Here is a translation of the guide to the Maison Calas created for the Mairie de Toulouse . - thus, to an extent, the modern "official version" of the Calas affair. (The brochure can be seen on display inside the house in various photographs and videos).
The text is based on the book L'Affaire Calas by the late Janine Garrisson, published by Fayard in 2004. The guide also includes a very swish illustration produced by Studio différemment, a company specialising in digital historical reconstructions. Numbers refer to the different parts of the house where the events took place.
Jean Calas was a native of the Huguenot lands around Castres and Mazamet who had set up a modest cloth business in Toulouse. He was married to Anne-Rose Cabibel, a Protestant from the same region. The couple had six children, four sons and two daughters. The eldest Marc-Antoine had ambitions to become a lawyer but was debarred because he declined to conform to Catholicism. Like his younger brother Pierre, he helped his father in the shop. A third brother Louis, had left the family home and become a Catholic, thereby obliging his father to provide him with a pension. The other member of the household was their servant Jeanne Viguière, a Catholic (since Protestants were not permitted to employ their co-religionists as servants)
❶ The supper
That evening the Calas family had a dinner guest, Gaubert Lavaisse, the son of Protestant friends in Toulouse; Madame Calas had bought a piece of Roquefort cheese in his honour. Also present, besides their parents, were Pierre and Marc-Antoine. Marc-Antoine had been sent out earlier by his father to get change for some louis d'or; the servant Jeanne Viguière had gone to fetch him from the cabaret Quatre Billards [a cafe-pool hall] where he often spent his free time. Over the meal Gaubert talked about his studies in Bordeaux. Marc-Antoine, who seemed tense, corrected his brother sharply over historical details in their conversation about the architectural improvements taking place in Toulouse. After the dessert had been served, at about half-past eight he got up from the table and left once more for the Quatre Billards........
❷ After supper
The Calas family and their guest spent the period after supper in the adjoining room, Madame Calas's chamber. At about ten o'clock Lavaisse took his leave of the family. Pierre, who had fallen asleep, was woken up in order to accompany him....
The drama
As they passed, Pierre and Lavaisse noticed that the door to the back room of the shop was open ❸, which was unusual. They went inside and discovered the body of Marc-Antoine. Pierre immediately called his father who came downstairs and found the scene. ❹
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| Door from the corridor into the rear room of the Calas shop (now blocked off) Photos from the Association Jean Calas Facebook page. |
Entanglements
A proper inquiry would doubtless have swifly determined the true cause of Marc-Antoine Calas's death, were it not that the capitoul David de Beaudrigue immediately took charge. David de Beaudrigue was appreciated by the administration for his zeal in policing (he did not hesitate to interrupt respectable social gatherings in search of clandestine gambling) and had been chosen as capitoul every year since 1747.
On the 13th October at eleven o'clock in the evening, he was alerted to the disturbance in the rue des Filateurs. He took several soldiers and arrived at Calas's door➏. Without troubling to investigate the"crime scene", or the cabaret where Marc-Antoine had passed the evening (whose owner was never interrogated), he had the body transported to the Capitole and the members of the household taken for questioning. Their interrogation immediately took a strong anti-Protestant direction: no doubt David de Beaudrigue had read works of propaganda which claimed that Protestant fathers would murder their children if they became Catholics. The guilty party, for him, was Jean Calas, and he had killed his son because Marc-Antoine had wanted to convert to Catholicism. This aberrant thesis would take hold because the town had been panicked by the affair of the Grenier brothers [leaders of a supposed Protestant rising, executed in Toulouse in February 1762]. The train of events which would engulf Jean Calas had been set in motion.
At this point there are some notes on the various parts of the Maison Calas:
❼ The Calas house, which is still in existence at 50 rue des Filatiers, is shown elevated and in cross-section. The accommodation was as follows:
❽ Kitchen
❾ Floor with the children's rooms.
❿. Attic with the servant's room.
⓫. Walkway and exterior staircase.
⓬. Rear courtyard and stables. It was possible to take a horse through the house along the "corredor" to reach the stables.
⓭. Entrance door and "corredor". The door still survives today, but it has been moved to a new location in the courtyard.
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| The former entrance door to the building, in its relocated position. Photos from the Association Jean Calas Facebook page. |
The brochure concludes with a brief account of Calas's trial and execution:
Already devastated by the death of Marc-Antoine, Jean Calas and his family now found themselves accused of his murder. Not knowing what to do, they took the advise given them by a Protestant lawyer: since the existence of an unknown could never be proven, they must admit that Marc-Antoine had committed suicide. Hence they contradicted their first statements, an inconsistency which furnished the prosecution's only real argument.
