Deriding the Messiah and the Devil in Paul d’Holbach’s Histoire critique de Jésus Christ (1770)

Abstract

This article studies the Histoire critique de Jésus Christ (1770), anonymously published by the German-French atheist Paul d’Holbach, who edited, expanded, and radicalized an anonymous clandestine manuscript concerning the life of Jesus and the beginnings of his religious movement. The article analyzes how d’Holbach’s book mocks the figure of Christ, portraying the new faith as a fraudulent enterprise full of false miracles and human weaknesses. In a work where irony, humor, and ridicule are constantly used as narrative strategies, the demonological world provides opportunities for displaying multiple corrosive arguments against Christianity. After reviewing d’Holbach’s philosophical position against the existence of demons, the article studies how the devils’ role in Christian theodicy, the notion of demonic possession, and Christ’s exorcisms are ridiculed in Histoire critique as examples of irrationality, fraud, and superstition. In addition, the article will point to a contemporary debate influencing d’Holbach’s views on what he saw as the connected territories of demonology, credulity, and religious fanaticism: the controversy surrounding the 18th century convulsionnaires of Saint-Médard. This heterodox religious movement, characterized by belief in a holy man and miraculous cures, proved invaluable to d’Holbach, who maliciously compared this episode to the beginnings of the Christian movement.

1. Introduction

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) tells the story of the bombing of Dresden in February 1945; Vonnegut was there as an American prisoner of war, and survived the massacre. The book contains a brief account of The Gospel from Outer Space, a fictional work by a fictional sci-fi author, Kilgore Trout, which tells the story of an alien who studies Christianity to learn “why Christians found it so easy to be cruel”. The conclusion is that the New Testament is flawed: while it tries to teach people to be merciful, what the Gospel actually teaches is this: “Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn’t well connected”. Where is the weak point? The readers know before-hand that, although he seems to be a simple, poor person, a “nobody”, Christ is actually the Son of God. So, reasons the alien,

when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought (…): Oh, boy—they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time! And that thought had a brother: “There are right people to lynch”. Who? People not well connected.

The alien decides to craft a new Gospel, where Jesus “really was a nobody”, preaching love and mercy and bringing a lot of trouble to “a lot of people with better connections than he had”. One day, the people crucified this nobody; they laughed—there couldn’t possibly be any repercussions. The reader also thought that “since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was”. And then,

just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections!

(Vonnegut 1969, pp. 108–10)

The story is funny because it betrays everything we expect to happen. We expect Christianity to be shown as the religion of love and mercy, but it appears as a calculus: Who we may kill with impunity? We expect to find Jesus as God, but we find him as a common bum. We expect the Gospel to be inspired by the Holy Spirit, but the best version of the Gospel is written by an alien. Thus, the story is funny because it contains a traditional element in comedy, incongruity, i.e., the violation of pre-conceived mental patterns. We laugh out of a sense of surprise before something that unfolds differently as we imagine it would or should. Such discrepancies help comedy to become a moral enterprise: challenging accepted cultural boundaries, it may show a world turned upside down, and, for this reason, capable of revealing alternative views on the nature of things, even underlying truths about people, society, institutions, and beliefs (Bricker 2020; Morreall 1999, p. 5; Berger 1997, pp. 21–22).

Perhaps Vonnegut did not know that his alien Gospel was a 20th century iteration in a line of comical biographies of the Messiah, whose earliest example, as we shall see, is an anonymous 18th century manuscript, edited, rewritten, and expanded by the German-French atheist Paul d’Holbach (1723–1789), and published, also anonymously, as Histoire critique de Jésus Christ (1770).1 The book offers a satirical biography of Jesus and a humorous, merciless attack on his religious movement, portraying the new faith as a fraudulent enterprise led by religious megalomania and base passions. Printed in Amsterdam and smuggled into France, Histoire critique sold well on the black market—so well that a second edition appeared during the same year, and a third in 1778, granting the volume its way to the Roman Index; Calvinist Geneva had already prohibited it in 1772 (Hunwick 1995, p. 21).2

In this article, I will focus on a particular subject present in Histoire critique, that of the relationship between Jesus and the devil. Since the book follows and compares the different Gospels scene by scene in order to build a parodic biography of Christ, it also covers the scriptural passages portraying his dealings with demons. This allows us to analyze how the devil, its ontology, salvific function, and powers are ridiculed in Histoire critique. As we shall see, mocking Jesus gives way to a humorous anti-demonology, a possible strategy in the progressive dismantling of the traditional image of the devil at the close of the early modern period (Bostridge 1997; Midelfort 2005; Voltmer 2022, pp. 281–93).

In order to develop these ideas, first we need a more detailed approach to the complex editorial history of Histoire critique. Second, the article will state how humor could be a way to manifest resistance to Christian intolerance and censorship in early modern times. Histoire critique is an example of this strategy, displaying a set of incongruities in relation to Jesus, portraying him, not as a God-man, but as a mentally disturbed conman. Third, we will study d’Holbach’s philosophical stance concerning spirits, showing how his materialistic ontology and gnoseology, expounded in his Systême de la nature, published as Histoire critique in 1770, explained away the existence of devils. Then we tackle the problem of demonology, analyzing Histoire critique’s focus on the theological–philosophical incongruities embedded in theodicy, i.e., the problem of the origins of evil in a world created by a perfect God. We also study how the book deals with Jesus’ encounters with the devil, including instances of demonic possession and the miracle of exorcism, rejected by Histoire critique on scientific and epistemological grounds. The last section will deal with a malicious historical parallel drawn by d’Holbach in order to show the superstitious nature of all religious movements: Jesus’ enterprise, he claims, has many points of contact—fake miracles, a credulous public, and demons, for example—with that of the Jansenist convulsionnaires of 18th century Paris.

2. The Book and Its Author(s)

First, let us introduce Paul Henry Thiry d’Holbach, a key figure of the French Enlightenment.3 Born on 8 December 1723, in Edesheim, Rheinland-Pfalz, he was sent to Paris in 1735 to be adopted by his uncle, Franz Adam Holbach, who, after amassing a fortune at the stock market, bought a nobility title from the Vienna court and began stylizing himself as “von Holbach”. The young Paul acquired a fine education and learned Latin, Greek, and Hebrew before moving to Leiden in 1744 to study law at the local university. There, he got acquainted with new developments in natural sciences, a field he would later command, being welcomed as a foreign associate of the Berlin Royal Science Academy, and as a member of the Academies of Mannheim and St Petersburg. He returned to Paris in 1748 and became a naturalized Frenchman in 1749. When his uncle died in 1753, Paul inherited his title and part of his fortune; the remaining part had to await his cousin’s death.

Thus began a double life. Publicly, he was a regular Catholic nobleman, taking communion, or seeking a papal dispensation to marry his sister-in-law. For decades he held meetings twice a week at his house on the rue Royale Saint-Roche or at his retreat in Granval (Kors 1976). This was his salon, the famous “coterie holbachique”, “Café de l’Europe”, or “philosophical Church”, visited, among many others, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, Cesare Beccaria, Benjamin Franklin, and Denis Diderot, with whom the Baron held a life-long friendship—he wrote hundreds of articles for the Encyclopédie, and supported the project financially. However, in private, and in almost absolute secret, he advanced his cause, the atheization of the Enlightenment, anonymously writing, editing, publishing, and disseminating radical treatises (Curran 2012, pp. 3, 28; Kors 1992, p. 273).4 According to Gianluca Mori, the Baron is one of the few authors who sought to provide philosophical substance to the 18th century rebellion against theology and religion (Mori 2021, p. ix). He is, to use Charles Devellennes term, a “positive atheist”, an intellectual with a philosophical perspective at the service of rethinking all concepts and expectations (moral, social, political) in order to live an autonomous life, that is, a life without recourse to a heteronomous principle—God (Devellennes 2021, pp. 12, 14, 97). Ironically, this double life would still rule his death, six months before the Revolution, on 21 January 1789. He received a Catholic funeral and was piously interred in the church of Saint-Roche; shortly after, the Republic of Letters would know of his contribution to radical thought (Gourdon 2014, pp. 107–20).5

