Candide | Chapter 6 | Summary

Summary

Pangloss is arrested for heresy, as is Candide for listening to a heretic. At an Inquisition ceremony for the torture or execution of heretics, Candide suffers a flogging, three men are burned at the stake, and Pangloss is hanged. Before being led away from the scene by an old woman, Candide questions how the death of his savior, his tutor, and his love can happen in the best of all possible worlds.

Analysis

The ceremony was called an auto-da-fé, or act of faith, but it was really an opportunity for public humiliation and punishment serving as a warning to others. The other heretics are a man from the Spanish province of Biscay who married his godmother and two Portuguese men who "were seen throwing away the bacon garnish" on a chicken. The men who refused the bacon revealed they were Jewish. The man who married his godmother violated a superstitious ban against marrying a godparent. Voltaire's inclusion of both types of heretics shows both his sympathy for people who had to hide their true religion and his impatience with ecclesiastical superstition. He identified as a deist, and he didn't always agree with the church.