Note 66 — Chapter XIII · THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT

It was only powerful protection that could save such a book from proscription; but Charron and his book had the support at once of Henri IV and the President Jeannin—the former a proved indifferentist to religious forms; the latter the author of the remark that a peace with two religions was better than a war which had none. Such a temper had become predominant even among professed Catholics, as may be gathered from the immense popularity of the Satyre Menippée (1594). Ridiculing as it did the insensate fanaticism of the Catholic League, that composition was naturally described as the work of atheists; but there seems to have been no such element in the case, the authors being all Catholics of good standing, and some of them even having a record for zeal.66 The Satyre was in fact the triumphant revolt of the humorous common sense of France against the tyranny of fanaticism, which it may be said to have overthrown at one stroke,67 inasmuch as it made possible the entry of Henri into Paris. By a sudden appeal to secular sanity and the sense of humour it made the bulk of the Catholic mass ashamed of its past course.68 On the other hand, it is expressly testified by the Catholic historian De Thou that all the rich and the aristocracy held the League in abomination.69 In such an atmosphere rationalism must needs germinate, especially when the king’s acceptance of Catholicism dramatized the unreality of the grounds of strife.