D’Holbach’s campaign to discredit Christianity and atheize the Enlightenment includes Histoire critique de Jésus-Christ, printed in September 1770 in Amsterdam by one of the most important publishers of the Enlightenment, Marc-Michel Rey, who specialized in editing and distributing the philosophes’ illegal works (Darnton 2021, pp. 68–70; McKenna and Vial-Bonacci 2020, pp. 283–304). Here, as with all his works, the Baron was able to conceal his authorship. Histoire critique was first mentioned in France by the newsletter Mémoires secrets, which consigns the appearance of the anonymous book in its entry for 1 October 1770, calling the attention to “cet ouvrage impie” (Mémoires Secrets Pour Servir a L’histoire de la République des Lettres en France, Depuis MDCCLXII Jusqu’a nos Jours 1777, p. 201).6 Four years later, in 1774, Jean-Baptiste Bullet, a theologian from Besançon well immersed in the battle against atheism and unbelief, published Réponses critiques, in which he included Histoire critique as a work pertaining to one of those “nouveaux incrédules”; this unknown author, Bullet contends, was driven by an “haine aveugle contre le Christianisme” (Bullet 1774, p. 335).7 Six years later, in his multi-volume Traité historique et dogmatique de la vraie religion (1780), Nicolas-Sylvestre Bergier, theologian and canon of the Paris Cathedral—and a regular at d’Holbach’s salon—would decry the anonymity of Histoire critique and other anti-Christian works, written by authors who did not have the courage to face their enemies, as Jesus and his Apostles did:

Les Docteurs de l’incrédulité, qui ont aussi projeté la réforme du genre humain, sont beaucoup plus prudens. Ils ne se montrent point, ils ne mettent pas seulement leur nom à la tête de leurs écrits.

Bergier had to content himself with calling this author “l’ Historien critique” or “notre Critique” (Bergier 1780b, pp. 438, 443, 446).8 In 1783, François-Xavier Moïse, professor at the Collège Royale in Dole and author of Réponses critiques a plusieurs questions proposées par les incrédules modernes, censured the writer of the Histoire critique as “l’auteur le plus impie & le moins instruit que je connoisse”—only he did not know who the author was (Moïse 1783, pp. 274–75).9

It would be only after the Baron’s death in 1789 that the mystery would be solved. The bibliophile Antoine-Alexandre Barbier would be the first to identify d’Holbach as the author of Histoire critique in his Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes (1806); he thanked Jacques-André Naigeon, d’Holbach’s closest collaborator, for revealing the Baron’s authorship of many radical anonymous and pseudonymous books (A.-A. Barbier 1806, pp. 316–17).10 However, pace Barbier, the attribution would remain contested. In 1822, the anonymous translator of the first Spanish version of Histoire critique could still claim that “no podemos tener la satisfaccion de instruir á los lectores acerca del autor de la Crítica de J. C. pues aunque sabemos que se atribuye generalmente al Baron de Holbac [sic], nos parece temeridad asegurarlo hasta que tengamos pruebas mas positivas” (d’Holbach 1822, pp. v–vi).11

Matters of attribution would complicate themselves further during the second half of the 20th century. As I pointed out in passing in the Introduction, the book does not belong entirely to d’Holbach. In 1982, Roland Desné concluded that the Baron edited, expanded, and radicalized an anonymous manuscript entitled Historie critique de Jésus fils de Marie, tirée d’ouvrages authentiques par Salvador, juif, et traduite par un Français refugié; its date is uncertain, but Desné offers 1755–1760 as a possibility (Desné 1982, pp. 174–75). This manuscript pertains to the tradition of clandestine literature, a disperse group of anonymous treatises appearing roughly between the mid-17th and the end of the 18th centuries, portraying underground ideas—religious, anti-religious, philosophical, political, pornographic—impossible to print and sell in early modern times, when repressive institutions were part and parcel of all orthodoxies (Lanson 1912; Wade 1938; Vernière 1954; Jacob 1981; Paganini 2020a).

Naturally, a major part of this literature was ferociously anti-Christian, offering a strong rational critique of revelation, theology, miracles, and prophecies; a radical opposition to (and ridicule of) Church structure, ritual, and dogma in favor of a natural (moral) religion; and an affirmation of the constitutive intolerance and brutality of Christianity as a historical phenomenon, with the alliance of throne and altar as one of its salient features. The clandestine tradition also recovered and resignified ancient and modern philosophies, such as Epicureanism, Lucretianism, Skepticism, Cartesianism, Spinozism, and Mechanism, and radicalized some themes already present in Renaissance and 17th century heterodox authors, such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Pietro Pomponazzi, Michel de Montaigne, René Descartes, or Thomas Hobbes, for example. As a symbol of this clandestine literature, one may point to the mysterious Traité des trois imposteurs, often diffused under the title L’Esprit de Spinosa. Feared since the Middle Ages, attributed to many heterodox thinkers in the Renaissance, probably written around 1700, first printed in The Hague in 1719, and immediately suppressed, the treatise portrayed Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad as ruthless political leaders and masters of deception. Incidentally, the text was edited by d’Holbach and printed by Rey in 1768 (Berti 1996, pp. 23–30; Benítez 1996; Sandrier 2004, pp. 340–49).

The manuscript entitled Historie critique de Jésus fils de Marie was part of this underground world of radical ideas, which the Baron sought to enlist in his own campaign against Christianity.12 Now, which are d’Holbach’s contributions in editing this manuscript? First, he saved it from obscurity and made it well known in Europe and beyond. What once was an obscure clandestine work—surviving today in just one copy, located in Berlin—became a book with three editions and hundreds of copies printed, pirated, and sold; in fact, after Systême de la nature (1770), the Baron’s atheistic masterpiece, Histoire critique is his best-selling book. This success deserves attention, since d’Holbach was the second forbidden bestseller author in France, right behind Voltaire (Bahr 2013, p. 20; Darnton 2021, pp. 130, 139; Darnton 2014a, pp. 60–63, 68; Curran 2012, p. 5). In addition, it was translated into English and Spanish.13 Second, the text itself changed: D’Holbach expanded the preface and some chapters significantly, fused or separated chapters, wrote numerous and lengthy footnotes, many in which he referred to his own works and other heterodox texts, and added three new chapters (number 16, 17, 18) (Sandrier 2004, pp. 355–60). The final product is a much more ironic, satirical, and radical text, to which we now turn.14

3. Enlightened Ridicule: The Incongruous Jesus

As said, d’Holbach’s intentions while working on Histoire critique were to “atheize” the Enlightenment project. Now, as we just noticed, there was indeed danger in showing oneself as a heterodox thinker in Catholic France during the 18th century, let alone a disbeliever. As Robert Darnton argues, censorship during the Ancien Régime was more nuanced than commonly believed. The period was definitely not a battle between the Enlightenment and obscurantist, traditional powers. To give only one example, Lamoignon de Malesherbes, the director of the book trade administration, helped Voltaire and Rousseau to get many of their books published, and even sheltered materials of the Encyclopédie in his own house, when, in 1758–1759, the Parliament, the Church, and the Sorbonne succeeded in exerting post-publication censorship, forcing the Crown to revoke the royal printing privilege given to Diderot and d’Alambert (Darnton 2014b, pp. 24, 30, 44–45, 49, 57–59). That being said, it remains true that radical texts were absolutely banned and persecuted. Since royal censors ensured that manuscripts contained nothing too scandalous against religion, morality, and the state, such works were often printed outside France and poured back into the realm by way of smuggling and underground distribution. This was a well-known reality to the inspecteurs de la librairie, the book police, always in search of illegal books, and, if possible (although this seldom happened), their authors (Darnton 2014b, pp. 47–48, 50, 61, 69). D’Holbach’s editorial efforts pertained to this milieu of forbidden and hunted texts. He knew he should never publish his thoughts under his own name: Le Christianisme dévoilé, edited in 1761 under the pen-name “M. Boulanger”, and Systême de la nature (1770), allegedly written by one “M. Mirabaud”, were burnt by the public executioner; Le bon-sens (1772), published anonymously, suffered the same fate (Blom 2010, pp. 109, 127; Devellennes 2021, p. 102; Goodlett 2001, pp. 1076–77).15

