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Étienne Dolet

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Étienne Dolet
Born3 August 1509
Orleans, France
Died3 August 1546
Paris, France
Cause of deathPublic execution for heresy
MonumentsNumerous monuments in France. Major statue in Paris melted down by German occupation during World War II.
NationalityFrench
Occupation(s)philosopher, writer, printer, translator
Known foroutspoken views and heterodox publications

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 and the municipal authorities of Toulouse, together with his later publications in Lyon, caused the French Inquisition to monitor his activities closely. After several stays in prison, the combined efforts of the parlement of Paris, the Inquisition, and the theological faculty of the Sorbonne resulted in his conviction for heresy and a death sentence. He was hung and burned with his books on the Place Maubert in Paris. In modern times, Dolet is remembered as an early proponent of what is now known as freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Early life and education

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Born in 1509 into a family of parents who are not known to modern historians, Dolet lived in Orléans until the age of twelve. He was able to secure a very solid education because influential "and perhaps wealthy patronage ... made provision for his education, mainly at Padua and Toulouse, with apparently few privations due to lack of means."[1] Accordingly, in 1521, he left for Paris, where he studied Latin for five years with Nicolas Bérault, who also taught 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 of the Cicero' writings. He did this under the direction of his master and friend, Simon de Villanova. On the death of Villanova, Étienne Dolet served 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”.[2] He also found time to write Latin love poems to a Venetian woman named Elena.[3]

He returned soon afterwards to Toulouse, where he studied law from 1532 to 1534.[4]

Prison stays and banishment

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During his stay in Toulouse, he was elected speaker of the 'French Nation' and was recognised as a gifted orator. In October 1533, he delivered a violent indictment of the "backwardness and hostility to humanism and classical scholarship"[5] of the city of Toulouse and later, in January 1534, a diatribe on religious superstitions and the brutality of the Gascons.[6] 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.

In August 1534, following the banishment, he moved to Lyon, where he joined the circle of Lyon humanists and began the most fruitful part of his career.[5] Its members included Clément Marot and Rabelais, as well as Guillaume and Maurice Scève, Jean de Tourne père and the printer Sébastien Gryphe, for whom he became a proofreader.

In 1535, thanks to Sébastien Gryphe, Dolet published his tract, the Dialogus de imitatione Ciceroniana, which revived the quarrel over Ciceronianism. In this work, he attacks both Erasmus and Luther, accusing them both of trying to destroy the Christian religion.

During a brawl that took place in December 1536, Dolet killed a painter nicknamed Compaing who, he claimed, wanted to assassinate him. He fled to Lyon and discreetly reached Paris to beg for mercy from the King (Francis I), who pardoned him in February 1537. Dolet was nevertheless imprisoned for a few weeks upon his return to Lyon.[7]

Royal privilege and printer in Lyon

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On March 6, 1538, Francis I granted Dolet a highly advantageous privilege[5] that gave him the exclusive right for ten years to print any work in Latin, Greek, Italian or French, whether from his pen or under his supervision. He allowed various publishers to benefit from this privilege before setting himself up as a printer in 1539.[8]

In 1538, he published the second of his two volumes of the Commentariorum linguae Latinae, an ambitious etymological dictionary of Latin (the first was published in 1536).[8] This work, which he conceived of during his adolescence, is considered to be the magnum opus of his life.

In 1541, he published De officio legati on the functions of ambassadors.[1][9] This work is thought to be earliest printed work on the subject of ambassadorial responsibilities.[10] However, it regarded mainly as an historical marker and is not considered to be influential in advancing thought on the law of international diplomacy.[1]

Commemorative plaque for Étienne Dolet, located at the passage des Imprimeurs in Lyon.

With the financial assistance of Hellouin Dulin,[11] Dolet opened a print shop on the rue Mercière in Lyon. Over the period 1538 to 1544, Dolet published some 84 works[1] including textbooks for students, classic texts in French or Latin, and the literature of the time, Clément Marot, Rabelais (indeed, Dolet published a counterfeit edition of Gargantua which led to the falling out of the two men ).

One of his popular publishing successes was his work on 'How to Translate Well.' In this publication and more generally, Dolet promoted the use of vernacular French. This was part of a growing movement to make books more available to the educated, general public.[8][12]

A quarter of this production is devoted to religious works. Notably, he published a vernacular French version of the New Testament and 'The Institution of the Christian Religion' by John Calvin, a Protestant tract published during the Inquisition. He is not unaware of the dangers to which this sort of publication exposed him. Even works that he viewed as being within Catholic orthodoxy caused trouble with the Catholic authorities. His Cato Christianus is a catechism based on the model of the Disticha Catonis (Cato's Couplets), a popular textbook for teaching Latin in the 16th century.[13][14] The Cato Christianus was not only banned as soon as it was released, it was also condemned on October 2, 1542 and burned on the square in front of Notre-Dame de Paris in February 1544.[7]

Inquisition and trial

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Bronze statue of Etienne Dolet by Ernest Guilbert, Place Maubert. A political demonstration is visible in the photo at the base of the statue, which was a favorite location for protests by Parisian militants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Inaugurated in 1889, the statue was melted down for metal in support of the war effort by the Nazis in 1942.

