind of pomp and circumstance is also very scary. They erected a skeleton on the solemn and ornate coffin platform, and were able to move, this skeleton represented Mark Antoine, who held a palm branch in one hand and a pen in the other, indicating that he would sign an oath of renunciation of heresy, and in fact he wrote a verdict that put his father to death.

In Voltaire's view, it would be difficult for Jean Kallas to escape after this funeral. Soon, the celebration of the bicentenary of the Vasi massacre in Toulouse in 1762 was held locally, and for this ceremony, the construction of related facilities began in the city, and some even openly said that the wooden plank platform for the execution of the Calas family was the most spectacular decoration of the festival. During these two events, nothing in the available historical sources of support for Kallas remained, and a spiral of silence quietly formed in this atmosphere of judicial repression and religious fanaticism.

This public opinion also has a key impact on the judgment of the Toulouse courts. On March 9, 1762, 13 judges began discussions, but their opinions were widely divergent and they reached a stalemate. The two opposing judges debated the issue in the city, but because of the "storm in the city, there was a lot of discussion", and the judges involved in the debate hid in the countryside. Later, the pro-Carlas judges chose silence, and another turned to support the death penalty, which led to a majority of the party convicting Kallas, and by late March, Jean Kallas had been sentenced to a wheel-loading sentence. All but Pierre was acquitted; Far away in Nîmes

Dona, the youngest son who did not participate in the whole process, also went to Switzerland due to the prejudice of the people around him.

It can be said that Kallas's death sentence is a fabrication of facts and the construction of public opinion caused by the imagination of religious persecution. Scholars such as David Bien have discussed the serious antagonism between Catholicism and Protestantism at that time, Huguenot not only had great disagreement with Catholicism in ideology, social security and international relations, but was considered to have a fairly strong republican tendency in France, where the absolute monarchy was like a day, and the proportion of Protestants engaged in industry and commerce was much higher than that of Catholics, so that social class differentiation and religious contradictions converged to a certain extent." The peasants' distrust of the citizens constituted a catalyst for social unrest", and in August 1572 there was the Catholic massacre of St. Bartholomew against the Huguenots for months. Catholics do not identify with the Huguenots in their entirety, but from the fear that the Huguenots will kill and take money. Although the negative image of the Huguenots had begun to fade and the physical repression had ceased at the time of the Caras case, the brutal acts in the name of religion had not been broken, and the Kalas family, as a Huguenotist with a very small proportion of the population of Toulouse, were regarded by the authorities and the public as murderers with a relatively deep historical and social background. With the brutal and reckless intervention of the Church, given its existence as God's "earthly expansion of the kingdom of heaven," the dictatorship of Kallas became necessary for it to maintain and manifest its authority and to combat heresy.

(ii) Church, Carnival and Judiciary Doubts: The First Formation of Facts

Such a latent emotion rooted in the social psyche quickly evolved into a general knowledge of facts in Toulouse with the intervention of the Church, and the case was quickly characterized as murder and naked religious persecution, and the religious activities that were fanned before the verdict of this case were actually based on this judgment, and public opinion was no longer particularly tolerant of the suspicion of the facts themselves, and the individual was wrapped up in a carnival in the sense of Bakhtin Michael. The upside-down life (monde à lènvers) "allows the collective repression of daily religious repression to fully unfold."

In this case, the judicial efforts on fact-checking were insignificant, the judges' arguments were quickly overwhelmed, and in terms of the final verdict, there may still be doubts about the judiciary, Jean Kallas was sentenced to death, Pierre was exiled from the city, and everyone else was acquitted. This apparently perverse circumstance was not taken seriously enough at the time, and on the contrary, the general conclusion of the guilty verdict undoubtedly shoveled the last shovel of soil for the original construction of the "facts".

Second, the reversal of public opinion: Voltaire's reconstruction of the facts of the Karras case

Did Mark commit suicide or did he kill him? As far as the historical materials that can be retrieved at the time of the crime are concerned, most of them are left by Voltaire and his legal team, and there is almost no content in Toulouse, in the case that the mainstream of the academic community basically agrees that Mark is a suicide, there are still scholars who question some contradictions in the current historical materials, although they will not overturn the big conclusion, but also leave a question for this case: Since what Voltaire has is difficult to call the truth, where does the persuasive power of its factual construction come from? To explore this question, it is necessary to return to the historical scene and pay attention to Voltaire's factual construction process.

