Voltaire

As I was walking through our kitchen I spied "Candide" by Voltaire. Since my daughter goes to a college prep school this is one of the many books she has to read there. Though I had heard of Voltaire before I had always assumed (wrongly so I discovered tonight) that he was a college Philosophy professor. However, I see now he was a sort of Shakespeare like person in Paris who was persecuted and sent to the Bastille more than once, held, beat up and finally released several times. He eventually was exiled from Paris and not allowed to live there anymore. And spent his final 20 years (he passed on in his 80s) near Geneva, Switzerland. What I knew of Voltaire before now was basically that he knew "The Comte De Saint Germain" and that he had said of him to a letter to Frederick the Great of Prussia that Saint Germain knew everything and never dies. Here is a quote about Voltaire from Wikipedia:

François-Marie Arouet (French pronunciation: [fʁɑ̃.swa ma.ʁi aʁ.wɛ]; 21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), better known by the pen name Voltaire (pronounced: [vɔl.tɛːʁ]), was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poetry, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was an outspoken supporter of social reform, despite strict censorship laws with harsh penalties for those who broke them. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma and the French institutions of his day. end quote.

It is easy to see how people armed with Voltaire's philosophy eventually created the French revolution later in the 18th century  1789 to 1799 which basically wiped out the aristocracy of France if they were not able to leave the country either before or during the revolution.

It is also easy to see why the Comte de Saint Germain and Voltaire would be friends or acquaintances because of similar philosophies of freedom of religion, free trade, and the separation of church and state.

begin quote regarding the age of enlightenment from Wikipedia:

The Age of Enlightenment (or simply the Enlightenment or Age of Reason) was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in Church and state. Originating about 1650–1700, it was sparked by philosophers Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), John Locke (1632–1704), Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), mathematician Isaac Newton (1643–1727) and Voltaire (1694–1778). Ruling princes often endorsed and fostered figures and even attempted to apply their ideas of government. The Enlightenment flourished until about 1790–1800, after which the emphasis on reason gave way to Romanticism's emphasis on emotion and a Counter-Enlightenment gained force.
The centre of the Enlightenment was France, where it was based in the salons and culminated in the great Encyclopédie (1751–72) edited by Denis Diderot (1713–1784) with contributions by hundreds of leading philosophes (intellectuals) such as Voltaire (1694–1778), Rousseau (1712–1778) and Montesquieu (1689–1755). Some 25,000 copies of the 35 volume set were sold, half of them outside France. The new intellectual forces spread to urban centres across Europe, notably England, Scotland, the German states, the Netherlands, Russia, Italy, Austria, and Spain, then jumped the Atlantic into the European colonies, where it influenced Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, among many others, and played a major role in the American Revolution. The political ideals influenced the American Declaration of Independence, the United States Bill of Rights, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, and the Polish–Lithuanian Constitution of May 3, 1791.[1

If you are interested in reading "Candide" by Voltaire for free onlline, here is the place to do it like I did:

Candide - Literature.org - The Online Literature Library

My daughter had to take her book of "Candide" to school and so I read it online today at the above site. 

note: also if you begin to read Candide and don't know what the word Anabaptist means, here is part of the definition from Wikipedia:

Anabaptists (Greek ανα (again, twice) +βαπτιζω (baptize), thus "re-baptizers"^[1]) are Protestant Christians of the Radical Reformation of 16th-century Europe, and their direct descendants, particularly the Amish, Brethren, Hutterites, and Mennonites.
Anabaptists rejected conventional Christian practices such as wearing wedding rings,^{[citation needed]} taking oaths, and participating in civil government. They adhered to a literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount and believer's baptism.