1. The case for the Prosecution (see Garnot, p.53-60)
There were no eye-witnesses to the crime and even indirect testimonies were inconclusive.
The accusation was based on two charges: that the Calas family had killed Marc-Antoine because he wanted to convert to Catholicism, and that they had been aided in this by all or part of the Protestant community of Toulouse.
The Monitoire asked explicitly for proof that murder had been decided upon that morning in a house in the "parish of Daurade" (ie.the house of Lavaisse's host Cazeing) and that, following this, Marc-Antoine had been killed "by suspension or torsion".
Here is the text of the Monitoire in English.
C. Kegan Paul, "The story of Jean Calas", Theological Review, no.7 (1870), p.378-409, p.394
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=IDM2AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA394#v=onepage&q&f=false
To make the case even slightly plausible, it was first necessary to establish that Marc-Antoine had wished to abjure. Since there was no declaration or certificate of confession, evidence was sought in the last days of the young man's life. Several witnesses, had seen Marc Antoine in a church, even at Catholic services, but details were imprecise. Testimony concerning the supposed Protestant plot was even more unreliable. The l’abbé Dugu, the most detailed of the witnesses, claimed that a meeting had taken place at the Calas house, where it had been decided to strangle Marc-Antoine and bury the body in the cellar; however, his evidence was based only on third-hand rumour.
The psychological state of the young man was cited against the likelihood of suicide. Several witnesses, testified that he had behaved normally on the 13th October, indeed had been in a good mood.
Some neighbours claimed to have heard Marc Antoine crying out at the moment of his death: "Ah, mon père, vous m’étranglez!" but others recalled only the laments of the Calas family when the body was found. Since the disturbance took place after 9:30, the timing makes the latter almost certain.
Forensic evidence
This was more persuasive. If it did not prove the culpability of the Calas family, it cast doubt on the suicide theory. The statements of 15th October by the accused specified that the body had been found hanging from the doors which connected the rear storeroom with the shop. These were a pair of “French doors”, which swung together when closed; it seems that Marc-Antoine had taken one of the thick round pins which was used to tighten bales of cloth, placed it across the top of the half-shut doors, and fastened a rope to it to create a noose. (See David Bien, Le Calas Affair (1960) p.9)
On the 16th October, when David de Beaurigue and the procurateur du roi Lagane entered the shop, they found the wooden pin and the rope, with Marc-Antoine's hairs still adhering to it, also his clothes, neatly folded on the counter in the manner of a suicide. However, when they tried to reconstruct the scene, they found difficulties:- The baton, which was round and smooth, rolled easily out of position. It would also not have been long enough to reach if the doors had been fully open: Marc-Antoine would therefore have had very little space to manoeuvre.
- The short length of the rope was also a problem. To match the marks on Marc-Antoine's neck, it would have needed to be wound twice round. But this did not leave enough rope to reach the pin unless the body had been suspended eighteen inches off the floor. David de Beaudrigue did not find a chair or stool near the body, so how had Marc-Antoine managed this? When challenged, Calas himself replied only that "in his troubled state, he had not noticed if there was a chair. There were such in the shop; Marc-Antoine could have used one and kicked it away".
- Equally awkwardly, there was still dust on the tops of the doors and a dozen small strings for tying packages were found undisturbed draped over one of them.
The judges were advised that suicide under the conditions described by Calas, Pierre and Lavaisse was a physical impossibility. Lagane was of the opinion that Marc-Antoine had been made to lay or sit across two chairs and then garroted.
The statements of the accused
The family members had not been so completely separated in the period after their arrest that collusion was ruled out. A young lawyer called Carrière, a friend of Marc-Antoine and Lavaisse, had visited them in prison on 14th October and even managed to enter illegally the Calas house. It was he who persuaded the accused to change their story – or, as they claimed, to tell the truth regarding the suicide (p.101-3) The next day Calas had wrote to Carrière, asking how he should answer at his next interrogation. Louis Calas and a friend, the abbé Benaben,were in the attorney's office when the letter was delivered. Benaben, recalled that Carrière had been angered by the letter; he said that Calas had lost his mind, that he had told him to tell the truth and not think of sparing the honour of his dead son. He immediately dictated three letters one to each of the accused men, and gave them to Louis to deliver. Calas was given his, but the clerk at the prison turned the other two over to the authorities. Benaben related that the letter to Calas directed him to say that he learned of Marc's death only when Lavaisse went back upstairs to tell him of it, that he had then gone downstairs and cut down the body to save the honour of his son. The confiscated letters exhorted Pierre and Lavaisse to tell the truth; they were reminded that the reason they had lied was because bodies of suicides were dragged on a hurdle. They were advised to recall their exact movements and what was said. To suspicious eyes, this seemed a lot of prompting.