Dolet's publication of religious works attracted the attention of the inquisitor Matthew Ory in 1542. In August of that year, he was incarcerated in the prisons of Lyon, accused of being the author of pernicious works and of not believing in the immortality of the soul. Convicted of having printed certain of these pernicious works, eating meat during Lent and claiming to prefer the sermon to the mass, he appealed to the Parliament of Paris, which had him transferred from the prisons of Roanne to the Conciergerie where he remained for 15 months.[15] He obtained a new pardon thanks to the intervention of the Bishop of Tulle, Pierre Duchâtel and returned to Lyon.

He was imprisoned a second time in 1544, after the discovery of bundles of heretical books bearing his printer's mark. However, he managed to escape and took refuge in Piedmont, Italy. He imprudently returned to France because he thought he could print letters in Lyon to appeal to the justice of the King of France, the Queen of Navarre and the Parliament of Paris. It was in these circumstances that he published the 'Second Hell,' a collection of letters addressed to the powerful and intended to be a defense against his accusers. These letters were followed by two translations of Plato, the Axiochus and a translation of the Hipparchus (also apocryphal), subtitled “on lust and affection to gain”.[16]

His third trial examined the affair of the bundles of heretical books. This trial may have been the result of a plot almost certainly organised by competing master printers from Lyon. The inquisitors focused on a passage of his translation of the Axochius: “After death, you will be nothing at all”. Dolet embellished his translation by adding the words “du tout” (at all). The theology faculty of the Sorbonne saw this as proof of Dolet's heresy: he does not believe in the immortality of the soul.[17] He was condemned to death as a heretic.

Execution

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On August 3, 1546, Dolet made 'amends' at the site of his torture by invoking the Virgin and her patron saint. In accordance with an act of mercy in his judgment, he was offered the possibility of being hanged, before being thrown with his books onto his pyre, on Place Maubert in Paris. This Place was reserved for the printers' pyres during the Inquisition: four other printers were strangled there and then burned in 1546.

On his way to be first hung and then burnt, 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).[7] This reportedly elicited the following response from the priest who accompanied him: Non pie turba dolet sed Dolet ipse dolet (“it will be Dolet who will suffer and no one else”).[17]

Religious views

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A bust of Étienne Dolet in Orléans, (Val-de-Loire, France)

Whether Dolet is to be classed with a representative of Protestantism or as an advocate of anti-Christian rationalism has been frequently debared. The principal Protestants of his own time did not recognize him as one of them. Calvin 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.[7]

Dolet has been referred to as an Anti-Trinitarian.[18]

Legacy

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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 in 1889 on the site of his execution on the Place Maubert in Paris.[7] During the religious conflicts of the Third Republic, the statue became "not only the virtual emblem of anticlerical freethinkers, but also served as a rallying point for Parisian militants, who paraded before his monument every year."[19] The statue was removed and melted down in 1942 during the German occupation of Paris.

Principal works

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The title page of a book bearing Dolet's imprint

Many of Dolet's books were destroyed as the products of heresy and books bearing his imprint are now extremely rare.[1] His principal works are:

  • Orationes duæ in Tholosam. Eiusdem epistolarum libri II. Eiusdem carminum libri II. Ad eundem Epistolarum amicorum liber (1534)
  • Dialogus de Imitatione Ciceroniana adversus Desiderium Erasmus Roterdamum pro Christophoro Longolio(1535), where he argues with Erasmus.
  • Commentarius Linguæ latinæ, Book I (1536) ; Book II (1538), Lyon, 2 volumes in-folio.
  • De Re navali liber ad Lazarum Bayfium (1537)
  • Carminum libri quatuor. Collection of 195 selected works. Banned in Lyon for its use of the term, fatum, in its full philosophical sense[20] (1538).
  • Cato Christianus Stephano Dole-to Gallo aurelio autore, Lyon, Étienne Dolet, 1538.
  • CatoFormulae latinarum locutionum (1539)
  • La Manière de bien traduire d’une langue en l’autre (How to Translate Well from One Language to Another); (1540)[21]
  • Les Gestes de Françoys de Valoys, roi de France, Lyon, E. Dolet, 1540.
  • Le Second Enfer d'Estienne Dolet natif d'Orléans (The Second Hell), Troyes, 1544. The 'Hell' in the title refers to the title of a book by Clément Marot dealing with his imprisonment for heresy in the prison of Châtelet in 1525; Dolet printed this book in 1542. 'Second' could mean either that it is the second book dealing with this subject (after that of Marot) or it could refer to Dolet's second imprisonment.[22]
  • Cantique d’Estienne Dolet (1546), on his sorrow and consolation.

