1 J. A. Symonds writes that in the age of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio “what we call the Renaissance had not yet arrived” (Renaissance in Italy: Age of the Despots, ed. 1897, p. 9). ↑
2 Cp. Renan, Averroès, 3e édit. pp. 280–82, 295; Lewes, Hist. of Philos., 4th ed. ii, 67; Reuter, Gesch. der relig. Aufklärung im Mittelalter, i, 139–41. It is noteworthy that the troubadour, Austore d’Orlac, in cursing the crusades and the clergy who promoted them, suggests that the Christians should turn Moslems, seeing that God is on the side of the unbelievers (Gieseler, Per. III. Div. III, § 58, note 1). ↑
3 Cp. Burckhardt, Civ. of the Renais. in Italy, Eng. tr. ed. 1892, pp. 490, 492. ↑
6 Cp. Hardwick, p. 361; “Janus,” The Pope and the Council, p. 308. ↑
8 Villari, Life and Times of Machiavelli, Eng. tr. 3rd ed. vol. i, introd. p. 115. Cp. Burckhardt, pp. 35, 226. ↑
9 As to its history see “Janus,” The Pope and the Council, p. 131 sq. ↑
10 Villari, as last cited, pp. 98, 108. ↑
11 It is noteworthy, however, that he did not detect, or at least did not declare, the spuriousness of the text of the three witnesses (Hallam, Lit. of Europe, iii, 58, note). Here the piety of Alfonso, who knew his Bible by heart, may have restrained him. ↑
12 See the passages transcribed by Hallam, Lit. of Europe, i, 148. ↑
13 Villari, as last cited, pp. 98–101. ↑
14 Cp. Gebhart, Renaissance en Italie, pp. 72–73; Burckhardt, pp. 458–65; Lea, Hist. of the Inquisition, i, 5–4. “The authors of the most scandalous satires were themselves mostly monks or benficed priests.” (Burckhardt, p. 465.) ↑
15 Burckhardt, pp. 451–61; J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: The Age of the Despots, ed. 1897, p. 359; Villari, Life of Machiavelli, i, 153. ↑
16 See it well analysed by Owen, pp. 147–60. Cp. Hallam, Lit. of Europe, i, 199. M. Perrens describes Pulci as “emancipated from all belief”; but holds that he “bantered the faith without the least design of attacking religion” (La Civilisation florentine, p. 151). But cp. Villari, Life of Machiavelli, i, 159–60. ↑
17 Owen, p. 160. So also Hunt, and the editor of the Parnaso Italiano, there cited. ↑
20 Lea, ii, 271–72. Cp. pp. 282–84. ↑
25 Cp. R. C. Christie’s essay, “Pomponatius—a Skeptic,” in his Selected Essays and Papers, 1902, pp. 131–32; Renan, Averroès, pp. 345–352. ↑
26 Comm. in Aristot. de Gen. et Corr., lib. i, fol. 29 G. cited by Ellis in note on Bacon, who quotes a version of the phrase in the De Augmentis, B. v, end. As to Nifo see Nourrisson, Machiavel, 1875, ch. xii. ↑
27 As to ribald blasphemies by the Roman clergy see Erasmus, Epist. xxvi, 34 (ed. le Clerc), cited by Hardwick, Church History: Middle Age, p. 378, note. ↑
28 Lit. Hist. of Europe, i, 142. Following Eichhorn, Hallam notes vindications by Marsilio Ficino, Alfonso de Spina (a converted Jew), Æneas Sylvius, and Pico di Mirandola; observing that the work of the first-named “differs little from modern apologies of the same class.” ↑
29 Cp. Ranke, History of the Popes, Bohn tr. ed. 1908, i, 58. ↑
30 Epist. above cited; Burigni, Vie d’Erasme, 1757, i, 148–49. ↑
31 Paul Canensius, cited by Ranke. ↑
32 This view seems to solve the mystery as to Perugino’s creed. Vasari (ed. Milanesi, iii, 589) calls him “persona di assai poca religione.” Mezzanotte (Della vita di P. Vanucci, etc. 1836, p. 172 sq.) indignantly rejects the statement, but notes that in Ciatti’s MS. annals of Perugia, ad ann. 1524, the mind of the painter is said to have been come una tavola rasa in religious matters. Mezzanotte holds that Pietro has been there confounded with a later Perugian painter. ↑