Now, in this climate of censure and persecution of radical criticism, comedy and wit could be ways to cope with such difficulties. Especially in its caustic forms—satire, parody, ridicule—humor was definitely a resilience resource. Theories of resilience analyze how a society (or groups or individuals within a society) react to situations of stress, challenge, trauma, oppression, and upheaval, developing their potential for adaptive action facing dire circumstances (Voltmer 2025; Unger 2021, pp. 6–31; Woods 2019, pp. 52–65; Hellige 2019, pp. 30–51). In brief, humor helps to criticize established hierarchies by pointing at their incongruities, thus challenging adverse political, religious, and social conditions, like those present in early modern Christian societies (Schweizer 2020, p. 43). This is best exemplified by Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, who wrote the following in 1711:

The natural free spirits of ingenious men, if imprisoned and controlled, will find out other ways of motion to relieve themselves in their constraint and, whether it be in burlesque, mimicry, or buffoonery, they will be glad at any rate to vent themselves, and be revenged on their constrainers. If men are forbid to speak their minds seriously on certain subjects, they will do it ironically. If they are forbid to speak at all upon such subjects or if they find it really dangerous to do so, they will then redouble their disguise (…). And thus raillery is brought more in fashion and runs into an extreme. It is the persecuting spirit has raised the bantering one.

(Shaftesbury [Anthony Ashley Cooper] 2003, p. 34)

This is why comedy, as John Morreall says, is naturally iconoclastic. The comic gaze rests on incongruities; it feeds on inconsistencies and blunders, which authorities and traditions provide in full (Morreall 1999, p. 36). The comic vision, then, has a nexus with the Enlightenment project, a connection well explained by Peter Berger, who claims that “the genius of modernity (whether one views it as a good or an evil spirit) is to disaggregate, to debunk, to look behind the facades of the social order. This inevitably results in a vision of all sorts of incongruity. The affinity with the comic perspective is plausible” (Berger 1997, p. 24).

Histoire critique pertains to this tradition. Spawned from an anonymous clandestine manuscript, published anonymously in a foreign press to avoid persecution, the book fights Christianity, not with sophisticated theological conundrums, but with virulent mockery, ridiculing its system of belief to further the cause of unbelief (Hunwick 1995, pp. 7, 24, 28).16 D’Holbach knew that his publication would cause scandal, and joked about it:

[The author] s’entendra traiter d’impie, de blasphêmateur, d’Antéchrist (…). Il n’en dormira pas moins; mais comme il pourroit se faire que son sommeil l’empêchât alors de répondre, il croit devoir faire entendre d’advance à ses pieux antagonistes que des injures ne sont pas des raisons.

(d’Holbach 1770a, p. xxxi; Hunwick 1995, p. 55)

He succeeded: the work was received as scandalous, ironic, and sarcastic at the time. Mémoires secrets consigns in its entry for 10 October 1770 that “l’auteur de l’Histoire critique de la vie de Jésus Christ employe tour-à-tour l’ironie & la déclamation” in order to accomplish his “criminel projet de représenter l’évangile comme un roman oriental”, presenting “les faits sous un jour si ridicule”. The anonymous author, adds the Mémoires secrets, has amassed a great deal of irreligious literature concerning the Gospels, combining arguments to create “un corps de preuves irrésistible (…) pour ceux qui voudront examiner notre sainte religion avec les lumieres d’une raison dangereuse, ou se servir d’une logique réprouvée en matiere de foi” (Mémoires Secrets Pour Servir a L’histoire de la République des Lettres en France, Depuis MDCCLXII Jusqu’a nos Jours 1777, pp. 201, 202).17

“Sous un jour si ridicule”. Indeed, what caused much of the scandal was the portrayal of Jesus as a source of comic incongruities, thus demolishing the way in which the Christian tradition saw him (and forced others to see him). In Christianity, one expects a man-God, expects the triumph of Good over Evil, expects miracles, resurrection, salvation. However, Histoire critique—both the original manuscript and d’Holbach’s version—gives us nothing of the sort. As is usual in comedy, here the central character is not a hero, but an anti-hero. Emphasis lies, not in greatness, but in limitations; not in strength or courage, but in cleverness or mere luck; not in ulterior transcendental motives, but in common, even profane interests (Morreall 1999, p. 14).18 Jesus appears thus as the founder of a movement that, right from the start, was sustained by fraud and religious fanaticism. Convinced of being the Messiah, he did everything in his power to seduce people into following him. “En un mot”, says d’Holbach, Jesus was “un mélange assez constant d’enthousiasme & de fourberie” (d’Holbach 1770a, p. 337; Hunwick 1995, p. 246).19 This description matches well with other derisive epithets with which the Baron addresses Jesus: “Un artisan, enthousiaste mélancolique & jongleur maladroit”; “un furieux”, “un fou”; “un charlatan, un imposteur dangereux”; “un Aventurier, un fanatique impuissant puni pour avoir fait ombrage aux Pretres de son pays” (d’Holbach 1770a, pp. xi, 88, 89, 141, 305; Hunwick 1995, pp. 44, 105, 106, 134, 230).

Thus, Jesus appears as a man riddled with all-too-human dreams of glory and power, guided by spurious and fanatical interests. Humor, here, goes against the solemnity we expect from the man-God and his mission. Concerning his teachings of mutual love, for example, d’Holbach claims that “en général il est aisé de sentir que le Messie avoit le plus grand intéret à prêcher la charité à ses auditeurs; ils ne vivoit que d’aumônes” (d’Holbach 1770a, p. 167; Hunwick 1995, p. 148). Commenting on Matt 4: 19, where Jesus promises the Apostles that he will make them fishers of men, the Baron adds that he surely taught them “des moyens sûrs pour subsister sans travail de la crédulité du vulgaire” (d’Holbach 1770a, p. 80; Hunwick 1995, p. 101)—which explains why, after Jesus’ death, the Apostles removed his body from the grave and spoke about the Messiah’s resurrection; they “sentirent qu’il falloit prêcher la résurrection du Christ ou consentir à mourir de faim” (d’Holbach 1770a, p. 309; Hunwick 1995, p. 232). Turning the other cheek has nothing to do with enduring the evils of life or loving your enemies; the manuscript version of Histoire critique contends that you should not fight back because you could get into financial trouble with lawyers: “Ne plaidez point; les gens d’affaires vous ruineroient”; and besides, adds d’Holbach, “les pauvres ont toujours tort contre les riches” (d’Holbach 1770a, p. 174; Hunwick 1995, p. 152). Histoire critique also makes fun of Jesus’ audience. The poor and the destitute follow him, yes, but not to hear his saving words; informed of Jesus’ miracles involving bread and fish (Matt 15: 32–38; Mark 8: 1–9), they simply want to be fed. The manuscript version claims:

Cette foule cependant attendoit toujours dans l’espoir d’être régalée gratis, lorsqu’on apprit à Capharnaum que notre homme étoit sur l’autre rivage (…). Mais nos parasites, au lieu de trouver un repas servi sur l’herbe, furent régalés d’un Sermon.

(d’Holbach 1770a, pp. 233–34; Hunwick 1995, p. 185)

Ironically enough, the sermon is the one in which Jesus claims “I am the bread of life” (John 6: 35).