References

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  • This page is, for the most part, a translation of the francophone Wikipedia page, fr:Étienne Dolet. It also contains research and sources that do not appear on the francophone page.
  1. ^ a b c d e 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.
  2. ^ André Séguenny, Baden-Baden, Editions Valentin Koerner, 1984, 208 p. (ISBN 3-87320-095-3), p. 53.
  3. ^ Chisholm 1911, pp. 387–388.
  4. ^ Cameron, Pierre (2012). "Review of Étienne Dolet 1509-2009. Cahiers d'Humanisme et Renaissance 98". Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme. 35 (4): 145–148. ISSN 0034-429X.
  5. ^ a b c Smither, James R. (2013). "Review of Étienne Dolet 1509–2009. Cahiers d'Humanisme et Renaissance 98, Michèle Clément". The Sixteenth Century Journal. 44 (4): 1116–1118. doi:10.1086/SCJ24246333. ISSN 0361-0160. JSTOR 24246333.
  6. ^ "Étienne Dolet à l'Université de Toulouse. : 1531-1533 | Tolosana". tolosana.univ-toulouse.fr. Retrieved 2024-11-19.
  7. ^ a b c d e Chisholm 1911, p. 388.
  8. ^ a b c Bénévent, Christine; Walsby, Malcolm (2019), Bruni, Flavia; Pettegree, Andrew (eds.), "Lost Issues and Self-Censorship: Rethinking the Publishing History of Guillaume Budé's De l'Institution du Prince", Lost Books, Reconstructing the Print World of Pre-Industrial Europe, Brill, pp. 239–275, doi:10.1163/j.ctv2gjww23.15, ISBN 978-90-04-31181-7, retrieved 2024-11-22
  9. ^ "Étienne Dolet of Orleans, France". The American Journal of International Law. 27 (1): 82–95. 1933. doi:10.2307/2189785. ISSN 0002-9300. JSTOR 2189785.
  10. ^ 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.
  11. ^ Élise Rajchenbach. L’humaniste et l’imprimeur: les relations d’Étienne Dolet et de François Juste (1536-1539). Étienne Dolet (1509-2009). Étienne Dolet (1509-2009), Droz, 2012. ujm-01618399
  12. ^ Norton, Glyn P. (1974). "Translation Theory in Renaissance France: Etienne Dolet and the Rhetorical Tradition". Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme. 10 (1): 1–13. ISSN 0034-429X.
  13. ^ Brunet, «  », Catalogus librorum sedecimo saeculo impressorum,, Aureliae Aquensis, vol. Prima pars, t. 7,‎ 1982, p. 164-196.
  14. ^ Vignes, Jean (2005). "Pour une gnomologie : Enquête sur le succès de la littérature gnomique à la Renaissance". Seizième Siècle. 1 (1): 175–211. doi:10.3406/xvi.2005.853.
  15. ^ Lalouette Jacqueline, «  », Romantisme, 1989, no n°64. Raison, dérision, Laforgue, 1989, p. 86
  16. ^ N. Bismuth, Montréal, Université McGill, mémoire de maîtrise, Department of French Language and Literature, 1999, p. 8-13
  17. ^ a b Lemieux, René (2022-06-29). "Thanatographie d'Étienne Dolet : spéculer sur la liberté en traduction, la Modernité et la crainte de mourir". Cygne Noir (4): 82–103. doi:10.7202/1090132ar. ISSN 1929-090X.
  18. ^ e.g. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable - Unitarianism (1898)
  19. ^ McWilliam, Neil (1995). "Monuments, Martyrdom, and the Politics of Religion in the French Third Republic". The Art Bulletin. 77 (2): 186–206. doi:10.2307/3046097. ISSN 0004-3079. JSTOR 3046097.
  20. ^ André Séguenny (1984). Bibliotheca Dissidentium. Répertoire des non-conformistes religieux des seizième et dix-septième siècles. Baden-Baden: Editions Valentin Koerner. p. 53. ISBN 3-87320-095-3..
  21. ^ available at Gallica.
  22. ^ N. Bismuth (1999). Le jeu du paratexte : Le Second Enfer d'Étienne Dolet. Montréal: Université McGill, mémoire de maîtrise, Département de langue et littérature françaises. pp. 8–13.

Further reading

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  • 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)
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