(1) Voltaire's participation and reversal: a far-reaching network of historical materials

The reason why Voltaire was involved in this case may not be explained simply by the emotional motives of opposing the Catholic Church, the challenge to the monarchy by the Huguenotist Cameside uprising and his own deism tendencies led Voltaire to believe that he was "as far away from Calvinism as traditional Catholicism", and it is more appropriate to explain that this is a microcosm of Voltaire's lifelong pursuit of the concept of "tolerance", and the 1723 publication of Henriad praised the promulgation of the "Cleric". Henry IV of Nantes' Edict, published in 1733 in Philosophical Correspondence, developed Locke's view that the function of religion was limited to the mind. That is to say, after a long period of efforts, Voltaire has a conscious and mature work direction in the field of the dissemination of the concept of tolerance, and it is natural to devote himself to the reversal of the Caras case, just as Marc Macdonald cut into the vertical and horizontal two threads of the history of ideas and the study of the Enlightenment, placing the Caras case at the intersection of the concept of tolerance and practice.

After contacting the Kallas family and learning about the case, Voltaire published a series of pamphlets to defend himself, the main points of which are twofold: First, the case has nothing to do with religious belief; Second, the case was a suicide rather than a murder. In terms of specific documents, the original document relating to the trial and execution of the Toulouse merchant Jean Caras (hereinafter referred to as the "original document") is more detailed, and its "originality" lies in the fact that except for a petition, the other articles are letters and memorandums of the Kallas family, involving Anne Rose Cabibel, the second son, Pierre, the fourth son Donna, who was not present at the time, and there is also a pamphlet recounting the memories of the guest Lavis. The facts presented are generally consistent.

The information seems to come from direct eyewitnesses and is very convincing, but it is not. First of all, it is likely that these documents were processed by Voltaire, and Voltaire did not shy away from this, and the daimyo was written on the cover of the pamphlet, and at the end of each article there was the word "Chatelaine". Second, it was written a year before the crime, and Lavis's account was published only in 1765, which undermined the reliability of the narrative. Third, as far as the three dictators involved in the "Original Documents" are concerned, Voltaire seems to have adopted multiple sources, but there are still flaws, even if the blood community between the three people is not mentioned, from the legal effect of the testimony, Donna was in Nîmes, more than two hundred kilometers away, and Mrs. Carlas was not at the scene at the first time of finding the body, she "did not dare to go down, did not know what happened", when she went down to the scene, there were already neighbors who appeared and gathered at the scene, and the case had inevitably become public. At this point, her testimony no longer has a unique key role. Thus, the case itself had no witnesses to the moment of death, and Pierre was the only one who first found the body to tell the story publicly—Lavis's account would be three years later, forming an isolated testimony that would be less convincing for both judicial and historical research.

During the same period, Voltaire also published a series of related pamphlets, including the poem "The Unfortunate History of Calas, the Victim of Religious Fever", the appendix to the book "The Arrogant Philosopher", and the famous "On Tolerance". At the level of facts of the case, it is basically consistent with the "original documents", and the correspondence between Voltaire and the lawyers in the Kallas case is not directly related to the facts of the case, and these lawyers also provide the Kallas case with memorandums to record the facts of the case, but unlike the constructive expression in the original documents, these memorandums are mainly aimed at the evidence of the existing court trial, and the more typical ones are the original defense lawyer Sudre of the caras and the later reversal lawyer Elie de Beaumont. A pamphlet by Loyseau de Mauleon. The number of refutations upheld in these memorandums is also evident in many of Voltaire's works released to the public, such as "Critical Review of the Evidence in the Caras case", which makes a big fuss about the reliability of the evidence in the judicial field of Toulouse and the appropriateness of the subject of the access.

Despite being the embodiment of reason in the Enlightenment, Voltaire still used a great deal of emotional vocabulary and even personal attacks in his writings, such as in a letter to D'Alembert, where the Kallas case was called a "bloody and odious tragedy", the judge was "flattering" and the masses were "paranoid and fanatical". Although letters were generally seen as private expressions, "good letters were made public" was common at the time, and according to Abrosimov's research, Correspondence Littéraire, with the help of Diderot, founded a journal for the elite, Correspondance littéraire. Voltaire's letters were often published in this publication. And this letter, written in March 1765, had already been published in the British "Universal Magazine of Knowledge & Pleasure" in April, so at that time Voltaire's letter was not a purely private expression, Voltaire was also aware of this situation, and he also explained the situation to his aristocratic friends because of the improper adaptation of some British publishers. It is this "publisher's speculation" that makes the "philosopher's contemplation" form the Matthew effect in the field of public opinion. On the whole, Ablosimov summarized Voltaire's communication strategy as three points of opening up the center of power, mobilizing mass participation and seeking international solidarity, including the writing and publication of pamphlets and letters, participation in aristocratic salons, and urban public speeches.