33 Leonardo da Vinci, Frammenti letterari e filosofici, trascelti par Dr. Edmondo Solmi. Firenze, 1900. Pensieri sulla scienza, 19, 20. ↑
36 Some of the humanists called him unlettered (omo senza lettere), and he calls them gente stolta, a foolish tribe. ↑
37 Ib. 44, 46, 47, 48, 58, 60, 63, etc. ↑
42 Id. Pensieri sulla natura. 80–86. ↑
43 Shortly after Leonardo we find Girolamo Fracastorio (1483–1553) developing the criticism further, and in particular disposing of the futile formula, resorted to by the scientific apriorists of the time, that the “plastic force of nature” created fossils like other things. ↑
44 Id. Pensieri sulla morale, passim. ↑
48 Cp. Burckhardt, pp. 524, 541, notes; Villari, Life of Machiavelli, i, 124. “It was easy to see by his words that he hoped for the restoration of the pagan religion” (Id. Life of Savonarola, Eng. tr. p. 51). ↑
49 Only a few fragments of it survive. Villari, Life of Savonarola, p. 51. ↑
50 Carriere, Philos. Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit, 1847, p. 13. ↑
51 Cp. Villari, Life of Machiavelli, i, 128–34. ↑
52 Cp. Perrens, Hist. de Florence (1434–1531), i, 258. ↑
53 Id. p. 257. Cp. Villari, Machiavelli, i, 132; Savonarola, p. 60. ↑
54 “Of the majority of the twenty-two languages he was supposed to have studied, he knew little more than the alphabet and the elements of grammar” (Villari, Machiavelli, i, 135). As to Pico’s character, which was not saintly, see Perrens, Histoire, as cited, i, 561–62. ↑
55 Cp. Greswell, Memoirs of Politianus, Picus, etc. 2nd ed. 1805, 235; McCrie, The Reformation in Italy, ed. 1856, p. 33, note. ↑
57 Cp. K. M. Sauer, Gesch. der italien. Litteratur, 1883, p. 109; Villari, Machiavelli, i, 138. ↑
58 Villari, Machiavelli, i, 133. ↑
60 Discorsi sopra Tito Livio, i, 12. ↑
61 Istorie fiorentine, liv. i; Discorsi, i, 12. ↑
63 For another point of view see Owen, as cited, p. 167. ↑
64 In the Italian translation of Bacon’s essays, made for Bacon in 1618 by an English hand, Machiavelli is branded in one passage as an impio, and in another his name is dropped. See Routledge ed. of Bacon’s Works, pp. 749, 751. The admiring Paolo Giovio called him irrisor et atheos; and Cardinal Pole said the Prince was so full of every kind of irreligion that it might have been written by the hand of Satan (Nourrisson, Machiavel, 1875, p. 4). ↑
65 Burckhardt, pp. 499–500. Cp. Owen, pp. 165–68. It is thus impossible to be sure of the truth of the statement of Gregorovius (Lucrezia Borgia, Eng. tr. 1904, p. 25) that “There were no women skeptics or freethinkers; they would have been impossible in the society of that day.” Where dissimulation of unbelief was necessarily habitual, there may have been some women unbelievers as well as many men. ↑
66 Owen’s characterization of Machiavelli’s Asino d’oro as a “satire on the freethought of his age” (p. 177) will not stand investigation. See his own note, p. 178. ↑
68 As we saw, Polybius in his day took a similar view, coming as he did from Greece, where military failure had followed on a certain growth of unbelief. Machiavelli was much influenced by Polybius. Villari, ii, 9. ↑
69 Cp. Tullo Massarani, Studii di letteratura e d’arte, 1809, p. 96. ↑
73 Burckhardt, p. 464; Owen, p. 180, and refs. ↑
74 Owen, p. 181. See the whole account of Guicciardini’s rather confused opinions. ↑
75 Though Italy had most of what scientific knowledge existed. Burckhardt, p. 292. ↑
76 “A man might at the same time be condemned as a heretic in Spain for affirming, and in Italy for denying, the reality of the witches’ nightly rides” (The Pope and the Council, p. 258). ↑
