Étienne Dolet
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Étienne Dolet (French: [etjɛn dɔlɛ]; 3 August 1509 – 3 August 1546) was a French scholar, translator and printer. Dolet was a controversial figure throughout his lifetime. His early attacks upon the Inquisition, the city council and other authorities in Toulouse, together with his later publications in Lyon treating of theological subjects, roused the French Inquisition to monitor his activities closely. After being imprisoned several times, he was eventually convicted of heresy, strangled and burned with his books due to the combined efforts of the parlement of Paris, the Inquisition, and the theological faculty of the Sorbonne.
Early life and eduction
[edit]Born in 1509 into a modest family, Dolet lived in Orléans until the age of twelve. In 1521, he left for Paris, where he studied Latin for five years with Nicolas Bérault, professor of Gaspard II de Coligny. In 1526, following the humanist tradition of the time, he began a tour of European universities. First, he went to Padua to perfect his knowledge of Latin and especially the writings of Cicero, under the direction of his master and friend Simon de Villanova. On the death of the latter, Étienne Dolet attached himself as secretary to Jean de Langeac, bishop of Limoges and French ambassador to the Republic of Venice. There he followed Battista Egnazio's lessons on Cicero, who became for Dolet his “master of writing and often of thought”.[1] He also found time to write Latin love poems to a Venetian woman named Elena.[2]
He returned soon afterwards to Toulouse, where he studied law.
Speaking, writings, prison stays and banishment
[edit]During his stay in Toulouse, he was elected speaker of the French Nation and was recognised as being a gifted orateur. In October 1533, he delivered a violent indictment of the barbarism of Toulouse and later, in January 1534, a diatribe on religious superstitions and the brutality of the Gascons.[3] He was imprisoned in March 1534 and, despite the protection of Jean de Pins (a prominent humanist and bishop), he was banished by the parliament of Toulouse in 1534.
Following the banishment he moved to Lyon in August 1534, where he joined the circle of Lyon humanists, which included Clément Marot and Rabelais as well as Guillaume and Maurice Scève, Jean de Tourne and the printer Sébastien Gryphe, for whom he became a proofreader.
He entered the lists against Erasmus in the famous Ciceronian controversy, was Cicero the ideal exemplar of Latin prose or could one follow more fruitfully a variety of authors?) in which he took an ultra-Ciceronian stance. In 1535 he published through Sébastien Gryphe at Lyon a Dialogus de imitatione Ciceroniana. The following year saw the appearance of his two folio volumes Commentariorum linguae Latinae. This work was dedicated to Francis I, who gave him the privilege of printing, for a ten-year period, any works in Latin, Greek, Italian or French, which were the product of his own pen or had received his supervision. Accordingly, on his release from an imprisonment occasioned by his homicide of a painter named Henri Guillot, also called Compaing, he began his typographical and editorial labours at Lyon.[4]
In 1541, he published De officio legati on the functions of ambassadors.[5]
Cato christianus
[edit]He endeavoured to conciliate his opponents by publishing a Cato christianus, in which he made profession of his creed. The catholicity of his literary appreciation was soon displayed by the works which proceeded from his press: ancient and modern, sacred and secular, from the New Testament in Latin to Rabelais in French. But before the term of his privilege expired his labors were interrupted by his enemies, who succeeded in imprisoning him in 1542 on the charge of atheism.[4]
Further imprisonment and death
[edit]After imprisonment for fifteen months, Dolet was released by the advocacy of Pierre Duchatel, Bishop of Tulle. He escaped from a second imprisonment in 1544 by his own ingenuity, but, venturing back from Piedmont, whence he had fled in order to print at Lyon the letters by which he had appealed for justice to the king of France, the queen of Navarre and the parlement of Paris, he was again arrested. He was branded as a relapsed atheist by the theological faculty of the Sorbonne. On 3 August 1546 (his 37th birthday), he was executed in Place Maubert in Paris. On his way there he was said to had composed the punning pentameter Non dolet ipse Dolet, sed pia turba dolet (Dolet himself does not suffer, but the pious crowd grieves).[4]
Religious views
[edit]Whether Dolet is to be classed with the representatives of Protestantism or with the advocates of anti-Christian rationalism has been frequently disputed; the principal Protestants of his own time did not recognize him, and Calvin formally condemned him, along with Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and his master Villanova, as having uttered execrable blasphemies against the Son of God. The religious character of a large number of the books which he translated or published is sometimes noted in opposition to these charges, as is his advocacy of reading the Scriptures in the vernacular tongue.[4]
Dolet has been referred to as an Anti-Trinitarian.[6]
Legacy
[edit]The trial of Dolet was published (1836) by A.H. Taillandier from the registers of the parlement of Paris. A bronze statue of Dolet was erected on the Place Maubert in Paris in 1889;[4] it was removed and melted down in 1942 during the German occupation of Paris.
References
[edit]- ^ André Séguenny, Baden-Baden, Editions Valentin Koerner, 1984, 208 p. (ISBN 3-87320-095-3), p. 53.
- ^ Chisholm 1911, pp. 387–388.
- ^ "Étienne Dolet à l'Université de Toulouse. : 1531-1533 | Tolosana". tolosana.univ-toulouse.fr. Retrieved 2024-11-19.
- ^ a b c d e Chisholm 1911, p. 388.
- ^ Reeves, Jesse S. (1933). "Étienne Dolet on the Functions of the Ambassador, 1541". American Journal of International Law. 27 (1): 80–81. doi:10.2307/2189784. ISSN 0002-9300. JSTOR 2189784.
- ^ e.g. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable - Unitarianism (1898)
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Dolet, Étienne". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 8 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 387–388.
Further reading
[edit]- Picquier, Marcel, Etienne Dolet, 1509-1546: imprimeur humaniste, mort sur le bûcher, martyr de la libre pensée (nouv. ed., 2009)
- Weinberg, Florence Byham (2015). Dolet. Paladin Timeless Books. ISBN 978-1606191286.
- Boulmier, Joseph, E. Dolet, sa vie, ses oeuvres, son martyre (1857)
- Christie, Richard Copley, Étienne Dolet, the Martyr of the Renaissance (2nd ed., 1889), containing a full bibliography of works published by him as author or printer;
- Didot, Ambroise Firmin, Essai sur la typographie (1852)
- Galtier, O., Étienne Dolet (Paris, 1908).
- Michel, L., Dolet: sa statue, place Maubert: ses amis, ses ennemis (1889)
- Née de la Rochelle, J.F., Vie d'Éienne Dolet (1779)