All of this is based on Voltaire's historical data, and it is prudent to say that we can only know how, in Voltaire's view, the Kallas family covered up the suicide and how the church and the Toulouse court constructed the "facts". So why did Voltaire's not-so-solid reliability at the level of the construction of the facts of the Kallas case not affect his success in shaping the facts of the Karras case? In France in the middle of the 17th century, how public intellectuals gained public trust in the judgment of facts, and this strangeness and confusion of Voltaire's role in the present may be an important inspiration and reflection of the Enlightenment to modern civilization.

(ii) The Depressed and the Harmonious Family: Voltaire's Group Portrait Depiction of Dissolving the Motive for Murder

According to the trial of the Toulouse court, Mark was murdered for religious reasons, and Voltaire put forward a-for-tat statement about the cause of death and the way of death: Mark committed suicide for non-religious reasons. The inadequacy of the evidence of murder is on the one hand, after all, "there are certain elements pointing to murder at the scene", on the other hand, Voltaire adopted the description of each other's personalities by the Kallas family - although this is difficult to become evidence in the direct legal sense, but considering the frequent appearance of relevant expressions in various documents and the great success of the Karras case in public opinion, this "artificial design" strategy still has its effect.

In Voltaire's writings, the deceased Mark was a gloomy and taciturn man who had the intention of practicing law and had a degree, but was unable to do what he expected because Protestants could not hold public office at the time, "He became impermanent, silent, world-weary, and no longer participated in the entertainment and conversation of the neighborhood." After that, Mark read tragic works such as Hamlet and other articles and books on suicide. His own personality is not conducive to relieving depression, and he encounters practical difficulties, and the suicide motive of non-religious factors is thus established.

By contrast, Jean Kallas and Mrs. Kallas, who were close relatives of Mark, were extremely kind people, in Donna's words: "There should be no better parents than them." Especially on the issue of the conversion of his third son, Louis, Carlas did not take measures because of his conversion to Catholicism, on the contrary, Louis also depended on his father's financial support for his life. The attitude toward Louis is quite persuasive in dissolving the Carlas' motives for killing, but this remains in doubt. The French archaeologist Romane-Musculus Paul examined the genealogy of the Karras family and found that Louis, born in 1736, was "baptized Catholic" the next day, "publicly renounced his faith (abjure)" in 1756, and moved to England, which could be regarded as a Protestant country, in 1765. Whether Louis abandoned the Catholic or Protestant faith seems contradictory — after all, his Huguenot brothers and sisters were the same church as his baptism. In addition, Louis had already moved away from his parents' house at the time of the crime, and whether there were religious reasons behind this remains to be examined. In addition, Kallas's self-report before his death was also published in the form of a pamphlet, according to which Jean Kallas did not blame the judiciary before his death, but hoped that they would receive God's protection and forgiveness, which is quite close to the narrative of Jesus forgiving the executioners when he was crucified in Luke (23:43-47), thus shaping Kallas's personality and morality. In addition to direct portrayals in the literature, Voltaire also brought Madame Carlas into the Paris Salon, and this face-to-face human-to-human communication made it easier for Parisian high society to believe in the veracity of Madame Caras and Voltaire's account.

Despite being acquitted, Lavis, who had been a guest at the Kallas family at the time, was once suspected by the Toulouse of being the killer sent by the Protestant Church to kill Mark. Voltaire refuted this more cryptically based on the Kallas family's account, Donna called Lavis "honest and gentle", and Madame de Calas, with whom he talked a lot, was also very impressed with him, and even Jean Kallas's dying confession did not forget to pay tribute to him. In addition, in Lavis's self-description and in the Original Document, it is also mentioned that his status as the son of a lawyer and a "new Catholic", not only does not have the motive to kill, but it is indeed not common sense to murder in such a clumsy and direct way.

