Note 149 — Chapter X · FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE

Of the freethought of such an age there could be no adequate record. Its tempestuous energy, however, implies not a little of private unbelief; and at a time when in England, two generations behind France in point of literary evolution, there was, as we shall see, a measure of rationalism among religionists, there must have been at least as much in the land of Rabelais and Desperiers. The work of Guillaume Postell, De causis seu principiis et originibus Naturæ contra Atheos, published in 1552, testifies to kinds of unbelief that outwent the doubt of Rabelais; though Postell’s general extravagance discounts all of his utterances. It is said of Guillaume Pellicier (1527–1568), Bishop of Montpellier, who first turned Protestant and afterwards, according to Gui Patin, atheist, that he would have been burned but for the fact of his consecration.149 And the English chroniclers preserve a scandal concerning an anonymous atheist, worded as follows: “1539. This yeare, in October, died in the Universitie of Parris, in France, a great doctor, which said their was no God, and had bene of that opinion synce he was twentie yeares old, and was above fouerscore yeares olde when he died. And all that tyme had kept his error secrett, and was esteamed for one of the greatest clarkes in all the Universitie of Parris, and his sentence was taken and holden among the said studentes as firme as scripture, which shewed, when he was asked why he had not shewed his opinion till his death, he answered that for feare of death he durst not, but when he knew that he should die he said their was no lief to come after this lief, and so died miserably to his great damnation.”150