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Pierre-Paul Sirven
Pierre-Paul Sirven (1709–1777) is one of Voltaire's ''causes célèbres'' in his campaign to ''écraser l'infame'' (crush infamy). Background Sirven became an archivist and notary in Castres, southern France, in 1736. He was a Protestant with three daughters; the middle one, Elizabeth, was mentally handicapped. Protestants suffered serious disabilities in France at the time and were frequently persecuted by the authorities, often on flimsy excuses. The case of Jean Calas, the subject of another of Voltaire's campaigns, had shown that legal authorities were fully prepared to ignore basic principles of law and justice in acting against members of the minority religion. The Toulouse ''parlement'' (high court) which took the decision in the Calas case also had jurisdiction over the authorities that would eventually try Sirven. Elizabeth disappeared on 6 March 1760, aged 21. After having searched for her without success, Sirven learned that she had been taken into the convent of th ...
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Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—especially of the Roman Catholic Church—and of slavery. Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, and scientific expositions. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets. Voltaire was one of the first authors to become renowned and commercially successful internationally. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties and was at constant risk from the strict censorship laws of the Catholic French monarchy. His polemics witheringly satirized intolerance, religious dogma, and the French institutions of his day. H ...
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Castres
Castres (; ''Castras'' in the Languedocian dialect of Occitan) is the sole subprefecture of the Tarn department in the Occitanie region in Southern France. It lies in the former province of Languedoc, although not in the former region of Languedoc-Roussillon. In 2018, the commune had a population of 41,795. Castres is the fourth-largest industrial centre of the predominantly rural former Midi-Pyrénées region after Toulouse, Tarbes and Albi, as well as the largest in the part of Languedoc lying between Toulouse and Montpellier. It is noted for being the birthplace of the famous socialist leader Jean Jaurès (1859–1914) and home to the important Goya Museum of Spanish painting. Demographics In 1831, the population of Castres was 12,032, making it the largest town of the department of Tarn. One of the few industrial towns in the region of Albigeois, the population of the commune proper grew to 19,483 in 1901, and 34,126 by 1954. However, with the decline of its industr ...
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France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea; overseas territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean. Due to its several coastal territories, France has the largest exclusive economic zone in the world. France borders Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Monaco, Italy, Andorra, and Spain in continental Europe, as well as the Netherlands, Suriname, and Brazil in the Americas via its overseas territories in French Guiana and Saint Martin. Its eighteen integral regions (five of which are overseas) span a combined area of and contain clos ...
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Jean Calas
Jean Calas (1698 – 10 March 1762) was a merchant living in Toulouse, France, who was tried, tortured and executed for the murder of his son, despite his protestations of innocence. Calas was a Protestant in an officially Catholic society. Doubts about his guilt were raised by opponents of the Catholic Church and he was exonerated in 1764. In France, he became a symbolic victim of religious intolerance, along with François-Jean de la Barre and Pierre-Paul Sirven. Background Calas, along with his wife, was a Protestant. France was then a Catholic country; Catholicism was the state religion, with no legal right for individuals to practice different faiths. While the harsh oppression of Protestantism initiated by King Louis XIV had largely receded, Protestants were, at best, tolerated. Louis, one of Calas' sons, converted to Catholicism in 1756. Death of Marc-Antoine Calas left, The arrest of Calas. On 13–14 October 1761, another of the Calas sons, Marc-Antoine, was foun ...
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Toulouse
Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and from Paris. It is the fourth-largest city in France after Paris, Marseille and Lyon, with 493,465 inhabitants within its municipal boundaries (2019 census); its metropolitan area has a population of 1,454,158 inhabitants (2019 census). Toulouse is the central city of one of the 20 French Métropoles, with one of the three strongest demographic growth (2013-2019). Toulouse is the centre of the European aerospace industry, with the headquarters of Airbus, the SPOT satellite system, ATR and the Aerospace Valley. It hosts the CNES's Toulouse Space Centre (CST) which is the largest national space centre in Europe, but also, on the military side, the newly created NATO space centre of excellence and the French Space Command and Space Academy. T ...
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Lettre De Cachet
''Lettres de cachet'' (; ) were letters signed by the king of France, countersigned by one of his ministers, and closed with the royal seal. They contained orders directly from the king, often to enforce arbitrary actions and judgments that could not be appealed. In the case of organized bodies, 'lettres de cachet’ were issued for the purpose of preventing assembly or accomplishing some other definite act. The provincial estates were convoked (called to assembly) in this manner, and it was by a ''lettre de cachet'' (in this case, a ''lettre de jussipri''), or by showing in person in a '' lit de justice'', that the king ordered a '' parlement'' to register a law despite that ''parlement''s refusal to pass it. The best-known ''lettres de cachet'', however, were penal, by which a subject was imprisoned without trial and without an opportunity of defense (after inquiry and due diligence by the ''lieutenant de police'') in a state prison or an ordinary jail, confinement in a ...
