Note 17 — DISQUISITIONS ON THE BOOK ENTITLED THE THREE IMPOSTORS.

In the preface of “Atheism Overthrown,” he discovers that the author of this work, in order to vindicate himself from the crime laid to his charge, declares that “The Three Impostors” had been published thirty years before he was born. This is a strange discovery, but it appeared so satisfactory to Struvius that he ceased to doubt in the existence of such a book, because he knew the year in which Campannelle was born (1568.) and knew also that the book was printed thirty years before this, viz. in 1538. Afterwards in pushing their researches farther, they resolved to consider Boccaccio as the author of the work, from a misinterpreted passage in Chap. 2, No. 6, in the “Atheism Overthrown” where the following words occur; “Hence Boccaccio in his impious fables, contends that there is no distinction between the law of Moses, of Christ and of Mahomet, because they are as like each other as the three similar rings.17” But does Campannelle, in this passage intend to say that Boccaccio was the author of “The Three Impostors?” So far is this from being the case, that he answers elsewhere the objections of the Atheists against Boccaccio and the book in question; and Struvius himself, in the 9th paragraph of his dissertation on “Learned Impostors” quotes a passage from Ernstius, which states that Campannelle had told him that the book was written by Muret; now Muret having been born in 1526, and the book been printed in 1538, he could only have been 12 years of age; at which time of life we cannot suppose it possible that he was able to write a work of this description. It follows therefore that this book, said to have been written in Latin and printed in Germany, never existed. At no period has there been a printed work, however rarely to be met with, in reference to which very authentic and circumstantial information could not be found.