Note 131 — Chapter X · FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE

Dolet (1508–1546) was certainly much less of an unbeliever131 than Rabelais;132 but where Rabelais could with ultimate impunity ridicule the whole machinery of the Church,133 Dolet, after several iniquitous prosecutions, in which his jealous rivals in the printing business took part, was finally done to death in priestly revenge134 for his youthful attack on the religion of inquisitorial Toulouse, where gross pagan superstition and gross orthodoxy went hand in hand.135 He certainly “lived a life of sturt and strife.” Born at Orléans, he studied in his boyhood at Paris; later at Padua, under Simon Villanovanus, whom he heard converse with Sir Thomas More; then, at 21, for a year at Venice, where he was secretary to Langeac, the French Bishop of Limoges. It was at Toulouse, where he went in 1532 to study law, that he began his quarrels and his troubles. In that year, and in that town, the young Jean de Caturce, a lecturer in the school of law, was burned alive on a trivial charge of heresy; and Dolet witnessed the tragedy.136 Previously there had been a wholesale arrest of suspected Lutherans—“advocates, procureurs, ecclesiastics of all sorts, monks, friars, and curés.”137 Thirty-two saved themselves by flight; but among those arrested was Jean de Boysonne, the most learned and the ablest professor in the university, much admired by Rabelais,138 and afterwards the most intimate friend of Dolet. It was his sheer love of letters that brought upon him the charge of heresy;139 but he was forced publicly to abjure ten Lutheran heresies charged upon him. The students of the time were divided in the old fashion into “nations,” and formed societies as such; and Dolet, chosen in 1534 as “orator” of the “French” group, as distinct from the Gascons and the Tolosans, in the course of a quarrel of the societies delivered two Latin orations, in one of which he vilipended alike the cruelty and the superstitions of Toulouse. A number of the leading bigots of the place were attacked; and Dolet was after an interval of some months thrown into prison, charged with exciting a riot and with contempt of the Parlement of Toulouse. His incarceration did not last long; but never thereafter was he safe; and in the remaining thirteen years of his life he was five more times in prison, for nearly five years in all.140