Note 168 — Chapter X · FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE

Two years later there was put to death at Paris, by hanging and burning, on the charge of atheism, Geoffroi Vallée, a man of good family in Orléans. Long before, at the age of sixteen, he had written a freethinking treatise entitled La Béatitude des Chrétiens, ou le fléau de la foy—a discussion between a Huguenot, a Catholic, a libertin, an Anabaptist and an atheist. He had been the associate of Ronsard, who renounced him, and helped, it is said, to bring him to execution.168 It is not unlikely that a similar fate would have overtaken the famous Protestant scholar and lexicographer, Henri Estienne (1532–1598), had he not died unexpectedly. His false repute of being “the prince of atheists”169 and the “Pantagruel of Geneva” was probably due in large part to his sufficiently audacious Apologie pour Hérodote170 (1566) and to his having translated into Latin (1562) the Hypotyposes of Sextus Empiricus, a work which must have made for freethinking. But he was rather a Protestant than a rationalist. In the former book he had spoken, either sincerely or ironically, of the “detestable book” of Bonaventure Desperiers, calling him a mocker of God; and impeached Rabelais as a modern Lucian, believing neither in God nor immortality;171 yet his own performance was fully as well fitted as theirs to cause scandal. It is in fact one of the richest repertories ever formed of scandalous stories against priests, monks, nuns, and popes.172