There were also significant inconsistencies and oddities in the accounts then given:
- There was some doubt whether the five accused had really been together for the whole time after supper. It emerged that the servant had been asleep in the kitchen. Likewise Pierre, who had accompanied his parents into the living room, had fallen into a slumber in an armchair and had only been roused with difficulty to accompany out Lavaisse. Both Madame Calas and Lavaisse testified that Calas had not left the room during this time. Yet, when the alarm was raised, Calas had descended the stairs wearing his dressing gown and nightcap.
- Calas stated that Marc-Antoine had remained for half an hour after supper was over, while the others said he had left immediately. At first the family indicated that he had left the house altogether, but on second questioning Lavaisse admitted that he and Pierre had know that he was still in the building. Pierre told a friend that his brother had taken the key to the storeroom before going downstairs.
- It seemed strange that the door to the storeroom had been left ajar.
- There were discrepancies in the details of the scene. Pierre claimed that the doors where Marc-Antoine had hanged himself, had been wide open, whilst Lavaisse did not even realise there were doors attached to the frame. Calas, on the other hand, insisted that the doors had been part-way closed and clearly visible. Calas claimed that the rope had been cut by Pierre or Lavaisse; but when it was show to him to be all one piece, he simply retracted this statement. He was also unable to confirm the existence of a chair or stool. (p.106)
- The defendants claimed that they had not touched Marc-Antoine's clothes, which were neatly folded on a counter. Yet Jeanne Viguière had told a neighbour that the key was not on him. So, were these even the clothes he had been wearing?
- In addition, there was the problem of the black neckerchief. Surely Marc, who had so carefully removed and folded up his clothing, would have removed his tie too? Jeanne Viguière thought he had been wearing his summer white tie that evening. (p.106-7) This reinforced the idea that the black tie had been put on the body to conceal marks of strangulation.
- The circumstances in which the body was found seems suspicious. Calas testified that he had taken his son down from the doors, laid him on the floor and verified that he was dead. So why was Pierre dispatched in such haste to find a doctor? Pierre claimed that they were not sure his brother was dead; yet earlier he had stated that the body was already cold to the touch. Did they hope, by summoning a doctor, to make an unnatural death pass for a natural one? (p.107)
- Lavaisse hurried out to notify his host Cazeing but he did not tell him how Marc-Antoine had died. The most natural explanation was that the suicide story was a cover-up (p.107-8)
- Madame Calas maintained that it was only after she was in prison that she had heard about Marc's suicide, whereas Calas stated clearly that he had told her.
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| Les adieux de Calas à sa famille. Engraving by Daniel Chodowiecki, 1767, Berlin |
It should certainly be remembered that the accused were always interrogated separately and in difficult conditions, so that it was relatively easy for inconsistencies to appear between accounts. David Bien, in his classic study of the Calas affair, concludes: "Nearly all the discrepancies in the defendants' accounts,regarded sympathetically, appear as perfectly human errors resulting from the failure to observe closely and to remember carefully what happened in a time of very great excitement and nervous strain" (Bien, p.109-10)
It is also possible that events had indeed not taken place exactly as Calas reported precisely because he had initially hoped to conceal the suicide. A lot of the discrepancies would be resolved if it were supposed that Calas had already discovered his son's body, maybe taken it down and added the scarf, then left the door ajar for him to be found. He might perhaps have hoped that a sympathetic doctor would confirm death by natural causes.
2. Arguments for the defence (Garnot, p.60-66)
There were three major sets of documents produced in defence of the Calas family during the trial and subsequent appeal.
1. Judicial memoirs drawn up by Théodore Sudre and Laurent Angliviel de La Beaumelle, avocats of the Parlement of Toulouse, (in late 1761 or early 1762).
Although defence lawyers were not permitted to be present during a trial, formal written defences could be submitted on behalf of the accused. As was the case here, they were often published. The authors challenged the conduct of the case and refuted the arguments against the accused point by point.
Firstly, the preliminary investigation had been shoddily carried out, with a number of procedural irregularities:
- Medical examination of the body had not been performed in situ and the doctors and surgeons had never been "confronted" by the accused.