4. The Materialistic Rejection of Spirits

We have presented Jesus’ figure in Histoire critique, focusing on his comical traits. Before analyzing his dealings with devils, we must address briefly the subject of demons in d’Holbach’s philosophical thought. With Systême de la nature (1770), published the same year as Histoire critique, the Baron becomes the first thinker to print, albeit pseudonymously, a consistent theory of atheism, a materialist ontology.20 Simply put, he held that all phenomena are a product of nature—that is, of an eternal, uncreated, self-existing corporeal matter, whose essence has motion as one of its properties; it is, in fact, one ontological entity, matter in motion, acting according to necessary and immutable laws. Overturning a millenarian tradition, fulfilling Christianity’s worst fears, d’Holbach claimed that this nature was the cause of all effects, not an effect of the first cause—the philosophical nickname for God (Buckley 1987, pp. 275–90; Berthiaume 2014, c. 3, pp. 23–26, c. 4, pp. 12–14; Kors 1992, pp. 274–76, 284; Devellennes 2021, pp. 114–17; Mori 2021, pp. 286–98).21

Paradoxically enough, as Gianluca Mori contends, atheism was a by-product of theism, the pyrrhic result of a battle that theology declared at the birth of scholasticism, and René Descartes reimagined in the 17th century: understanding Christianity, not as a way of living a life in Christ, but as a philosophical system. Atheism, Mori says, grew “as a parasite” of theology, preying on metaphysical axioms derived from a rational conception of God as the first cause, independent of faith and revelation. This meant that God, as an object of scientific, rational inquiry, became falsifiable (Mori 2021, p. ix).22 By ascribing to a material first cause those philosophical attributes traditionally linked to God (eternity, omnipotence, infinity, perfection), but simultaneously denying the moral–anthropomorphic attributes also ascribed traditionally to God (freedom, intelligence, goodness, purpose, will), atheists forged a rational system capable of rejecting the existence of the divine as early modern culture understood it. Thus, atheism “was the unwanted product of that same culture and was fed by it”, claiming that dressing up the Christian God in philosophical clothing was impossible: there is a first cause, eternal, infinite, necessary, productive, yes, but, because material, it is also devoid of any moral–anthropomorphic attribute, and thus, useless to any public or personal religion (Mori 2021, pp. x, 3, quote in 10, 290, 298).23

It is in light of this material first cause that d’Holbach will deny the existence of devils. His critique stems from his overall ontological rejection of spirits. If nothing can be alien to nature, to matter in motion, to “du grand tout”, as d’Holbach calls it, then “les êtres que l’on suppose au dessus de la nature ou distingués d’elle-même seront toujours des chimeres”, figments of an ignorant imagination trying to decipher how nature works (d’Holbach 1770b, vol. 1, pp. 1–2; see also vol. 1, pp. 42–43). Gnoseology helps us to understand this better. Against the notion of Cartesian innate ideas, d’Holbach affirmed sensationalistic empiricism—simply put, that all our knowledge comes from physical sensation alone. In the Baron’s view, this entails a materialistic causation, since we can only experience material phenomena affecting our physical senses. Thus, we cannot have any true idea of any entity if we do not perceive it with our senses; what does not affect our senses must be considered non-existent (d’Holbach 1770b, vol. 1, pp. 13–14). It is here that chimeras appear, for “dès que nous quittons l’expérience nous tombons dans le vuide où notre imagination nous égare” (d’Holbach 1770b, vol. 1, p. 5).24 This has led men to concoct the realm of immaterial or incorporeal invisible substances; that is, the realm of “spirits” such as the majority of metaphysical and theological systems understood them, Christianity among them (d’Holbach 1770b, vol. 1, pp. 90–93).

Ontology and gnoseology, then, teach us that “spirit” is nothing more than a word devoid of meaning, an imaginary construction derived from the ignorance of nature. “D’où l’on voit que par le mot esprit, l’on ne veut indiquer que la cause ignorée d’un phénomene qu’on ne sçait point expliquer d’une façon naturelle”. “Spirit”, then, is an example of how often “l’homme dédaigna étude de la Nature pour courir après des phantômes” (d’Holbach 1770b, vol. 1, pp. 101, i). Now, one of these ghosts, which even connects proud 18th century Europeans with belittled contemporary “savages”, is the belief in demons:

Les nations sauvages admettent des esprits pour rendre compte des effets qu’ils ne savent à qui attribuer, ou qui leur semblent merveilleux. En attributant à des esprits les phénomenes de la nature & ceux du corps humain, faisons-nous autre chose que raisonner en sauvages? (…). D’après les mêmes principes, l’on croit encore aujourd’hui aux Anges, aux Démons.

(d’Holbach 1770b, vol. 1, p. 102)

D’Holbach’s dismissal of Christian demonology would be a constant in his books, a fact noted by worried Catholic apologists, convinced that such heterodox views would have a disastrous impact on society. Of course, without knowing the author of such corrosive anti-demonological ideas, Augustin Barruel’s (1781) novel Les Helviennes warns against d’Holbach’s works through the character Madame La Baronne. The vignette is not without humor, and also shows the repressive atmosphere of the late French 18th century:

J’avais envoyé quelques Livres chez mon Relieur, entre autres le Système de la Nature et le Bon Sens; j’avais recommandé qu’on ne les montrât à personne. La défense piqua la curiosité du garçon Relieur; il passa la nuit à feuilleter ces Livres, et prit le lendemain quelques libertés avec la fille de son maître. La pauvre enfant avait sans doute peur d’être damnée; car notre galant se crut obligé de lui dire qu’il n’y avait point d’enfer, et qu’il venait de le lire dans un Livre de Madame la Baronne. (…) Notre nouvel Apôtre est conduit chez le Bailli, et, comme séducteur, condamné aux galères.

(Barruel 1781, pp. 5–6)25

5. Theodicy as Incongruity

It is clear from his materialistic philosophy that d’Holbach did not believe in the existence of devils and damnation. In Histoire critique, such disbelief is expressed in the ridicule of scriptural passages dealing with demonology. Let us start with his discussion about the place of evil in the Christian economy of salvation, a theological debate known as theodicy. As we saw above, early modern atheism plays on the paradoxes arising from rationally opposing the philosophical and moral attributes traditionally attached to God. Theodicy provides a telling opportunity for such an approach: in view of the evidence of evil in the world, God’s moral attributes—kindness, goodness, and, in the case of the man-God, the capacity for suffering—are pitted against his omniscience and omnipotence. D’Holbach frames these paradoxes as comic incongruities.26

The demonic temptation in the Garden of Eden, the commission of the original sin, and Jesus’ sacrifice as necessary for mankind’s triumph over this sin are ridiculed by d’Holbach. This orthodox theology, if followed to its natural conclusion, portrays the supposedly benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient God as a willful tyrant:

Les incrédules trouvent que la conduite attribuée à Dieu par la Théologie Chrétienne, est injurieuse pour lui, en ce qu’elle le représente comme le plus implacable, le plus cruel, le plus injuste des tyrans. Enfin ils trouvent qu’il eût été plus sage d’empêcher l’homme de pécher, que de permettre qu’il péchât & de faire mourir son fils pour expier son péché.

(d’Holbach 1770a, p. 39; Hunwick 1995, p. 78)

The incongruities germane to theodicy are exposed by the Baron in his interpretation of the episode of the garden of Gethsemane, in which Jesus, terrorized by the prospect of his imprisonment, shows sorrow and anguish (Matt 26: 38). First, unbelievers are “très-étonnés de voir tant de foiblesse dans un Dieu, qui sçavoit de toute éternité qu’il étoit destiné à mourir pour le rachat du genre humain”. Second, is not God omnipotent? Why sacrificing his own son?

Dieu son Pere, sans exposer son cher fils innocent à des tourmens si cruels, pouvoit d’un seul mot pardonner aux hommes coupables, les rendre conformes à ses vues, leur remettre leurs fautes. Ils croyent que la conduite de Dieu eût été plus simple & plus généreuse en s’appaisant à moins de frais pour une pomme mangée depuis quatre mille ans.