77 The Pope and the Council, pp. 249–61. It was another Spina who wrote on the other side. ↑
78 F. Fiorentino, Pietro Pomponazzi, 1868, p. 30. ↑
79 Owen, pp. 197–98; Renan, Averroès, pp. 353–62; Christie, as cited, p. 133. ↑
80 Cp. Owen, pp. 201, 218; Lange, i, 183–87 (tr. i, 220–25). He, however, granted that the mass of mankind, “brutish and materialized,” needed the belief in heaven and hell to moralize them (Christie, pp. 140–41). ↑
81 This principle, though deriving from Averroïsm, and condemned, as we have seen, by Pope John XXI, had been affirmed by so high an orthodox authority as Albertus Magnus. Cp. Owen, pp. 211–12, note. While thus officially recognized, it was of course denounced by the devout when they saw how it availed to save heretics from harm. Mr. Owen has well pointed out (p. 238) the inconsistency of the believers who maintain that faith is independent of reason, and yet denounce as blasphemous the profession to believe by faith what is not intelligible by philosophy. ↑
82 Owen, pp. 209, note. “Son école est une école de laïques. de médecins, d’esprits forts, de libres penseurs” (Bouillier, Hist. de la philos. cartèsienne, 1854, i, 3). ↑
83 Owen. p. 210; Christie, p. 151. ↑
87 Gebhart, pp. 59–63; Burckhardt, p. 211. ↑
89 Burckhardt, pp. 279–80; Villari, Life of Machiavelli, pp. 106–107. ↑
90 Burckhardt, pt. iii, ch. xi. ↑
91 Dr. Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 1895, i, 265. Cp. Renan, Averroès, Avert. ↑
92 Schechter, Studies in Judaism, pp. 213, 420–21. ↑
93 Notice of Bonaventure Desperiers, by Bibliophile Jacob [i.e. Lacroix], in 1841 ed. of Cymbalum Mundi, etc. ↑
94 For a solution of the enigma of the title see the Clef of Eloi Johanneau in ed. cited, p. 83. Cymbalum mundi was a nickname given in antiquity to (among others) an Alexandrian grammarian called Didymus—the name of doubting Thomas in the gospel. The book is dedicated by Thomas Du Clevier à son ami Pierre Tyrocan, which is found to be, with one letter altered (perhaps by a printer’s error), an anagram for Thomas Incrédule à son ami Pierre Croyant, “Unbelieving Thomas to his friend Believing Peter.” Clef cited, pp. 80–85. ↑
95 Origen, Against Celsus, vi, 78. ↑
96 The readiness of piety in all ages to invent frightful deaths for unbelievers must be remembered in connection with this and other records. Cp. Notice cited, p. xx, and note. The authority for this is Henri Estienne, Apologie pour Hérodote, liv. i, chs. 18, end, and 26. ↑
97 So Charles Nodier, cited in the Notice by Bibliophile Jacob, pp. xxiii–xxiv. The English translator of 1723 professed to see no unbelief in the book. ↑
98 Perrens, Les Libertins en France au XVIIe siècle, 1896, p. 41. ↑
99 Notice historique in Bibliophile Jacob’s ed. of Rabelais, 1841; Stapfer, Rabelais, pp. 6, 10; W. F. Smith, biog. not. to his trans. of Rabelais, 1893, i, p. xxii. ↑
100 Rathery, notice biog. to ed. of Burgaud des Marets, i, 12. Jacob’s account of his relations with his friends Budé and Amy at this stage is erroneous. See Rathery, p. 14. ↑
101 Le Double, Rabelais anatomiste et physiologiste, 1889, pp. 12, 425; and pref. by Professor Duval, p. xiii; Stapfer, p. 42; A. Tilley, François Rabelais, 1907, pp. 74–76. ↑
102 In the same year he was induced to publish what turned out to be two spurious documents purporting to be ancient Roman remains. See Heulhard, Rabelais légiste, and Jacob, Notice, p. xviii. ↑
105 As to this see Tilley, p. 53. ↑
106 See it at the end of the ed. of Bibliophile Jacob. ↑