- The scene had only been investigated on the day following the crime. No seals had been affixed or guards left on watch, so that objects (for example a stool) could have been moved or removed. [Indeed the lawyer Carrière had been able to gain access to the premises quite illegally on the evening of the 14th.]
- The accused were arrested before any crime had been established.
- The Monitoire asked lead questions and flagrantly breached the rule that no-one should be referred to by name - Marc-Antoine was named no less than six times.
Additional circumstances made murder unlikely:
- Since all the accused had been together, if one was guilty, all must be. Yet Lavaisse was a chance visitor and the servant, Jeanne Viguière, a Catholic known for her long and sincere attachment to the Calas children.
- The victim's coat and shirt were found on a shop counter neatly folded after the manner of a suicide.
- Marc-Antoine was a vigorous young man of twenty-nine who would have put up a strong fight. Yet examination of the body revealed no bruises or contusions to indicate that a struggle had taken place. Nor were there marks to show his wrists had been bound.
- Why chose to act at eight o'clock in the evening when the street was still full? No passers-by had in fact remarked any disturbance at the time the alleged attack took place.
- The reactions of the family and Lavaisse spoke in their favour. The shouts overheard were in fact their cries of shock and despair; witnesses testified to the tears of the parents; the accused promptly sent for a doctor and notified the authorities. Their only sin had been the very human one of wishing to save the honour of the family and its deceased member. Where in the entire world could there be found five persons so "unnatural" as to plot and, after calmly eating their supper, carry out in cold blood the murder of a son, brother or friend? "Even lions and tigers protect their young" (Sudre Mémoire pour le Sieur Jean Calas....(Toulouse 1762), p.11-14)
2. Requête au roi en son Conseil, the formal appeal presented to the Royal Council in the name of Donat Calas in 1763 with a view to revision of the trial.
The main additional point made in the posthumous case was the illogic of having convicting only Calas:
- All the accused were together for the whole time the supposed murder was committed.
- Jean Calas had died protesting his innocence.
- All the other accused had been released.
- It was physically impossible that Jean Calas could have hanged his son alone. Pierre's banishment was either totally unjust or too slight a penalty.
3. Pierre Mariette's written plaidoirie of 1764, which preceded Calas's final exoneration.
Having discredited the witnesses, Mariette offered five proofs of innocence:
1. The Calas family were peaceful citizens. When Marc-Antoine's younger brother Louis had renounced his faith, his father had not been violent or vindictive towards him.
2. It was hardly likely that Gaubert Lavaisse, the son of a renowned barrister, would have plotted to kill his friend.
3. The servant, Jeanne Viguière, a pious Catholic who had helped Louis to convert, would also not have taken part in such a plot.
4. Again, why would murderers have chosen a time when the neighbours were still around? There were no marks of struggle on the body: Marc Antoine, who was tall and trained in arms, would not have allowed himself to be murdered without a fight.
5. The accused had steadfastly maintained their innocence in spite of all the pressures brought to bear on them.
Mariette did not, however, address either the forensic problems or the worrying contradictions in the statements of the accused.
3. Subsequent discussions (Garnot, p.53-60).
Medical evidence revisited
The doctors who were called to examine the body confirmed the initial observations of the surgeon's assistant, Antoine Gorsse. They discovered a rope mark which ran round Marc-Antoine’s neck and disappeared into his hair above and behind the ears. They ruled out death by natural causes but, concluded only that Marc-Antoine had been strangled or hanged either by himself or by others. (Bien, p.8-9). The subsequent postmortum, though thorough, failed to provide further elucidation. There were no evident signs of struggle.
The “garotting” thesis was soon opened to question. Sudre argued that the the marks described in the medical reports were not in fact consistent with strangulation. [He slightly spoiled his case by maintaining that a person who is strangled to death usually omits a substance from his mouth whereas a man who hangs himself does not; the doctors had in fact reported a foam and muceous emission from the corpse’s nose and mouth. (Sudre, Mémoire pour le Sieur Jean Calas....(Toulouse 1762), p.17, Bien p.100) ]
In 1763 Antoine Louis, pioneer of forensic science and later inventor of the guillotine, presented a memoir on the distinction between suicide by hanging and assassination. He compared autopsies of criminals hanged in Paris with the findings on Marc-Antoine. If Calas had strangled his son, then hanged him to disguise his crime, the body would have displayed ecchymoses [a type of bruising]. He also concluded that it would be extremely difficult for one man to kill another by hanging.