(d’Holbach 1770a, p. 278; Hunwick 1995, p. 213)27

The devil’s triumph in tempting Adam and Eve—a success repeated till this day, adds d’Holbach, judging from the present state of humanity—shows that the theology built around the notion of original sin is a proof that the whole Christian system is no more than Manichaeism:

Dans tout le systeme Evangélique le Diable est plus habile & plus puissant que Dieu le Pere & que Dieu le fils. Au moins est-il certain qu’il ne cesse de traverser leurs desseins avec succès, & qu’il finit par réduire Dieu le Pere à la dure nécessité de faire mourir son cher fils pour réparer le mal que Satan avoit fait au genre humain. Le Christianisme est un vrai Manichéisme, dans lequel tout l’avantage est toujours du côté du mauvais principe. Celui-ci par le grand nombre d’adhérens qu’il se fait encore, rend visiblement inutiles tous les projets Divins.

(d’Holbach 1770a, p. 111; Hunwick 1995, p. 118)

For d’Holbach, then, Christian theodicy is simply impossible to understand by rational means. Either God is a tyrant, and hence his benevolence (and thus perfection) is called into question; or the devil is far more powerful than God, hence we must rule out divine omnipotence, and Christianity falls into dualism. Be it as it may, the incongruities of theodicy pose no problem for the Church; quite the contrary, claims the Baron: “Il est de l’essence de la Religion que les hommes ne puissent jamais rien comprendre à la conduite divine, cela fournit à leurs guides spirituels le plaisir de la leur expliquer pour leur argent” (d’Holbach 1770a, p. 279; Hunwick 1995, p. 213).

It is worth noting that the inspiration for d’Holbach’s comical approach concerning theodicy undoubtedly comes from the French philosopher and journalist Pierre Bayle (Mori 2021, pp. 287, 297–98). In his Dictionnaire historique et critique (1694–1697, with later re-editions), Bayle treated the problem of evil as an example of the contradiction between God’s moral–anthropomorphic and philosophical attributes. This contradiction, he thought, was insurmountable, for it is impossible to understand the existence of evil from a rational and a Christian perspective: how could a benevolent and omniscient God allow or will that humanity be tempted into sin by a malicious being that He himself has created? (Bahr 2010; Solère 2023). The key here is that Bayle treated a traditionally difficult and solemn subject with uncompromising ridicule—an approach that d’Holbach would later take in Histoire critique. As an example, we may refer to the article “Paulicians”, note F, in which Bayle compared God’s stance towards Eve’s demonic temptation with that of a mother who allows her daughter to go to a dance and be seduced by a young gentleman, thus risking her virginity:

Si cette mere alloit à ce bal, & si par une fenêtre elle voioit & elle entendoit l’une de ses filles, se défendant foiblement dans le coin d’un cabinet, contre les demandes d’un jeune galant; si lors même qu’elle verroit que sa fille n’auroit plus qu’un pas à faire, pour aquiescer aux désires du tentateur, elle n’alloit pas la secourir & la délivrer du piege, ne diroit-on pas avec raison qu’elle agiroit comme une cruelle marâtre?

(Bayle 1730, p. 628)

6. Collusive Miracles: The Example of Exorcism

Theodicy is not the only territory shared by Christ and the devil. Histoire critique has much to say about Jesus’ miracles, specifically about the exorcism of demoniacs, extensively attested in the Gospels (Twelftree 1993, 2007; Sorensen 2002). Of course, since for d’Holbach everything that exists is nature, i.e., matter in motion acting according to necessary and immutable laws, miracles are, by definition, impossible. Systême de la nature clarifies this:

Un miracle n’est pour nous qu’un effet rare don’t nous ignorons la cause naturelle; ainsi en nous disant que Dieu fait un miracle, on ne nous apprend rien, sinon qu’une cause inconnue a produit d’une manière inconnue un effet que nous n’attendions pas ou qui nous paroît étrange.

(d’Holbach 1770b, vol. 2, p. 179)28

Hence, belief in miracles means—just as belief in spirits—ignorance of nature. Accordingly, Histoire critique presents Jesus’ miracles as feeding on the credulity and superstition of his audience. The Jewish people, claims d’Holbach, “fut en tout tems le plus aveugle, le plus stupide, le plus crédule, le plus superstitieux & le plus insensé qui ait paru sur la terre” (d’Holbach 1770a, p. 1; Hunwick 1995, p. 56). Since the Old Testament deployed numerous prophecies of divine deliverance, the Jews “furent sans cesse disposés à écouter avidement tout homme qui s’annonça comme inspiré d’en-haut”; they expected marvelous feats from these characters, “que leur stupidité leur fit prendre pour des miracles, pour des oeuvres surnaturelles, pour des signes indubitables de la puissance divine”. This credulity turned the Jews into easy prey, reasons the Baron, since “tout imposteur adroit fut à portée de les tromper” (d’Holbach 1770a, pp. 7–8; Hunwick 1995, p. 61). Jesus embodied this impostor, playing tricks on them, sometimes with the complicity of coconspirators. A religious fanatic and conman, says d’Holbach, Jesus knew how to approach his audience:

Notre héros connoissoit le foible de ses concitoyens; il leur falloit des prodiges, il en fit à leur yeux. Des stupides, totalement étrangers aux sciences naturelles, à la Médicine, aux ressources de l’artifice, prirent aisément pour des miracles des opérations très-simples, & attribuerent au doigt de Dieu des effets qui pouvoient être dus aux connoissances que Jésus avoit acquises durant le long intervalle dont sa Mission fut précédée.

(d’Holbach 1770a, p. 337; Hunwick 1995, p. 245)

Histoire critique taints Jesus’ own birth with this notion of miracles as imposture, as d’Holbach’s interpretation of the Annunciation by the angel Gabriel shows (Luke 1: 28–38). “Rien de plus simple que cette narration—he says—: pour peu qu’on y réfléchisse on en verra disparoître le merveilleux”. There is no angel, there is no immaculate conception, only a man of flesh and bone entering Mary’s house, praising her beauty, and exclaiming, according to the Baron:

‘Vos charmes vous sont garans de ma sincérité. Couronnez donc mes feux. Ne craignez point les suites de votre complaisance; votre époux est un sot, à qui par des visions & des songes on peut faire croire ce qu’on voudra. Le bon homme regardera votre grossesse comme l’effet d’un miracle du Très-Haut; il adoptera votre Enfant avec joie’.

(d’Holbach 1770a, pp. 27–28; Hunwick 1995, p. 72)

This mockery of the Annunciation sets the tone for Histoire critique’s views on Jesus’ illegitimate birth and whereabouts as a child, including his stay in Egypt (Matt 2: 13–23), an important point if we are to deal with Christ’s miraculous powers. Inspired by an anti-Christian tradition stretching back to ancient times and medieval Jewish polemics, Histoire critique signals Egypt as the place where a bastard Jesus could have learnt his tricks, mistakenly regarded in his times as supernatural powers.29 Indeed, as d’Holbach contends, “ses enemmis prétendoient qu’il y avoit appris la magie, à laquelle ils attribuoient les prodiges ou tours d’addresse qu’on lui voyoit opérer” (d’Holbach 1770a, pp. 55–56; Hunwick 1995, p. 89).30 This included some knowledge of medicine, just enough to be able to cure people, or at least to appear to do so—a success for which he is heralded in the original manuscript of Histoire critique as “notre Esculape”, and by d’Holbach as “notre Thaumaturge” (d’Holbach 1770a, pp. 107, 267; Hunwick 1995, pp. 116, 205). Of course, treating the sick helped to establish his fame as a divine being: the manuscript version of Histoire critique contends that this gave Christ the opportunity to perform a “multitude de miracles, car c’est ainsi que l’on nommoit les guérisons opérées par Jésus” (d’Holbach 1770a, p. 104; Hunwick 1995, p. 114).