107 Cp. Stapfer, pp. 24–25; Rathery, p. 26. ↑
109 Cp. Jacob, Notice, p. xxxviii; Smith, ii, 524. ↑
110 Rathery, p. 71; Stapfer, pp. 42–43. ↑
113 Rathery, pp. 44–49. The notion of Lacroix, that Rabelais visited England, has no evidence to support it. Cp. Rathery, p. 49, and Smith, p. xxiii. ↑
114 Cp. Jacob, p. lx. Ramus himself, for his attacks on the authority of Aristotle, was called an atheist. Cp. Waddington, Ramus, sa vie, etc., 1855, p. 126. ↑
115 See the list in the avertissement of M. Burgaud des Marets to éd. Firmin Didot. Cp. Stapfer, pp. 63, 64. For example, the “theologian” who makes the ludicrous speech in Liv. i, ch. xix, becomes (chs. 18 and 20) a “sophist”; and the sorbonistes, sorbonicoles, and sorbonagres of chs. 20 and 21 become mere maistres, magistres, and sophistes likewise. ↑
116 It is doubtful whether Rabelais wrote the whole of the notice prefixed to the next edition, in which this attack was made; but it seems clear that he “had a hand in it” (Tilley, François Rabelais, p. 87). ↑
117 R. Christie, Étienne Dolet, pp. 369–72. Christie, in his vacillating way, severely blames Dolet, and then admits that the book may have been printed while Dolet was in prison, and that in any case there was no malice in the matter. This point, and the persistent Catholic calumnies against Dolet, are examined by the author in art. “The Truth about Étienne Dolet,” in National Reformer, June 2 and 9, 1889. ↑
118 Epistre, pref. to Liv. iv. Ed. Jacob, p. 318. ↑
119 Cp. W. F. Smith’s trans. of Rabelais, 1893, ii, p. x. In this book, however, other hands have certainly been at work. Rabelais left it unfinished. ↑
120 Jacob, Notice, p. lxiii; Stapfer, p. 76. ↑
121 So Rathery, p. 60; and Stapfer, p. 78. Jacob, p. lxii, says he resigned only one. Rathery makes the point clear by giving a copy of the act of resignation as to Meudon. ↑
122 A Discourse ... against Nicholas Machiavel, Eng. tr. (1577), ed. 1608, Epist. ded. p. 2. ↑
125 Liv. iv, ch. xlv–xlviii. ↑
128 Prof. Stapfer, Rabelais, sa personne, son génie, son œuvre, 1889, pp. 365–68. Cp. the Notice of Bibliophile Jacob, ed. 1841 of Rabelais, pp. lvii-lviii; and Perrens, Les Libertins, p. 39. In his youth he affirmed the doctrine. Stapfer, p. 23. ↑
129 Cp. René Millet, Rabelais, 1892, pp. 172–80. ↑
131 The description of him by one French biographer, M. Boulmier (Estienne Dolet, 1857), as “le Christ de la pensée libre” is a gross extravagance. Dolet was substantially orthodox, and even anti-Protestant, though he denounced the cruel usage of Protestants. ↑
132 Wallace (Antitrinitarian Biography, 1850, ii. 2) asserts that Dolet “not only became a convert to the opinions of Servetus, but a zealous propagator of them.” For this there is not a shadow of evidence. ↑
133 Cp. Voltaire, Lettres sur Rabelais, etc. i. ↑
134 Cp. author’s art. above cited; R. C. Christie, Étienne Dolet, 2nd ed. 1890, p. 100; Octave Galtier, Étienne Dolet (N.D.), pp. 66, 94, etc. ↑
135 Christie, as cited, pp. 50–58, 105–106; Galtier, p. 26 sq. ↑
136 It is to this that Rabelais alludes (ii, 5) when he tells how at Toulouse they “stuck not to burn their regents alive like red herrings.” ↑
140 One of his enemies wrote of him that prison was his country—patria Doleti. ↑
141 Procès d’Estienne Dolet, Paris, 1836, p. 11; Galtier, pp. 65–70; Christie, pp. 389–90. ↑
142 Procès, p. viii.; Galtier, p. 78. ↑
143 Galtier, p. 101 sq.; Christie, p. 461. ↑
144 A modern French judge, the President Baudrier, was found to affirm that the laws, though “unduly severe,” were “neither unduly nor unfairly pressed” against Dolet! Christie, p. 471. ↑