He tried to explain – ultimately inconclusively – how Marc-Antoine could have committed suicide. Hanging does not cause death by prevention of breathing but by asphyxiation due to the compression of the jugular veins. This meant it was possible for Marc-Antoine to have killed himself without attaching the rope to the pole overhead; he could have attached it to a door knob; he could even have had his feet on the ground. (Garnot, p.70-71)
An external killer?
This possibility had been elaborated in March 1762 by the avocat Duroux, who speculated that Marc Antoine had been followed home from the Quatre Billards and murdered for money. However, there was never any real evidence to support the theory.
Marc-Antoine' state of mind
Marc-Antoine's actions did not seem to have been consistent with planned suicide. Why did he leave the door from the shop ajar when he knew that Lavaisse might leave at any moment? On the day that he died he behaved normally - working in the shop, visiting the pool hall, chatting with friends. To one friend he confided the pleasant news that he was soon to acquire the blue suit he wanted so badly. At home he ate his dinner as usual. He may in retrospect have appeared tense, but he conversed quite normally on trivial matters, among them the authenticity of various antiquities kept in the town hall. After dinner he got up from the table and departed as usual. Calas testified that he knew no cause or motivation for suicide. Pierre, even as late as 8th November, said that he had never noted any tendency in his brother towards self-destruction (p.99-100)
Responses: What could have driven him to suicide?
David Bien points out the judges were preoccupied by Marc-Antoine’s supposed conversion to Catholicism and did not pursue other lines of inquiry. The real tensions between Calas and his son, were not about religion but about money. According to Marc-Antoine’s close friend Jean-François Challier, he had pressed his father for funds to establish his own business but, when an opportunity arose in Uzès in July 1761, Calas had refused the money. It emerged after Calas’s death, that his own financial affairs were in a parlous state; he had debts of thousands of livres - and even owed his baker 241 livres. When pressed, he admitted scolding Marc-Antoine over his daily gambling and billiards playing. A local shopkeeper testified that she had walked in on Calas holding Marc-Antoine by the collar and shouting, "Scoundrel, this will cost you your life". She was under the impression that the young man had stolen money from the shop.
Despite this, as David Bien observes, no effort was made to question Marc-Antoine's cronies at the pool hall in order to find out if he had lost money gambling - the most obvious cause of suicidal despair (especially since that afternoon he had been entrusted with his father's louis d'or to change.)
Marc-Antoine's religious convictions
To suppose the would conspire to commit murder rather than allow one of their number to apostatise misinterprets normal Catholic-Protestant relations in urban Toulouse. Protestants was insignificant in number - 200 in a population of 50,000 - and, apart from a handful of lawyers like the elder Lavaisse or the procurateur Clauzade, they were socially unimportant. Calas, one of fifteen or so Huguenot merchants,had been a dealer in indiennes in the city for twenty-nine years and was accepted as a respectable and law-abiding citizen.
The community was allowed to pursue their faith without interference, provided they conformed outwardly. Lawyers and procureurs had to produce the necessary certificates of Catholicism; and to be baptised and married, if not buried, as Catholics. Otherwise their doctrinal orthodoxy not really seen as important.(Bien p.31)
Calas had his children baptised and fulfilled his legal obligation to take a servant who was Catholic. He worshipped mostly in the privacy of his own home, with prayers in the evening and readings from the psalms on Sunday. Only for important celebrations, would the family join with other Protestants. Their relations with their Catholic neighbours was familiar and friendly; Marc-Antoine’s sisters attracted the attentions of Catholic suitors and he himself had a wide circle of Catholic friends and acquaintances. According to a clerk in the shop across the street he was generally well-liked (p.32-33)
Re-reading confirms that there is absolutely no evidence that Marc-Antoine ever intended to convert. Jeanne Viguière testified that he was a devout young man who regularly worshipped with his family. His best friend Challier, a Catholic who had just finished his legal studies, reported that they had discussed religion together “many times”. Marc-Antoine had admired the Protestant pastors who had suffered martyrdom for their faith. In June 1761 he had disputed amicably with Challier's brother, who was a priest. For these educated young men, religious sentiment created common ground; they would read Corneille's Polyeucte together: on one occasion religious feeling had brought tears to Marc-Antoine's eyes (p.33-4)
Several witnesses testified that Marc-Antoine had been seen in Catholic churches. However, not one single priest could be found with whom he had discussed conversion (a legal career would have required a signed certificate of confession.) Pierre Calas explained that he and his brother enjoyed church music. They also appreciated religious art and the cultivated sermons of Catholic Toulouse. No less that eight Catholic friends confirmed that Marc-Antoine had been to church with them. The embroiderer François Bordes had accompanied him to hear sermons in various churches, but he had never attended Mass. Others reported that they had listened to music and choirs.(p.34-5). According to two separate witnesses Marc-Antoine had knelt as a courtesy when the Viaticum was carried through the streets, despite the assurance of his companions that he was not expected to do so. (Bien, p.34-6)
4. l'infâme?