In addition to the individuals at the scene of the crime, Voltaire's attacks on the judicial staff of Toulouse and the residents of Toulouse are also reflected in the lines. In On Tolerance, it is slightly sarcastic that several judges evaded public opinion "for a regrettable reason", the original document said that the people who tried Kalas were "unwise", and the rumor-mongers were "of poor character", and similar writing style can be glimpsed in the lawyers' memos, and Morayon preconceived the description of the incident: "A young man was overwhelmed by the burden of life and escaped from himself in his father's house... The father cried out in despair when he saw his son's body, but it was thought that there had been an argument and a fight, and as a result, we saw the kindest parents executed for the crime of the murderer. Similar preconceived judgments were even amplified by the 19th century, with magazines saying that "several of the judges were bought" and that the magistrate David who arrested the Kallas family was "reckless and impetuous... with blind enthusiasm and cruel determination", with detailed descriptions such as "sarcastic eyes" and short dialogues; Not only does it use the almost identical rhetorical rhetorical question in Donna's memorandum in his discourse on Pierre's guilt, but he also calls Catholics "lacking in individuality and reason", directly arguing that Catholicism still adheres to the doctrine of the killing of the son of Calas; For example, in 1831, a religious newspaper in the United States relayed Kallas's self-statement before his death in the form of letters, which also adhered to the tone of sympathy and indignation, and the attitude of religious opposition was remarkable, and the article was repeatedly recited. Other scholars, such as Edna Nixon, clearly held the Protestant and degrading of Protestantism, that Kallas was "indomitable" and that judges were "unscrupulous."

Voltaire's approach to writing was a great success, as evidenced by the attitude of the nobles and bureaucrats at the Pre-Imperial Council: "The enthusiasm of the Duc de Praslin for her (Madame de Calas) could not have been greater... There were many judges present, and ministers came a lot, and this field was very favorable to them... The petition to overturn the case was endorsed by all... [The people present] were also deeply indignant at the unfair judgment of the past. Voltaire made almost the whole of Paris and even France empathize with the Kallas, and this is where he succeeded in comparison with the theologians who had previously preached religious tolerance: overcoming the problem of "lengthy, serious, vulgar partisanship" in previous religious propaganda, and enhancing readability with literary writing. Finally, on June 4, 1764, the Council of State revoked the judgment of the High Court of Toulouse. On March 9, 1765, the Council of State officially declared the complete restoration of the Calas family, and the king granted Madame Kallas a pension of 36,000 gold coins. However, it is worth noting that the official reversal of the case did not specify the cause of Mark's death.

(3) Evidence and Science: The Embodiment and Correction of Reason in Voltaire's Public Expression

Voltaire's rational category can be summed up as a materialistic empiricism inherited from Locke, which focuses on "experience and common sense." This is also evident in his historical writing: not blindly following authority, teaching by facts, and having a strong progressive and mechanistic color. In contrast to the public expression in the Kallas case, reason in the Voltaire sense also runs through the form: in addition to the relatively emotional and clear expression in the group portrait depiction, the discussion of evidence within the judicial rules and the application of scientific knowledge are also the characteristics of his writing.

The arrests, sentences and executions of the Toulouse judiciary were themselves suspicious, and Voltaire first attacked the source of the evidence. In addition to the results of the search, the arrest of Kallas and others was based on "fanatical shouting" and "rumors", not to mention that the intervention of the Church had the implication of a certain forced statement. In addition, Voltaire believed that religious fanaticism was the direct cause of Kallas's execution, that the Church was overstepping its position in the judicial process, and that the judicial process was carried out by religious fanaticism, especially when the judge avoided the case due to public pressure, which to a considerable extent dissipated the fairness of the judgment. Given Voltaire's support for an enlightened monarchy, the Kallas case and its rehabilitation, placed in the context of the gradual formation of the nation-state in the 18th century, can even be understood as a brief resurrection of religious fanaticism and a powerful suppression of secular monarchy. It is worth mentioning that in the changes before and after the judges' votes, Voltaire's description is questionable, in "On Tolerance" there were initially 6 judges in favor of the death penalty and 7 against it, but the number of votes against it below became 6 votes, and the final vote was 8 to 5; In the original document, only the opinions of 12 judges were discussed, and the initial vote was 6 to 6, and the final decision, although the result was clear, did not explain the specific circumstances.

