# Voltaire’s correspondence slogan écrasez l’infâme becomes a public anticlerical programme

Date: 1762

## The fact

From the early 1760s, especially around Calas, Voltaire closed letters with écrasez l’infâme, a slogan against ecclesiastical power that polarised French public language.

## Context

[Voltaire](/people/voltaire) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official archive/museum/agency pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Voltaire Foundation — University of Oxford (https://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/; Voltaire Foundation / University of Oxford).

## Significance

A slogan is not a statute. It is still a polarisation path.

A slogan is not a statute. It is still a polarisation path.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.
Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is [political-polarization](/drivers/political-polarization). The welfare reading used in this dossier is worsening. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here. Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is political-polarization. The welfare reading used in this dossier is worsening. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Voltaire: https://factrail.ai/people/voltaire

## Drivers

- Political Polarization: https://factrail.ai/drivers/political-polarization

## Sources

- https://doi.org/10.1017/ccol9780521849739
- https://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/vo-ecrasez-infame-publicity