145 Concerning whom see Christie, as cited, pp. 29 01. ↑
146 Tilley, as last cited, p. 69. ↑
148 Christie, as cited, pp. 465–67; Lutteroth, La Reformation en France pendant sa première période, 1850, pp. 39–40; Prof. H. M. Baird, Rise of the Huguenots, 1880, i, 240 sq. ↑
149 Perrens, Les Libertins, p. 43; Patin, Lettres, ed. Reveillé-Parise, 1846, i, 210. ↑
150 Wriothesley’s Chronicle (Camden Society, 1875), pp. 107–108. ↑
151 Nodier, quoted by Bibliophile Jacob in ed. of Cymbalum Mundi, as cited, p. xviii. ↑
152 Cp. Brantome, Des dames illustres, Œuvres, ed. 1838, ii, 186. ↑
153 Bayle, Dictionnaire, art. Marguerite de Navarre (the First), notes F and G. ↑
154 Bayle, note N. Cp. Nodier, as cited, p. xix, as to the collaboration of Desperiers and others. ↑
155 Bayle, art. Ronsard, note D. ↑
156 Garasse, La Doctrine Curieuse des Beaux Esprits de ce Temps, 1623, pp. 126–27. Ronsard replied to the charge in his poem, Des misères du temps. ↑
157 Bayle, art. Ronsard, note O. Cp. Perrens, Les Libertins, p. 43. ↑
158 MS. 1588. First printed in 1841 by Guhrauer, again in 1857 by L. Noack. ↑
159 As before noted, he was one of the first to use the word. Cp. Lechler, Geschichte des englischen Deismus, pp. 31, 455, notes. ↑
160 Bayle, art. Bodin, note O. Cp. Renan, Averroès, 3e édit. p. 424; and the Lettres de Gui Patin, iii, 679 (letter of 27 juillet, 1668), cited by Perrens, Les Libertins, p. 43. Leibnitz, in an early letter to Jac. Thomasius, speaks of the MS. of the Colloquium, then in circulation, as proving its writer to be “the professed enemy of the Christian religion,” adding: “Vanini’s dialogues are a trifle in comparison.” (Philosophische Schriften, ed. Gerhardt, i, 26; Martineau, Study of Spinoza, p. 77.) Carriere, however, notes (Weltanschauung, p. 317) that in later years Leibnitz learned to prize Bodin’s treatise highly. ↑
161 Cp. Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, i, 66, 87–91. In the République too he has a chapter on astrology, to which he leans somewhat. ↑
162 République, Liv. iv, ch. ii. ↑
163 Id. Liv. iv, ch. vii. “Bodin in this sophistry was undoubtedly insincere” (Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii, 159). ↑
164 Cp. Perrens, Les Libertins. p. 43. ↑
165 Cp. Villemain, Vie de L’Hopital, in Études de l’hist. moderne, 1846. pp. 363–68, 428. ↑
166 Buckle (3-vol. ed. ii, 10; 1-vol. ed. p. 291) errs in representing L’Hopital as the only statesman of the time who dreamt of toleration. It is to be noted, on the other hand, that the Huguenots themselves protested against any toleration of atheists or Anabaptists; and even the reputed freethinker Gabriel Naudé, writing his Science des Princes, ou Considérations politiques sur les Coups d’état, in 1639, defended the massacre on political grounds (Owen, Skeptics of the French Renaissance, p. 470, note). Bodin implicitly execrated it. Cp. Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii, 162. ↑
168 Garasse, Doctrine Curieuse, pp. 125~26; Mémoires de Garasse, ed. Ch. Nisard, 1860, pp. 77–78; Perrens, p. 43. ↑
169 Bibliophile Jacob, Introd. to Beroalde de Verville. ↑
170 Estienne’s full title is: L’Introduction au traité de la conformité des merveilles, anciennes avec les modernes: ou, Traité préparatif à l’Apologie pour Hérodote. ↑
171 Apologie pour Hérodote, ed. 1607, pp. 97, 249 (liv. i, chs. xiv, xviii.) Cymbalum Mundi, ed. Bibliophile Jacob, pp. xx, 13. ↑
172 The index was specially framed to call attention to these items. The entry, “Fables des dieux des payens cousines germaines des legendes des saints,” is typical. ↑
