Note 166 — Chapter X · FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE

Buckle (3-vol. ed. ii, 10; 1-vol. ed. p. 291) errs in representing L’Hopital as the only statesman of the time who dreamt of toleration. It is to be noted, on the other hand, that the Huguenots themselves protested against any toleration of atheists or Anabaptists; and even the reputed freethinker Gabriel Naudé, writing his Science des Princes, ou Considérations politiques sur les Coups d’état, in 1639, defended the massacre on political grounds (Owen, Skeptics of the French Renaissance, p. 470, note). Bodin implicitly execrated it. Cp. Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii, 162. ↑