One special miracle of this kind was exorcism. D’Holbach notices the centrality of exorcism as proof of divinity, stating that “les guérisons des possédés étoitent de tous les miracles ceux dans lesquels notre homme étoit le plus expert” (d’Holbach 1770a, p. 122; Hunwick 1995, p. 123). Histoire critique synthetizes centuries-old approaches concerning the disbelief in the reality of demonic possession, taking it as a natural disease or as an imposture.31 By pointing at the conditions of production of the biblical text—that is, its human fabric in a distant, barbarous culture—Histoire critique seeks to deny the demonic origin of possession and the sacred character of exorcism.32 Concerning infirmities, for example, the original manuscript claims that “les maladies qu’on prenoit du tems des Juifs pour des possessions, ne sont duës qu’à des dérangemens produits dans le cerveau par l’excès de la chaleur”; to this, d’Holbach adds that “ces maladies étoient fréquentes en Judée, où la superstition & l’ignorance avoient empêché la médicine de faire de grands progrès”. Since today we have a better knowledge about nature’s works, we may dismiss this belief completely; indeed, says the Baron, “la plupart des possédés que l’on trouve parmi nous sont des hypocondriaques, des maniaques, des femmes hystériques, des mélancoliques, des personnes tourmentées de vapeurs ou de spasmes”. Current knowledge about what past ages took as possession, then, seems to d’Holbach a perfect example of how “l’incredulité enleve à Jésus un gran nombre de ses miracles” (d’Holbach 1770a, p. 109; Hunwick 1995, pp. 116–17). But what if they are not sick? Then, claims the Baron, the possessed:

sont des imposteurs qui, pour gagner de l’argent, pour intéresser les simples & montrer le pouvoir des Prêtres, consentent à recevoir le Diable, afin que ceux-ci ayent la gloire de le chasser; il n’est guere de possession parmi nous qui pût résister à une fustigation.

(d’Holbach 1770a, p. 109; Hunwick 1995, p. 117)

Such exorcistical connivance is highlighted in Histoire critique, which repeatedly portrays Jesus deceiving his public in collusion with the possessed. An example is Luke 4: 34, a passage showing how the devil recognizes Jesus as the Messiah. Note d’Holbach’s additions to the original manuscript (following Hunwick’s edition, I insert them in brackets):

Au milieu de sa prédication un jour de Sabbath, on lui amène un possédé [qui peut-être de concert avec lui] se met à crier de toute sa force: ‘laisse-nous en paix; qu’y a-t-il entre toi & nous, Jésus de Nazareth? Es-tu venu pour nous prendre? Nous sçavons qui tu es, le Saint de Dieu’ [Luke 4: 34]. Le peuple épouvanté attendoit l’issue de l’avanture lorsque Jésus [sûr de son fait,] s’adressant, non à l’homme, mais au Démon qui le possede, ‘tais-toi’, dit-il, ‘& sors de cet homme’. Aussi-tôt l’Esprit malin renversa le possédé, lui causa d’horribles convulsions, & disparut sans que personne le vît”.

(d’Holbach 1770a, p. 108; Hunwick 1995, p. 116)

Histoire critique exploits the curious fact that the devils identify Jesus as the Messiah, only to be silenced by him on the spot. On the one hand, this is portrayed as part of the incongruities arising from the opposition of divine attributes, in this case, omniscience and omnipotence. It is obvious that the devils could only know Jesus’ real identity strictly by divine permission; why, then, did Jesus, who is God, silence them? But more importantly, why should demons, perverse enemies of humankind, want to tell everyone that Jesus was the saving Christ, thus spreading the salvific Word? The original manuscript of Histoire critique poses these conundrums openly:

Or Dieu en accordant au Diable la connoissance de son fils, a voulu, ou n’a pas voulu qu’il en parlât: s’il l’a voulu, Jésus a eu tort de s’y opposer; s’il ne l’a pas voulu, comment le Diable a-t-il pu agir contre la volonté divine? Jésus cache avec soin sa qualité dont la connoissance pouvoit seule opérer le salut. Or dans ce cas le Diable avoit lui-même le plus grand intérêt de la cacher: c’est donc contre son propre intéret & contre la volonté du Tout-Puissant que le Diable fait connoître la qualité du Christ.

(d’Holbach 1770a, p. 112; Hunwick 1995, p. 118)

In addition, both the original manuscript and d’Holbach notice that, although Jesus’ mission was to be acknowledged by his audience as the Son of God, the only ones recognizing him as such are the devils. D’Holbach ironically claims: “On diroit qu’il ne s’est montré que pour recevoir les hommages du Démon” (d’Holbach 1770a, p. 160; Hunwick 1995, p. 144). So, why would the demons identify Jesus as Christ? The original manuscript states that the fact that Jesus imposed silence on the devils only after they identified him as the Messiah seems further proof that he was deceiving the audience in connivance with the demoniacs. He used them to publicize his purported divine nature without having to proclaim it for himself:

Si Jésus ne vouloit pas réellement que le Diable le découvrît, pourquoi attendre qu’il eût parlé pour lui imposer silence? La conduite du Messie dans ces circonstances a fait croire que, n’osant prendre sans danger en public la qualité de Christ ou de fils de Dieu, il n’étoit pas sincérement faché que les Diables qui étoient à ses ordres divulguassent son secret, & lui épargnassent la peine de parler. D’ailleurs c’étoit tirer un aveu très-important de la bouche de ses ennemis.

(d’Holbach 1770a, pp. 112–13; Hunwick 1995, p. 118)

D’Holbach insists on this accusation of connivance between Jesus and the possessed, and how the theater of exorcism functioned as an opportunity to publicize his alleged divinity:

Il permet que ce secret se décele par la bouche du Diable, à qui il a communément grand soin d’imposer silence lorsqu’il a parlé d’une façon assez intelligible pour avoir fait impression sur les spectateurs. Ainsi à l’aide de ses possédés, de ses énergumenes ou de ses convulsionnaires, il se fait rendre des témoignages, qui dans sa propre bouche eussent été trop suspects & l’aurorient pu rendre odieux.

(d’Holbach 1770a, p. 339; Hunwick 1995, pp. 257–58)

7. Histoire critique and the Convulsionnaires

D’Holbach’s use of the word “convulsionnaires” takes us to the last point of our analysis, that of the malicious historical comparison that the Baron draws between Jesus’ movement and the popular ecstatic episodes exploding in Paris in the 1730s. This strategy pertains solely to the d’Holbach, since references to the convulsionnaires are not found in the original manuscript of Histoire critique (Desné 1982, pp. 175–76).

Although this is not the place to provide a full account of the convulsionnaires, a brief note is needed. They were an unexpected development arising from a movement within the French Catholic Church, the Jansenists, which, from the end of the 17th century, were opposed to the Crown, the Jesuits, and the papacy. Jansenists had their origins in the thought of the Dutch theologian and bishop Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638), who defended a rigid penitential discipline and a puritanical ideal of virtue, derived from a pessimistic view of human nature and a strict Augustinian vision of salvific, predestinarian grace. Jansenists were soon accused of crypto-Calvinism by their enemies in Rome and the Jesuit order. In France, where Jansenism found a profound echo, it favored the lay reading of devotional books and vernacular Bibles, and defended a broad view of Gallicanism, rejecting unconsulted papal intervention, highlighting the superiority of individual conscience over obedience, and preferring Conciliarism over Vatican power. Louis XIV, for his part, took Jansenism as a potentially subversive element, capable of disrupting his desired religious homogeneity; in addition, he suspected them of upholding “republican” views concerning the superiority of the Estates General over the King, thus mistrusting them as enemies of absolute power (Kreiser 1978, pp. 5–6; McManners 1998, p. 364).33