To be sure, Beaudrigue was not short of witnesses: the whole district had seen or heard something that evening. The cries of Pierre and Lavaisse when they found the body, became Marc-Antoine's pleas for mercy as he was strangled by his own family. The young man's taste for sacred music, was proof that he wanted to become a Catholic. Everyone had seen him go to confession in the cathedral of Saint-Etienne. It was only at the very end of the inquiry, that anyone took the trouble to ask the priests there, who testified that they had never seen him No-one listened to those, like the Catholic servant, who knew him best. They described a young man of deep Protestant faith, who took part in family worship and attended forbidden assemblies - but who was tormented by the tedious prospect of life as a shopkeeper.
In the fevered atmosphere of Catholic Toulouse the young Calas was regarded as a martyr. His funeral took place with great pomp in Saint-Etienne and a macabre ceremony was organised in the chapel of the White Penitents: Marc-Antoine was represented by an articulated skeleton set among black draperies and brandished a placard which read "Abduration of heresy".
In November the Calas family appeared before the Capitouls who had begun to have doubts...In a calculated move, they committed a procedural fault which allowed them to pass the case on to the lawyers of the Parlement of Toulouse. These too hesitated. Since the participation of the other members of the family was too difficult to prove, they contented themselves with Jean Calas himself. On 9th March 1762 Calas was condemned to death and sentenced to be broken on the wheel - to be "strangled after remaining on the wheel for two hours". And so, the modest shopkeeper was transformed into a martyr.
On 10 March he was put to the torture but "persisted in maintaining that he was innocent". He was taken to the front of Saint-Etienne where an immense crowd saw him placed on the cart to be transported to the scaffold on the place Saint-Georges. An official noted that "Calas suffered his torment with inconceivable courage. He let out only a single cry with each blow. During the hours that he was on the wheel, he talked with his confessor about things other than religion, having told him that anything he could say on the subject would be useless and that he would die a Protestant."
Marc-Antoine Calas was dead, Jean Calas too; the true "affaire Calas" was about to begin - which would make of Toulouse, its Capitouls and its Parlement, an easy target for the heralds of the fight against arbitrary power and "fanaticism".
Reference
Mairie de Toulouse, Petites histoires de Toulouse: "13 octobre 1761 - Ce soir-là dans la maison Calas". Produced by Studio différemment; text by Jean de Saint Blanquat
For more information on the interior layout of the house, see the description by the abbé Adrien Salvan, quoted in Athanase-Josué Coquerel, Jean Calas et sa famille (1869) note 1, p.429-31.
Ground floor: A long corridor led to a courtyard where there was an ancient acacia. Two shops opened onto the road; the one which adjoined the wall of the neighbouring house was that of the tailor Bou. The Calas's shop was divided by a partition into two parts; the first, on the road, was known as the boutique; the second, to the rear, was the magasin. They were connected by a communicating doorway, two metres high with two swing doors. Both the boutique and the magasin were entered from the corridor. Next to the magasin was the staircase. After the staircase, there was a third door which opened onto a small courtyard formed by dividing off a few metres from the main courtyard. The tailor Bou had a similar small courtyard for his use.
First floor: This floor comprised four rooms. 1. A dining room which opened onto a gallery overlooking the courtyard. 2. The kitchen, which adjoined this room and had a window onto the street. 3. Mme Calas's room, next to the kitchen and also overlooking the street. 4. A chamber next to the dining room, on the gallery side, where the family usually met after meals. There was a bed in this room and Mme Calas's room could be entered from it. There were latrines on each floor, and in the courtyard.
Coquerel, writing in 1869, adds:
Today, the two shops are knocked into one; the main courtyard and the two small courtyards have disappeared and the area is open to the sky. The staircase has been altered, although it still occupies the same space. The plan of the rooms on the first floor remains the same; the exterior gallery has been partly removed; the entry door and the corridor are the same; the doors which allowed entry into the boutique, the magasin and the small courtyard, are all walled up. In the Calas courtyard there was a window that provided light for the magasin and for the entrance to a large vaulted cellar which ran under both the Calas boutique and magasin and the premises of Bou. This cellar was reserved for Calas's exclusive use.
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k57191804/f456.item
See also: blog post on 18th-century interiors in Toulouse
See also: blog post on 18th-century interiors in Toulouse
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