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Catholicism
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization.O'Collins, p. v (preface). The church consists of 24 ''sui iuris'' churches, including the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, which comprise almost 3,500 dioceses and eparchies located around the world. The pope, who is the bishop of Rome, is the chief pastor of the church. The bishopric of Rome, known as the Holy See, is the central governing authority of the church. The administrative body of the Holy See, the Roman Curia, has its principal offices in Vatican City, a small enclave of the Italian city of Rome, of which the pope is head of state. The core beliefs of Catholicism are found in the Nicene Creed. The Catholic Church teaches that it is th ...
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Mazamet
Mazamet (; Languedocien: ''Masamet'') is a commune in the Tarn department in southern France. It is the second-largest component of the Castres-Mazamet metropolitan area. Geography Mazamet is situated on the northern slope of the Montagne Noire and on the Arnette, a small tributary of the Thoré, which forms the commune's northern border. Population Economy The town made its wealth during the 18th and 19th centuries, when it was the world center of the wool industry. At its height, the town imported more than 100,000 tonnes of wool annually from the Southern Hemisphere. After processing, numerous establishments were involved in wool-spinning and in the manufacture of leather goods, gloves, blankets, hosiery and clothing for the troops. Mazamet was the biggest center of the wool pulling industry in Europe. In 1906, 95% of French workers in the industry were employed in Tarn. While the vast majority of Mazamet's wool industry ended in the early 1990's, the town still has ...
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Breaking Wheel
The breaking wheel or execution wheel, also known as the Wheel of Catherine or simply the Wheel, was a torture method used for public execution primarily in Europe from antiquity through the Middle Ages into the early modern period by breaking the bones of a criminal or bludgeoning them to death. The practice was abolished in Bavaria in 1813 and in the Electorate of Hesse in 1836: the last known execution by the "Wheel" took place in Prussia in 1841. In the Holy Roman Empire it was a " mirror punishment" for highwaymen and street thieves, and was set out in the ''Sachsenspiegel'' for murder, and arson that resulted in fatalities. Punishment Those convicted as murderers, rapists, traitors and/or robbers to be executed by the wheel, sometimes termed to be "wheeled" or "broken on the wheel", would be taken to a public stage scaffold site and tied to the floor. The execution wheel was typically a large wooden spoked wheel, the same as was used on wooden transport carts a ...
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Lausanne
, neighboring_municipalities= Bottens, Bretigny-sur-Morrens, Chavannes-près-Renens, Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Crissier, Cugy, Écublens, Épalinges, Évian-les-Bains (FR-74), Froideville, Jouxtens-Mézery, Le Mont-sur-Lausanne, Lugrin (FR-74), Maxilly-sur-Léman (FR-74), Montpreveyres, Morrens, Neuvecelle (FR-74), Prilly, Pully, Renens, Romanel-sur-Lausanne, Saint-Sulpice, Savigny , twintowns = Lausanne ( , , , ) ; it, Losanna; rm, Losanna. is the capital and largest city of the Swiss French speaking canton of Vaud. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway between the Jura Mountains and the Alps, and facing the French town of Évian-les-Bains across the lake. Lausanne is located northeast of Geneva, the nearest major city. The municipality of Lausanne has a population of about 140,000, making it the fourth largest city in Switzerland after Basel, Geneva, and Zurich, with the entire agglomeration area having about ...
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Étienne Noël Damilaville
Étienne Noël Damilaville (21 November 1723 – 13 December 1768) was an 18th-century French man of letters, friend of Voltaire, Diderot and d'Alembert. He served in various military and administrative functions of the Ancien Régime. He was a member of the bodyguard of King Louis XV, and then a senior civil servant in the tax office responsible for supervising the '' Vingtième''. His official roles meant that his correspondence was unexamined by censors, enabling him to circulate letters between leading thinkers of the day, most particularly during the Sirven affair. The Encyclopédie Damilaville authored three articles in the Encyclopédie - ''Population'', ''Peace'' and ''The Vingtième''. Vingtieme Damilaville is believed to have coauthored an article in the Encyclopédie on the ''Vingtieme'' tax regime with Diderot, his trusted associate. His treatise is largely a discussion on the nature of government, of civil society and of the economy. Like Montesquie, Damilaville ...
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1709 Births
Seventeen or 17 may refer to: *17 (number), the natural number following 16 and preceding 18 * one of the years 17 BC, AD 17, 1917, 2017 Literature Magazines * ''Seventeen'' (American magazine), an American magazine * ''Seventeen'' (Japanese magazine), a Japanese magazine Novels * ''Seventeen'' (Tarkington novel), a 1916 novel by Booth Tarkington *''Seventeen'' (''Sebuntiin''), a 1961 novel by Kenzaburō Ōe * ''Seventeen'' (Serafin novel), a 2004 novel by Shan Serafin Stage and screen Film * ''Seventeen'' (1916 film), an American silent comedy film *'' Number Seventeen'', a 1932 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock * ''Seventeen'' (1940 film), an American comedy film *'' Eric Soya's '17''' (Danish: ''Sytten''), a 1965 Danish comedy film * ''Seventeen'' (1985 film), a documentary film * ''17 Again'' (film), a 2009 film whose working title was ''17'' * ''Seventeen'' (2019 film), a Spanish drama film Television * ''Seventeen'' (TV drama), a 1994 UK dramatic short starring Ch ...
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