A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume...

8 See above, p. 459. ↑

9The Scholemaster, Arber’s rep. p. 82. ↑

10E.g., work cited, pt. ii, Max. 1, and Max. 6, end. Eng. tr. 1608, pp. 93, 128. ↑

11 Mark Pattison, Essay on Joseph Scaliger, in Essays, Routledge’s ed. i, 114. ↑

12 When Pattison declares that Italian curiosity had bred “not secret unbelief but callous acquiescence” he sets up a spurious antithesis; and when he generalizes that in Italy “men did not disbelieve the truths of the Christian religion,” he understates the case. He errs equally in the opposite direction when he alleges (ib. p. 141) that in the France of Montaigne “a philosophical skepticism had become the creed of all thinking men.” Such a difference between France and Italy was impossible. ↑

13 See McCrie, Reformation in Italy, ed. 1856, pp. 96–99. ↑

14 Trechsel, Die protestantischen Antitrinitarier vor Faustus Socinus, i (1839), 56; Mosheim, 16 Cent. 3rd sec. pt. ii, ch. iv, § 3. ↑

15 Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii, 82. ↑

16 Art. Acontius, in Dict. of National Biog. Cp. J. J. Tayler. Retrospect of the Religious Life of England, 2nd ed. pp. 205–206. As to the attack on latitudinarianism in the Thirty-nine Articles, see above, p. 460. ↑

17 Bacon, Adv. of Learning, bk. i; Filum Labyrinthi, § 7 (Routledge ed. pp. 50, 63, 200). ↑

18 Cp. Zeller, Hist. de l’Italie, pp. 400–12; Green, Short Hist. ch. viii, § 2. ↑

19 McCrie, p. 164. It was said by Scaliger that “in the time of Pius IV [between Paul IV and Pius V] people talked very freely in Rome.” Id. ib. note. “It was even considered characteristic of good society in Rome to call the principles of Christianity in question. ‘One passes,’ says P. Ant. Bandino, ‘no longer for a man of cultivation unless one put forth heterodox opinions concerning the Christian faith.’” Ranke, Hist. of the Popes, Bohn, tr. ed. 1908, i, 58, citing Caracciolo’s MS. Life of Paul IV. ↑

20 Hallam, ii, 116. ↑

21 Under the alternative titles of The Examination of Men’s Wits and A Trial of Wits. Rep. 1596, 1604, 1616. ↑

22 Carew’s tr. ed. 1596, p. 15. ↑

23Id. p. 17. ↑

24Id. p. 19. ↑

25 According to Henri Estienne, Postell himself vended strange heresies, one being to the effect that to make a good religion there were needed three—the Christian, the Jewish, and the Turkish. Apologie pour Hérodote, liv. i, ed. 1607, pp. 98–100. ↑

26 Published at Antwerp. It was reprinted in 1582, 1583, and 1590; translated into Latin in 1583, and frequently reprinted in that form; translated into English (begun by Sir Philip Sidney and completed by Arthur Golding) in 1587, and in that form at least thrice reprinted in blackletter. ↑

27 Ed. 1582, p. 18. Eng. tr. 1601, p. 10. ↑

28 Or even in modifying philosophic doctrine, save perhaps as regards Descartes, later. Cp. Bartholmess, Hist. crit. des doctr. relig. de la philos. moderne, 1855, i, 21–22. ↑

29 See Owen, Skeptics of the French Renaissance, pp. 631–36—a fairer and more careful estimate, than that of Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii, 111–13. ↑

30Essais, bk. ii, ch. xiii, ed. Firmin-Didot, vol. ii, 2–3; King Lear, i, 2, near end; Les Amants Magnifiques, i, 2; iii, 1. Montaigne echoes Pliny (Hist. Nat. ii, 8), as Molière does Cicero, De Divinatione, ii, 43. ↑

31 “Our religion,” he writes, “is made to extirpate vices; it protects, nourishes, and incites them” (Essais, liv. ii, ch. xii; éd. Firmin-Didot, ii, 464). “There is no enmity so extreme as the Christian.” (I quote in general Florio’s translation for the flavour’s sake; but it should be noted that he makes many small slips.) ↑

32 Owen was mistaken (Skeptics of the French Renaissance, p. 414) in supposing that Montaigne spent several years over this translation. By Montaigne’s own account at the beginning of the Apologie, it was done in a few days. Cp. Miss Lowndes’s excellent monograph, Michel de Montaigne, pp. 103, 106. ↑

33 Éd. Firmin-Didot, ii, 469. ↑

34 Miss Lowndes, p. 145. Cp. Champion, Introd. aux Essais de Montaigne, 1900. ↑

35Essais, liv. ii, ch. xii; liv. iii, ch. v. Ed. cited, i, 65; ii, 309. ↑

36 For a view of Montaigne’s development see M. Champion’s excellent Introduction—a work indispensable to a full understanding of the Essais. ↑

37 Liv. ii, ch. xi. ↑

38 Cp. the Essais, liv. iii, ch. i (ed. cited, ii, 208). Owen gives a somewhat misleading idea of the passage (French Skeptics, p. 486). ↑

39 Miss Lowndes, Michel de Montaigne, p. 131. Cp. Owen, p. 414. ↑

40 He was consistent enough to doubt the new cosmology of Copernicus (Essais, as cited, i, 615); and he even made a rather childish attack on the reform of the Calendar (liv. iii, chs. x, xi); but he was a keen and convinced critic of the prevailing abuses in law and education. Owen’s discussion of his opinions is illuminating; but that of Champion makes a still more searching analysis as regards the conflicting tendencies in Montaigne. ↑

41 Liv. i, ch. liv. ↑

42 Liv. i, ch. xx, end. ↑

43 Liv. i, ch. xxii. ↑

44 Liv. ii, ch. ix. ↑

45 Liv. ii, ch. xvii. Ed. cited, ii, 58. ↑

46Id. p. 59. ↑

47 Liv. iii, ch. xiii. Ed. cited, ii, 572. ↑