The contradiction in the expression of the vote shows that Voltaire is still not clear enough about the facts of the Karras case, and there are also "traces of murder" at the scene, in which the confession of the Karras family is contradicted by the forensic doctor's examination report, in which the autopsy report submitted by the forensic doctor La Marque (La Marque) feeds about four hours before death, and according to the confession, it is no more than three hours from the time Mark left the table until the body was found. In this regard, Voltaire's explanation does not start from the content of the evidence itself, Pierre said that this is because of the forensic doctor Lamarck's personal resentment, while Donner said that the digestion time will change due to "age, gender, weight and physical fitness", Pierre's explanation cannot be verified, and Donner is a relativistic sophistry. Yet this rebuttal still worked, because Voltaire had naturally presupposed Kalas's innocent position. Compared with empirical medical reports, Voltaire's choice of confessions as the primary basis did not affect the effect of dissemination, but this expression was an inappropriate amendment to the "rationality" he advocated, and also reflected the immaturity of the law at that time.

If Lamarck's autopsy report is merely empirical material, then the study of hanging, Antonie Louis, the dean of the Royal Infirmary of the French Academy of Sciences, cited by Beaumont in the appeal and pamphlet, can be called a medical work that can stand up to scrutiny, using a large number of case materials, summarizing the difference between suicide and other killings, in which he usually leaves a horizontal circular scar, which is a sufficient condition for determining external strangulation. Beaumont, however, concludes that the negative proposition is also true, and Mark's autopsy report does not mention a level of circular scars, which Beaumont uses as the scientific basis for Mark's suicide, and Caspar Hirschiz also discusses the problem: "There are no lawyers and forensic experts [who understand this problem] in the Paris public." Beaumont's logical error was concealed and became the scientific basis for Marco's suicide.

(iv) Tolerance becomes fashionable: the factual details of retirement

All kinds of doubts not only did not affect the success of Voltaire's factual construction, but also few scholars questioned for a long time, the author believes that on the one hand, perhaps because of the lack of attention paid to the original text by the previous academic circles, on the other hand, under the Whig view of history, the value orientation of such research seems to be naturally determined: for the sake of tolerance and shouting, it seems that questioning Voltaire's conclusions naturally stands on the intolerant side.

Tolerance was almost a consensus in French intellectual circles at that time, the ideas of religious tolerance of the British thinkers John Locke and Pierre Bayle were introduced to France and had a profound impact on Voltaire, and the Dorgo and others of the physiocrats also supported religious tolerance, and as the concept of tolerance was projected into social reality, the Catholic Church was rapidly pushed against this moral concept in the evolution of this social trend.

In the Caras case, Voltaire's On Tolerance, as well as a series of other publications calling for tolerance, were so successful in France and throughout Europe that even the policemen, who did not like Voltaire at the time, admitted that On Tolerance was "interesting and well written." Abrosimov argues that the success of On Tolerance was due to Voltaire's restriction of its distribution to the nobility, precisely in the hands of the nobility, and the circle of this restriction greatly satisfied the vanity of these aristocrats who considered themselves to be the French elite. The Parisian aristocracy bears great similarities with the groups discussed by Thorstein Veblen in terms of sources of wealth, social attributes, and economic class, as it appears in the last chapter of The Theory of the Leisure Class: "It is knowledge itself, especially higher learning, that is most clearly influenced by the idea of the leisure class." The so-called "higher learning" manifested itself over a long historical period as knowledge with strong mystical overtones associated with religion, and then gradually evolved into the humanities or classical disciplines. Voltaire's "religious tolerance" issue and the rational concept behind it, because of its abstraction, classicism and mystique, can also be included in this category, so that the fashion of talking about rationality and religious tolerance in aristocratic circles is because the demand for identity is far beyond ordinary people, and the aristocracy is under great pressure from the trend. This also constitutes an important factor in the trend of public opinion strengthening: the pursuit of superiority – which exists as an identity distinction.

From religious tolerance to the Caras case, in Voltaire's writing, the latter exists as one of the arguments of the former, but in the actual communication effect, the former becomes the basis for the reversal of the latter, and this logical cycle is valid, but the problem is that such a way of writing and talking actually focuses on the confrontation between ideas rather than the specific fact-check, Voltaire's construction can be said to have a hard wound, but because of the excellence of the text itself, As a result, factual judgments and value judgments have been bound, and under the protection of tolerance of this value judgment itself and the fashion trend of the time, flaws in factual statements are no longer important.