173 Bayle, Dictionnaire, art. Castalion; Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii, 81; Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, ii, 46–49. Hallam finds Castalio’s letter to the Duke of Wirtemberg “cautious”; but Lecky quotes some strong expressions from what he describes as the preface of Martin Bellius (Castalio’s pseudonym) to Cluten’s De Haereticis persequendis, ed. 1610. Castalio died in 1563. As to his translations from the Bible, see Bayle’s note. ↑
174 Hallam, ii, 83; McCrie, Reformation in Italy, ed. 1856, p. 231. ↑
175 Even Stähelin (Johannes Calvin, ii, 303) condemns Calvin’s action and tone towards Castalio, though he makes the significant remark that the latter “treated the Bible pretty much as any other book.” ↑
176 Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, p. 169. ↑
178 Prof. Fortunat Strowski, Histoire du sentiment religieux en France au 17e siècle, Ptie i, De Montaigne à Pascal, 1907, pp. 19–23. ↑
179 “Du Vair ne songe pas au Médiateur; s’il y a dans son traité des allusions à Notre Seigneur, le nom de Jésus-Christ ne s’y trouve, je crois bien, pas une fois. Il songe encore moins aux pieux adjuvants qui excitent l’imagination; pas un mot de l’invocation des saints, pas un mot des sacrements” (Strowski, as cited, p. 78). ↑
180 Cp. Prof. Thorold Rogers, Economic Interpretation of History, p. 83. ↑
181 In 1387 the Lollards were denounced under that name by the Bishop of Worcester as “eternally damned sons of Antichrist.” ↑
182 See the Repressor, Babington’s ed. in the Rolls Series, 1860, Part ii. ↑
183 Hook, Lives of the Archbishops (Life of Bourchier), 1867, v, 294–306. ↑
184 He repels, e.g., Wiclif’s argument that a priest’s misconduct sufficed to destroy his right to his endowments. Repressor, Babington’s ed. as cited, ii, 413. ↑
186 Gardiner, Student’s History, p. 330. Cp. Green, ch. vi, § i, 2, pp. 267, 275; Stubbs Const. Hist., iii, 631–33. ↑
187 Cp. Pauli, Pictures of Old England, Eng. tr. Routledge’s rep. pp. 332–36. ↑
190 Cp. Souchay, Gesch. der deutschen Monarchie, 1861–62, iii, 230–31. ↑
191 On this cp. Souchay, pp. 234–39. ↑
192 See a good synopsis in Pünjer’s History of the Christian Philosophy of Religion, Eng. tr. pp. 68–89; and another in Moritz Carriere’s Die philosophische Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit, 1847, pp. 16–25, which, however, is open to Pünjer’s criticism that it is coloured by modern Hegelianism. ↑
193 Dr. Paul Frédéricq, Geschiedenis der Inquisitie in de Nederlanden, 1025–1520, Gent, 1892–1897, ii, 4–9. ↑
194 Michelet, Hist. de France, vii—éd. 1857, pp. 125, 172. ↑
195 This name has many forms; and it is contended that Sabieude is the correct one. See Owen, Evenings with the Skeptics, 1881, ii, 423. ↑
196 Cp. Hallam, Introd. to Lit. of Europe, ed. 1872, i, 142–44, and the analysis in Prof. Dowden’s Montaigne, 1905, p. 127 sq. ↑
197 Van Hoogstraten, in Frédéricq, as cited below. ↑
198 Dr. Frazer’s assumption (Golden Bough, 3rd ed. pt. i, i, 224) that magic assumes an invariable order of nature, is unsubstantiated even by his vast anthropological erudition. Magic varies arbitrarily, and the idea of a fixed “order” does not belong to the magician’s plane of thought. ↑
199 Maury, La Magie et l’Astrologie, 4e éd. pp. 214–16. ↑
200 “Judicial astrology ... which supplanted and degraded the art of medicine” (Prof. Clifford Allbutt, Harveian Oration on Science and Medieval Thought, 1901, App. p. 113). There is a startling survival of it in the physiology of Harvey. Id. p. 45. ↑