Note 143 — Chapter X · FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE

That was, however, swiftly followed by a final and successful prosecution. By a base device two parcels were made of prohibited books printed by Dolet and of Protestant books issued at Geneva; and these, bearing his name in large, were forwarded to Paris. The parcels were seized, and he was again arrested, early in January, 1544. He contrived to escape to Piedmont; but, returning secretly after six months to print documents of defence, he was discovered and sent to prison in Paris. The last pardon having covered all previous writings, the prosecutors sought in his translation of the pseudo-Platonic dialogues Axiochus and Hipparchus, printed with his last vindication; and, finding a slight over-emphasis of Sokrates’s phrase describing the death of the body (“thou shalt no longer be,” rendered by “thou shalt no longer be anything at all”), pronounced this a wilful propounding of a heresy, though in fact there had been no denial of the doctrine of immortality.143 This time the prey was held. After Dolet had been in prison for twenty months the Parlement of Paris ratified the sentence of death; and he was burned alive on August 3, 1546. The utter wickedness of the whole process144 at least serves to relieve by neighbourhood the darkness of the stains cast on Protestantism by the crimes of Calvin.