Third, the formation of public opinion in the Kallas case: media bias, factual construction, and public reason

The fact that the Church of Toulouse and Voltaire have taken a very different direction in constructing the facts of the Caras case is closely related to the fundamental difference in their positions: although both hold the banner of anti-religious persecution, the starting points of the two sides are not the same. There are also huge differences in the medium used: the church constructs and reinforces facts mainly through interrogations and two religious ceremonies in the church, while Voltaire fights for sympathy mainly through publications, letters, and salons. This difference is noteworthy, and we may wish to analyze the internal logic of the formation of European public opinion at that time, and reflect the practice path and mechanism of the Enlightenment at the level of public opinion with the dissemination fragment of the concept of tolerance projected by the Karras case.

(1) Space bias towards the medium: Voltaire detached from absolute space

There is a temporal and spatial bias in the media, as Innis said, "religious organizations rely on time, political organizations rely on space", and cloud "political empire relies on space, Christian empire relies on time." This is quite evident in the Kallas case, where the Catholic Church, though struck by the Reformation, has not wavered in its dominant position in Toulouse, and both forms adopted are manifestations of the temporal bias of the medium.

The interrogation of the citizens and the proclamation of the church depended on one important place: the church. The church is a complex complex in the Christian theological sense, regarded as the "temple of God" and "the refuge of the believer", and this absolute space that is "essentially the signifier of politics and the signifier of religion" has correspondingly the scalability of time and the relative closure of space due to its stability at the architectural level, and constitutes a permanent symbol of the authority of the local church. The practice of communication between the citizens of Toulouse in this space can also be said to be temporally biased, because the rituals organized by the church are equally consistent with the continuity of time and the closure of space, such as the interrogation initiated by the church being circled inside the church space and not being public, and the only thing presented to the citizens of Toulouse is the profound opposition between the authority of the church represented by this huge building and the Callas family as pagans; More typically, such as the commemoration of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, not only has a history of nearly two hundred years, but also only faces the interior of the city of Toulouse, the church mobilizes religious celebrations as a civic carnival, and then shapes the entire city as an extension of the church, making the collective fanaticism dominated by religious authority the only criterion for value judgment, thus forming a public opinion that is not conducive to Calas. By the mid-to-late 18th century, the French king had still not achieved control over the key aspects of the personnel and finances of the local church, which was still regarded as part of the entire Catholic Church - not part of the French power apparatus, that is, in the powerful Catholic power of Toulouse, the church was always the highest spiritual ruler in the city.

Correspondingly, Voltaire's communication practices were more spatial in their biases: salons were more open than church inquiries, letters were written to all of Europe, pamphlets he wrote to the uncertain masses, and these communication practices jumped out of the established time-biased media system. The development of the mass publishing industry, the increase in secular exchanges, and the expansion of the French royal power made the adjudication power in this case no longer simply attributed to the clerical class and the local judicial authorities under its control, but allowed the wider civic class and the political forces that could interfere in judicial decision-making to participate in the discussion and even judgment of such a "religious case", and religious authority was no longer the supreme criterion of value judgment. It can even be said that the revelation of the Kallas case meant that in France at that time, the printing media civilization represented by pamphlets and open letters launched a strong challenge to the media system of the religious civilization represented by the church.

(ii) Introduction of public reason: "democracy" of public opinion and tolerance of consensus

Another consequence of the Kallas case was that Voltaire himself was also shaped by the "public sphere of French character" and became the spokesman of public reason. On the one hand, Voltaire mobilized more members of society to participate in the process of public opinion, essentially implementing the simple principle of "democracy", thus providing endorsement for factual judgments. It was at the same time that the Kallas case occurred that "the public value of public opinion was revealed for the first time", and the ideas and practices of that time pointed out the intrinsic source of legitimacy of public opinion: participatory democracy.

On the other hand, there is also the inevitability of why tolerance can reach consensus and become "fashionable". Voltaire tried to expand his readership to the whole of Europe, and his construction of the higher dimensions of facts and the idea of "tolerance" in his arguments were not necessarily an option for maximizing the utility of specific individuals—if Voltaire did not intervene, the execution of Caras would have been a welcome situation in Toulouse. But at a time when the differences between sects, states, and nations could not be bridged for the time being, "tolerance" could become the greatest common denominator, transcending the original judicial and political decision-making, so that the individual had to place himself in a more open, broader, more heterogeneous social relationship to carry out a game-theoretic analysis, in Kant's framework, the use of reason was no longer private, but public.