Having ordered the destruction of the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal in 1711, Louis XIV pressed Clement XI to issue the Bull Unigenitus (1713), reproving Jansenism through the condemnation of Réflexions morales (1692), a best-selling work by the theologian and Oratorian Pasquier du Quesnel (1634–1719). Although Louis XIV had promised Clement a favorable reception of the document, Unigenitus launched a protracted debate in France, due to its theological–political overtones. The document was issued without a draft being sent to the Crown for discussion; papal censure of proposition 91 rejected Quesnel’s idea that “The fear of an unjust excommunication ought never to prevent us from doing our duty (…). Even when the wickedness of men seems to have excluded us, we are never out of the Church”, thus defending, in contrast, the Pope’s absolute prerogatives concerning excommunication. In addition, Rome denied any further clarification of some contentious points—a petition headed by Louis-Antoine de Noailles, the archbishop of Paris, sympathetic to Quesnel and an ardent Gallican; this transpired to be the Pope’s will to assert Rome’s ultimate authority and infallibility, disregarding the role of the Church of France in discussing and consenting to papal Bulls in order for them to become Church doctrine. As we may see, Unigenitus threatened Gallican principles defended by many in the ecclesiastical spheres since the Déclaration des Quatre articles of 1682, and specially by the Parliament, protector of traditional French laws and liberties. The Parliament would play a key role during the conflict: Jansenist priests would turn to this institution for legal defense against the mounting religious persecution coming from the constitutionnaires (the vast majority of the Church’s hierarchy, who complied with Louis’ wishes and accepted the Bull); such defense was denounced by Church hierarchies as an infringement of their ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The death of Louis XIV in 1715 and the coming of Phillippe of Orléans’ regency ensured the escalation of the conflict. Between 1717 and 1718, a minority of anticonstitutionnaires, composed of Noailles, a group of bishops, and members of the universities, religious orders, and cathedral chapters, “appealed” against Unigenitus and called for a universal Council of the Church that could decide on its validity, thus spawning a new stage of the conflict, led by the appelants (Maire 1985, pp. 41–43; Kreiser 1978, pp. 14–16, 20, 27–29, 32–33; McManners 1998, pp. 363, 376 [quoting proposition 91], 381, 385–88; Gres-Gayer 1988, pp. 271–74).

It is important to note here that the debate did not remain restricted to the upper spheres of power. Given that Jansenism was strong among the curés (the low parish priests), it quickly reached the popular milieu, thus “democratizing” a political–religious quarrel (Maire 1985, pp. 31–32, 40, 50; Kreiser 1978, pp. 65–67). It is in this popular milieu that the controversial convulsionnaire movement was born. In May 1727, a Jansenist deacon, the pious and ascetic François de Pâris, himself an appelant, was interred in the small cemetery of the church of Saint-Médard. On that very day, a woman was instantly cured of her paralyzed arm after kneeling before Pâris’ grave and praying for his intercession. The news soon spread across the city, and the cemetery became a site of pilgrimage. In the following years, pious believers and curious visitors would testify before physicians, policemen, and jurists how the sick suffered contortions, spasms, and convulsions near Pâris’ grave, emerging from the experience totally cured of their ailments. In the midst of the Unigenitus controversy, these thaumaturgic phenomena came to be seen by many persecuted Jansenists and other appelants as miracles indicating God’s favor to their cause (Kreiser 1978, pp. 68, 93, 97–98, 124, 130, 173–74).

In a joint effort, the Crown (represented by the Cardinal André de Fleury) and the Church hierarchy (led by the new archbishop of Paris, Charles-Gaspard de Vintimille, in office since 1729) labored to ban the growing kinetic cult around François Pâris. After ensuring the registration of Unigenitus as a law of the state in 1730, the government ordered the closing down of the cemetery of Saint-Médard in January 1732, thus putting an end to the convulsionnaires’ public gatherings. The movement retreated into private homes, where the convulsions changed their meaning: they were now part of a clandestine ceremony called secour, in which men and (mostly) women underwent ritual mortification in the hope of being relieved of the pain brought by the spasms. They were pierced with nails and swords, beaten with logs, set on fire, their skin marked with the sign of the cross; under this state, some practiced coprophagy, drank urine, or fed gruel to a wax baby Jesus; some were ultimately crucified. Such martyrdom was a “figurative” representation of the persecuted true Christians, past and present; prophetic visions and divinations were also common at this stage (Maire 1985, pp. 25, 56–57; Kreiser 1978, pp. x, 213–14, 249–50, 259, 266; Vila 2021, pp. 11, 19, 21).

Many among the convulsionnaires’ enemies—the Catholic hierarchy and the Crown, for sure, but also the Parliament and a growing number of Jansenists, increasingly horrified by these radical ecstatic experiences—rejected the movement’s claims to supernatural divine authority (Kreiser 1978, pp. 73, 178, 276). Some even affirmed that the purported miracles were in fact operations by devils. The Benedictine Louis Bernard de La Taste (1692–1754), for example, wrote numerous letters against the movement in the 1730s, claiming that, if one should admit anything unnatural in the convulsionnaires, it was that “ces tourmens ne se faisoient sentir qu’aux Energumenes”. Moreover, he claimed “que leurs caractères et leurs effets sont indignes de Dieu, & que si ces convulsions sont surnaturelles, l’on ne peut dispenser d’y reconnoître l’opération de l’Esprit séducteur” (La Taste 1740, pp. 2, 14).34

The philosophes would also attack the convulsionnaires, not as a diabolical, but as a deranged, fanatical, superstitious, and fraudulent movement (Vila 2019).35 Indeed, according to Anne Vila, the convulsionnaires were “the Enlightenment movement’s fundamental Other”, defying human reason with their emphasis on martyrdom and flagellation, and, above all, their appeals to sacred authority through miracles (Vila 2021, p. 10).36 The philosophes certainly laughed with the anonymous quip left at the closed gates of the Saint-Médard cemetery after the Crown’s restrictive measures; d’Holbach himself quotes it in Histoire critique: “‘De par le Roi est fait défense à Dieu de faire des miracles en ce lieu”; and he adds: “Dieu fut obéissant; & il ne fit plus de miracles pour les Jansénistes qu’à huis clos” (d’Holbach 1770a, p. 151; Hunwick 1995, p. 138).37 As Roy Porter mentions, the debate around the Saint-Médard miracles, involving the papacy, the Crown, the Roman Inquisition, and several Christian factions and religious orders, was “a free gift to Enlightenment critics in their challenge to the supernatural”, not least because all the criticism of those heterodox contemporary miracles helped in turn to criticize Christ’s own miracles, thus challenging orthodox religious beliefs (Porter 1999, p. 213; Kreiser 1978, pp. 127, 398–400).

Perhaps the most famous example here is d’Holbach’s admired English philosopher, David Hume, who, in Section X of his Enquiry concerning human understanding (1748), after paying lip service to the inspired letter of the Scripture, explicitly affirmed that the miracles of François Pâris were better attested and evidenced than those of Jesus himself; hence, if we believe in Christ’s miracles, we should also believe in those of Pâris—or better, we should believe in neither.38 As Michael Jacovides aptly puts it, taking into account Hume’s intended audience, “The best attested miracles that Hume has in mind in the first instance are the purported Jansenist miracles around the tomb of François de Pâris in the 1720s and 30s, and he assumes that his Protestant readers reject these stories out of hand. If his readers are willing to grant that the best attested miracle stories are obviously false, they should be willing to grant that there has never been a miracle story that deserves belief”—including those of the Bible (Jacovides 2024, pp. 3–4).39

It is precisely along these Humean lines that d’Holbach enters the debate.40 He starts by pointing at the contradiction between believing in Christ’s miracles, for which we have no contemporary witnesses, and disbelieving those of Pâris, for which we have direct testimonies, medical examinations, and judicial interrogations. Just as the Pharisees did not believe in Jesus’ miracles, even if they witnessed many of them, today, says d’Holbach, many do not believe in Pâris’ powers; the fact that they still believe in Christ’s is a testament to the irrationality of the belief in miracles:

[Jesus’] miracles sont crus maintenant par des gens qui ne voudroient pas croire ceux qu’on feroit en leur présence. Tout le monde à Paris croit les miracles de Jésus, & boeaucoup d’esprits-forts doutent de ceux des Jansénistes, dont plusieurs d’entre eux ont été les témoins.