According to David Bien, the Calas affair was "an anomaly in a growing trend of tolerance".
In theory the affair was a purely criminal trial. However, the greater part of the population of Toulouse saw the case as a religious issue. At work against Calas were both longstanding fears and contingent circumstances.
The laws against Protestants remained theoretically severe. The ordinance of 1724 laid down the death penalty for pastors caught carrying arms (six pastors were hanged between 1745 and 1762) and the galleys for ordinary Protestants attending open-air assemblies. Public office was closed to them; and only Catholic baptism or marriage were legally recognised. Children were theoretically liable to be taken from their parents at the age of seven to receive a Catholic education. Refusal of the last rites, could make a Protestant vulnerable to being considered a heretic, whose body could be profaned and his property confiscated. In practice the laws were seldom applied in their full severity, but they existed as a constant threat. In 1751, for instance, a Toulouse merchant called Samuel Vaisse had his marriage declared void and was obliged to undergo a Catholic ceremony.
Evocation of the past served to justify a latent hostility. The Protestants were presented as responsible for all the religious unrest of the 16th century. Every year on the 17th May a procession was held to celebrate the expulsion of the Huguenots from the town in 1562, an occasion when several hundred Catholics had been killed within the citadel. The War of the Camisards, moreover, was still within living memory.
The early 1760s presented a moment of particular tension. In 1761 and 1762 France was engaged in the Seven Years War against the Protestant powers of England and Prussia. Military operations were going badly. An economic depression had hit Languedoc and the price of bread continued to rise. Immediately before the Calas trial, the arrest of the Protestant pastor Rochette in Caussade, north of Montauban, had resulted in widespread panic and rumours of Protestant uprisings. Riquet de Bonrepos reported to the Parlement of Toulouse that the Huguenots were up in arms, and had all but sacked Caussade itself. On 18th February Rochette and the three Grenier brothers, were executed Toulouse amid the greatest possible security. The tense atmosphere made it possible to credit unlikely stories - even the ritual murder of Protestant children by their parents.
The second Sunday in November saw the burial of Marc-Antoine as a Catholic martyr in the cathedral of Saint-Etienne, his coffin escorted across the town by the White Penitents and as many as forty priests.
According to the manuscript diary of Pierre Barthès:
The Calas family, and their abetters were all Protestants to excess and zealous disciples of the heresiarch Calvin. According to common opinion, they strangled their child with their own hands, after having decided his fate in a council convoked, as the public Monitoire reported, in a house in the parish of the Daurade, where many Huguenots resided....they resolved the death of this young proselyte. (quoted Bien p.102)
The magistrates of the Parlement of Toulouse were inevitably affected by this state of mind. As guardians of justice, they feared the subversive potential of organised Protestantism. The concept they returned to repeatedly was that of "fanaticism"; an unreasoned obedience to dangerous principles. Protestant scorn of authority could easily led to armed rebellion; coolly calculated homicide seemed just one more act of Huguenot anti-social behaviour.
As David Bien notes the judges did not really believe that Protestant theology sanctioned murder, Nor, since they did not pursue Cazeing or the other accused, were they really convinced of a Protestant plot. In January 1762 the Protestant leader Paul Rabaut produced a ringing indictment in his brochure La calomnie confondue. It was a "calumny" to suggest that Calvin prescribed killing those who abjured, when toleration was the first principle of Protestantism; after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the Huguenots had not murdered their co-religionists who deserted to Catholicism. On March 6th the Parlement condemned Rabaut's pamphlet to be burned by the executioner. Bonrepos, insisted, rather lamely, that Rabaut was well aware that all Protestants were free in their consciences and the public investigation only examined the possibility of a single meeting of "some" Protestants. The court was not suggesting that an official Protestant synod or assembly had decreed the killing. (See Bien p.112-3)
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