In this way of thinking, tolerance is bound to become a moral law of universal significance. Opposition to tolerance at a time when heterogeneity was becoming more and more profound meant opposition to all other members of society, as Voltaire said in his reference to why he defended Calas: "You ask me why I am so interested in this Toulouse merchant who died of wheel-punishment, and I tell you first of all because I am human; The second is because I saw foreigners discuss this and condemn us. It is probably not necessary to make France infamous on the whole continent, right? ”

(iii) Revelation and Story: The Difference Between the Church and Voltaire's Factual Narrative Models

As mentioned above, Voltaire's factual construction is actually a shelter for the value of tolerance, and there are still flaws in the case itself. However, as far as the existing historical materials are concerned, before Voltaire created the pamphlet, there was no complete text to tell the whole story of the case: the judgment file of the court of Toulouse is also missing in the research and historical materials I have seen, and the factual construction of the church has actually been carried out by suggestion, and then it has been judicially revealed. Returning to the question of the media, the medium used by the Church does not have the ability of continuous narrative except for proclamation and dialogue, but these two forms do not express their factual judgments, but in various hints, the Church constantly provides details whose authenticity is still in doubt, and the construction of the case by the citizens of Toulouse is actually done in the self-patchwork of these details.

On the contrary, there is no technical difference between the texts and salons in which Voltaire is involved in the practice of proclamations and interrogations, but Voltaire tells a story that is complete enough, with a clear framework and abundant details. The medium of "ubiquity" leads to different forms of "civilization", and the Church of Toulouse is still trying to convey information through methods similar to "revelation", thus constructing a consistent Christian "mystic" way of transmitting information, in which the legitimacy of the Church from God is fulfilled; Voltaire presented all the factual details he knew, and constructed the legitimacy of his exposition through rationality expressed as "experience and common sense", which constituted a communication orientation for the secularization of Western society, and the influence of religion in the judiciary gradually declined, gradually declining into a "subsystem" of society. These two are biases of individual practice, not just the medium itself—after all, Gutenberg had invented printing for more than three hundred years, and the "availability" of printing had not been fulfilled at the Church end.

However, it should be noted that the fact that both the Church and Voltaire are based on the tragedy of death in the plot, and both lead to opposition to religious persecution, the former believing that the Kallas family murdered Mark, while the latter believes that the Toulouse authorities persecuted the Kallas family. Both have provoked a sufficient shock of public opinion on a corresponding scale – although the truth of the fact itself has not yet been confirmed, and the fear demands evoked by the use of religious persecution by these two narratives, as well as the strong self-efficacy and identity based on religion or reason, should be a relatively more critical level of public opinion formation than the truth itself. As for the fact that Voltaire depicts can finally win the victory of public opinion, it is not necessarily because his construction process is more "rational", but because he binds facts to tolerance, so that the irreproachability of value judgments extends to factual judgments.

Fourth, the aftermath

Eric Voegelin said that Voltaire did not attach importance to "the reliability of knowledge", making the European public think that "a good writer can talk about anything, any incorrect opinion can be regarded as an authoritative view, and the irresponsibility of thought equals the freedom of thought". The doubts in the Kallas case have not been clarified to this day, and Voltaire's series of ideas and practices have also been recognized as "myths deeply involved in the enlightenment step by step". Indeed, the progressive significance of the Kallas case cannot be ignored, but the author regrets that Voltaire's construction of facts still has intrinsic similarities with the church - factual judgment is not based on reality but on position, the value core of factual self-sufficiency is not fully reflected, the reversal of public opinion is not necessarily the victory of reason over irrationality, perhaps just the victory of one irrationality in the packaging of reason over another, and the final expression of the individual is most likely only the "truth of hope" of the individual or a specific person. More than a hundred years ago, Marx criticized Powell for "uncritically confusing political emancipation with the emancipation of man in general", and as far as the subject of this article is concerned, we always seem to confuse the emancipation of technological, political, and social order with the emancipation of our spirit and communication practice, and our cognition is always inevitably bound by certain values, so that a misjudgment of the facts arises, when this cognition is expressed in the public sphere, especially through specific subjects. It is quite possible that we will return to Toulouse in 1761: the truth may be obscured forever, and the individual as a member of society can only obtain constructed cognition and public opinion, and the vigilance against this risk is the precious spiritual wealth that Voltaire left us with more practical significance in the present in addition to tolerance and rational ideas.

In Journalism and Communication Studies, No. 5, 2022

Due to the space limitations, the public number is discarded for comments, and the full version can be found in the publication.

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