(d’Holbach 1770a, pp. 124–25; Hunwick 1995, p. 125)

Now, it is telling that d’Holbach reinforces the unfavorable comparison between François Pâris and Jesus through an appeal to demonology. The manuscript version of Histoire critique mentions the Pharisees’ accusation that Jesus exorcized, not through the power of God, but through Beelzebub (Mat 12: 24); note d’Holbach’s additions (here, in brackets):

Les Pharisiens & les Docteurs, [qui avoient aussi des exorcistes parmi eux, n’y virent rien de suprenant; ils prétendirent seulement] que leurs exorcistes faisoient leurs conjurations au nom de Dieu, tandis que Jésus faisoit les siennes au nom du Diable. Ainsi ils accusoient le Christ de chasser le Diable par le Diable, [ce qui étoit en effet tomber en contradiction]. Mais cette contradiction ne prouvoit pas la Divinité de Jésus, [elle prouvoit seulement que les Pharisiens étoient souvent capables de déraisonner & de se contredire comme font tous ceux qui sont superstitieux & crédules. Lorsque des Théologiens sont en dispute, rien n’est plus facile que de s’appercevoir que les querelleurs des différens partis déraisonnent également, & s’entredétruisent réciproquement].

(d’Holbach 1770a, p. 138; Hunwick 1995, p. 132)

D’ Holbach presses this demonological line further by adding a footnote in which the quarrel concerning Christ’s divine or demonic exorcisms serves to draw a parallel with the scandalous debates about the convulsionnaires’ miracles. As the Baron had already pointed out, François Pâris’ miracles are better attested than those of Jesus. Why, then, should we deny them, or reject their witnesses, or attribute these deeds to the devil, while, at the same time, accepting Jesus’ distant miracles and their witnesses in good faith? Can not the enemies of Pâris understand that all their criticism could be equally raised against Christ? As an example, d’Holbach mentions Louis Bernard de La Taste, who, as we have seen, accused the convulsionnaires of being demonically possessed:

Dom La Taste, Bénédictin célebre dans le parti Moliniste, vient tout récemment d’écrire des Lettres contre les miracles prétendus du Diacre Pâris, qu’il attribue à l’oeuvre du Démon. Son zêle a été récompensé d’un Evêché; ses partisans n’ont point vu que les argumens dont ce Moine s’est servi pour combattre les miracles d’un Janséniste détruisoient par contrecoup les miracles de Jésus-Christ, qui sont bien moins attestés que ceux de Pâris, dont tant de gens vivans & connus croyent ou prétendent avoir été témoins.

(d’Holbach 1770a, p. 139; Hunwick 1995, p. 132)41

Finally, the convulsionnaires provided d’Holbach with a recent example of how a religious movement, convinced of carrying God’s mission, would counterfeit miracles in order to triumph. This, claims the Baron, helps us to understand Jesus’ behavior. Since he was convinced that he was saving humankind, he used “un mélange assez constant d’enthousiasme & de fourberie”, concocting pia fraus miracles—for instance, as we have seen, exorcisms—in order to advance his holy cause (d’Holbach 1770a, pp. 338–39; Hunwick 1995, p. 246). Could Jesus be at the same time a man of faith and a conman? Certainly: we have a contemporary parallel in the convulsionnaires:

Des exemples très-récens suffisent pour nous convaincre que l’alliage de la piété & de la fourberie n’est nullement incompatible. L’on a vu tout Paris courir pour voir des miracles, des guérisons, des convulsions, & pour entendre des prédictions qui étoient visiblement des fraudes, imaginées par de bonnes âmes, dans la vue d’étayer leur parti, qu’elles qualifioient de la cause de Dieu. Il n’est gueres de zêlés dévots qui ne croyent le crime même permis quand il s’agit des intérêts de la Religion.

(d’Holbach 1770a, pp. 337–38; Hunwick 1995, p. 246)42

8. Conclusions

As we pointed out at the beginning of the article, Mémoires secrets, published in October 1770, was the first text addressing Histoire critique. It instantly underlined the disruptive quality of the book, which employed “ironie”, “ridicule”, “contradiction”, and “absurdité” in “son criminel projet de représenter l’évangile comme un roman oriental” (Mémoires Secrets Pour Servir a L’histoire de la République des Lettres en France, Depuis MDCCLXII Jusqu’a nos Jours 1777, p. 201). Others would soon highlight the corrosive nature of d’Holbach’s secretive—and creative—edition of this anonymous clandestine manuscript. We have already seen Nicolas Bergier’s animadversion towards this heterodox life of Jesus in his Traité historique et dogmatique de la vraie religion (1780). The theologian rejects the way in which “l’Histoire de Jesus-Christ est travestie” under “circonstances romanesques & scandaleuses”, peppered with “des sarcasmes & des invenctives”, amounting to nothing but “faussetés & absurdités”. The book, written “pour inspirer des doutes” about Christ, portrays his life and teachings as “odieuse & ridicule”, to the point that the anti-Christians of Antiquity, the Jews, and pagan critics like Celsus “sont plus modérés que l’Hisoire critique de Jesus-Christ” (Bergier 1780a, pp. 21, 78, 150; Bergier 1780b, pp. 574, 391, 463, 517).43

Irony, ridicule, absurdity, sarcasm, scandal, a travestied history. Indeed, Histoire critique is a good example of how caustic humor could be used as a resilience resource against the official Christian religion, enforced and defended in early modern times with repressive measures. The incongruities applied to the figure of Jesus elicit most of the laughter—a strategy unknowingly reproduced almost two centuries later in Vonnegut’s The Gospel of Outer Space, with which we opened this article. Histoire critique is the biography, not of a man-God, capable of performing miracles and offering salvation, but of a conman and a religious fanatic—according to the Enlightenment critique, a mentally disturbed person. Such discrepancies with orthodox discourse, as noted in the introduction, help Histoire critique to ridicule, and hence to criticize, accepted institutional, political, and cultural boundaries such as those enforced by the French Crown and the Catholic Church in the 18th century.

As Nicolas Bergier noted, d’Holbach’s book was edited “to inspire doubts” about Christ’s life and deeds. One of its targets was the biblical passages portraying Jesus’ dealings with the devil, which were crucial in establishing the grounds for late medieval and early modern theory and praxis of demonology. As seen in our analysis of Systême de la nature, d’Holbach rejected on philosophical grounds the existence of evil spirits and worked in the manuscript version of Histoire critique to add humor to his criticism of different aspects of the demonological tradition. Thus, he ridiculed the theological contradictions imbedded in theodicy, the experience of demonic possession—treated as a natural illness or an imposture—and the miracle of exorcism, seen as a fraud concocted between Jesus and his associates.

This critique of the miracle of exorcism leads d’Holbach to draw a historical parallel between Jesus’ movement and the ecstatic convulsionnaires of 18th century France, unexpectedly born from the bitter quarrel between the Jansenists, the Papacy, the Crown, and the Catholic Church. The Baron participated in the heated debate concerning the unorthodox convulsionnaires miracles, which in turn nurtured the Enlightenment critique of orthodox biblical miracles—in this article, we focused on the epistemological critique of David Hume, likely inspiring d’Holbach’s opinions in Histoire critique. In brief, the close comparison between the first Christians and the convulsionnaires served the Baron to attack all religious movements as nothing more than fraudulent enterprises led by unscrupulous, self-appointed divine leaders, and followed by superstitious, credulous, and fanatical people.