La collaboration d’Élie Bertrand aux Questions sur l’Encyclopédie: une version méconnue de « Droit canonique » et le manuscrit inédit de « Scélératesse et scélérat »

Breathe, Alice Georgette Hood (2024). La collaboration d’Élie Bertrand aux Questions sur l’Encyclopédie: une version méconnue de « Droit canonique » et le manuscrit inédit de « Scélératesse et scélérat » (In Press). Revue Voltaire PUPS

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We know from Voltaire’s correspondence that Élie Bertrand, former chief pastor of the French Protestant church in Bern, supplied two articles for the Questions sur l’Encyclopédie. “Droit canonique” features in good place and under Bertrand’s name, whereas “Scélératesse” had vanished almost without trace. A Memoir of Bertrand’s life provides new evidence on the genesis of “Droit canonique”. Possibly first written for king Stanislas of Poland around 1765, it was, according to Bertrand, “mutilated and truncated” for its first publication in the Questions in 1771 but appeared in more complete form in the Encyclopédie d’Yverdon in 1772. Indeed, comparing “Droit canonique” to the articles “Ecclésiastiques, biens” and “Ecclésiastique, autorité et puissance” that Bertrand contributed to this encyclopaedia reveals close parallels. Almost all of “Droit canonique” can plausibly be attributed to him, as well as many of its variants in the second, Neuchâtel edition of the Questions. The manuscript “Scélératesse et scélérat” on the other hand appears to have been written specifically for the Questions and on a topic requested by Voltaire (“the usurpations of the Roman court”). How then to explain that it was not used? We hypothesise that Voltaire may again have considered the article overlong but did not take the trouble to cut it since he fundamentally disagreed with the Protestant view of pope Alexander VI.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies > Institute of French Language and Literature
06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies > Institute of French Language and Literature > Literary Studies

UniBE Contributor:

Breathe, Alice Georgette Hood

Subjects:

800 Literature, rhetoric & criticism > 840 French & related literatures
400 Language > 440 French & related languages

ISSN:

1633-1117

Publisher:

PUPS

Language:

French

Submitter:

Alice Georgette Hood Breathe

Date Deposited:

03 Apr 2024 14:40

Last Modified:

03 Apr 2024 14:40

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/194820

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