CALAS, JEAN (1698-1762), a Protestant merchant at Tou louse, whose legal murder is a celebrated case in French history, was born at Lacaparede, near Chartres, on March 19, 1698. His wife was an Englishwoman of French extraction. They had three sons and three daughters. His son Louis had become a Roman Catholic. In Oct. 1761 another son, Antoine, hanged himself in his father's warehouse. It was alleged that he had been strangled by the family to prevent him from changing his religion, and that this was a common practice among Protestants. The unhappy family were condemned to the rack in order to extort confession. They appealed to the parlement ; but this body sentenced the old father to the torture, ordinary and extraordinary, to be broken alive upon the wheel, and then to be burnt to ashes; which decree was executed on March 9, 1762. Pierre Calas, the surviving son, was banished for life ; the rest were acquitted. The distracted widow, however, found some friends, and among them Voltaire, who laid her case before the council of State at Versailles. For three years he worked indefatigably to procure justice, and made the Calas case famous throughout Europe (see VOLTAIRE) . Finally the king and council annulled the proceeding of the parlement of Toulouse ; Calas was declared to have been innocent, and a pay ment was made to the family, but no proceedings were taken against the magistrates or the parlement.