Chapter 41 : The Spiritual Libertines

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Jacob Gruet rejected the existence of God and denied the existence of eternal life in the beyond, “saying of the law of God that it was worth nothing, just like the people who made it; that the Gospel is only lies and that all of the Scriptures are a false and crazy doctrine.”[453]

In an article on the Gruet affair, Berriot published several remarks attributed to the incriminated lampoon. He added to them a letter discovered at the time of Gruet’s arrest.

Moses is mocked in his ‘person’ and in his ‘doctrine,’ as are all the ‘patriarchs and prophets,’ who are characterized as ’folz, resveurs, fanatics’: as for ‘their scriptures,’ the author only has ‘detestation’! There is no more tenderness for the ‘evangelists’ and ‘disciples’ upon whom he inflicts the epithets ’maraux, scoundrels, apostates, oafs, escerveles. As far as the Virgin Mary — through whom Jesus is attacked — she is ridiculed in her ‘honor’ and her ‘decency,’ since she is described as a ‘bawd’ ... Nevertheless, it is the Christ who is the target of the most lively insults: the manuscript denies his ‘divinity,’ contests ‘his Passion,’ and his ‘resurrection’; Jesus of Nazareth, at first called ‘Nicolas of Molle’ by the pamphlet, is defined as ‘a beggar, a liar, a folz, a seducer, a wicked man and a miserable, unhappy fanatic, (...) a lout full of malignant presumption’ whose ‘miracles (...) are only sorceries and antics’ and whose hanging [from the cross] was ‘merited’; in brief, the Christ, who ‘believed himself to be the son of God’ and who ‘was a hypocrite,’ is in fact ‘miserably dead in his folly, a dumb follastre, a great drunk, a detestable traitor and a hanged wicked man’! The ‘Holy Spirit,’ which seems of little interest to the author, is only the object of several blasphemies, ‘intolerable’ or ‘abominable,’ it is true; while ‘the (...) Scriptures, the Old as well as the New Testament,’ are the subject of many pages of manuscript, which express a veritable ‘detestation’: ‘The Gospel (...) is only lies,’ ‘all of the Scriptures are false and wicked and (...) have less meaning than Esop’s fables’ since ‘it is a false and crazy doctrine’ ... Thus, the author clearly vows ‘to mock all Christianity’ and ‘all the Christians who have believed in (...) Jesus Christ and believe and will believe’ [in him]. He finally questions in a fundamental fashion ‘this law of God that is worth nothing’; he ‘blasphemies against the divine power and the essence of God’ and, denying that God is ‘creator of the heavens and earth,’ he ‘renounces and abolishes all religion and divinity,’ so as to conclude: ‘God is nothing,’ ‘men (are) similar to the beasts’ and ‘eternal life’ doesn’t exist!

Faced with such remarks, the historian of ideas certainly regrets not having access to the 13 manuscript sheets that were publicly burned in 1550, as well as the original copy of the letter Clarissime lector, which one found at the time of the arrest and of which Gruet denied paternity in 1547, but which he recognized as having in his possession and which he said he copied from [a text by] Jean des Cordes, which has also disappeared, in the Nineteenth Century it seems... Through a fortunate turn of events, Francois Rocca — the secretary of the Consistory, later the archivist of Geneva in 1768, and someone who knew of the Gruet affair through the Letter from Monnoie that concerned The Book of the Three Impostors — had, over the course of recounting the entirety of the trial in his Collection of Manuscript Memoirs in Geneva from 1526 to 1593, recopied several pieces and transcribed the precious text of the Clarissime lector, which still existed at that point, a text to which explicit reference was made by the interrogations of June 1547 as well as Beze’s Vita Calvini and Letter LXXVII from Calvin to Viret... It is thus in Francois Rocca’s Manuscript Memoirs, deposited at the Geneva Historical Society, that one can find a copy of this document that is so important to the history of the thought of the Renaissance and that obviously merits quotation at length:

Dear illustrious reader:

There are men of diverse opinions: one is a professor of literature (litterarum professor), another is a soldier (bellicator), another is in love with riches, another is a philosopher, still another is a blacksmith. What do I seem to you, illustrious reader?

I do not know what men have said and written, but I believe that all that has been written with respect to divine power is false, dreamed up and fantastic... Several wise men say that man was created from the substance of the earth and that the first man was Adam...

Truly, I myself think that the world is without beginning (absque principio) and will have no end (necdam aliqua finis). Indeed, who is the man who has truly described the beginning of the world? None other than Moses, who described the first generation, and this same Moses wrote about what took place two thousand years before his own epoch: therefore, all that he wrote, he had taken in his spirit, having no other authority than what he himself says and what he says was revealed to him... Me, I deny his authority because many men have contested it (...). He says that he saw God in the form of fire and that God was presented to him in another form (... as) a voice (...). Truly, I am in agreement with Aristotle, who wrote the following after reading the works of Moses: I am astonished to see this preposterous person say a lot and prove nothing (iste cornutus multa dicit, sed nihil probat)!

This same Moses affirmed, as I have said, that his first narratives were revealed to him by God, which is something I do not know about (...). After him came other men who invented still more (...) and added other fables and wrote them (...) about Job, Isaiah and the other ancients. Then the moderns, such as Jerome, Ambroise, Bede, Scotus, Aquinas and other barbarians (barbari) invented other falsehoods (...). Still others would come later (...).

Nevertheless, what dignity did their God have? It is a horrible thing to give man life and then, after two hours and three days of it, to bring death to him (est res nefanda facere hominem, dare illi vitam, post tandem alicui tempus vitae duarum horarum alteri trium dierum et postandem illi contribuere mortem). It is an impossible thing to create man and then break him (...). Likewise, some say that the soul is in the body, while others say that it is a spirit: where does this spirit go when it leaves the body? If you respond to me: it remains in a certain place, waiting for the Final Advent, then why does God not leave it in its own body, rather than changing its place? If you say: they are at rest, glorifying God and others are in Hell, [then I would respond] if they are in Hell, some essence would appear, therefore nothing is known of these things with certitude! ... Likewise, if it happens that some are resuscitated from among the dead, I believe that they would have described something of the form of this other world, like Lazarus and many others... But are these things invented for the pleasure of men, like those [stories of people] who sleep for a whole year?

And then, this one whom one calls the Christ, who claimed to be the Son of God: why did he so suffer the Passion? If he were the Son of God, he would have demonstrated the power that he said God had. I do not believe that he was the Son of God, but that he was a crazy person (fantasticus) who wanted to attribute the glory to himself and all the things that have been written on this subject are most certainly false (...).

Me, I believe that when a man is dead, there is no more hope for life (Hoc ideo credo quod, cum mortuus est homo, nulla altera expectatio vitae).

Finally, we who are called Christians: do we not think that the Jews, the Turks and those who live differently are condemned because they do not believe in the Christ? Therefore, if truly there is only one God, master of all things (unus Deus actor omnium rerum) who created mankind, why did he create such a great multitude so as to make them perish (quare creavit ipsam periri facere)? This is absurd: do you not see that all prosper, the Turks as well as the Christians? (...)

Nevertheless, as I said at the beginning, there is a difference in the nature of men: some are bloodthirsty, others are peaceful; some are truly chaste where women are concerned, others are lustful. From whence could this come? From the nature of the elements (ex natura elementorum)... Where the moderns support the idea that this machine (hanc fabricam) is entirely governed by a single God, I personally think that the astrological philosophers are closer to the truth (puto philosophos astrologos propinquiores esse veritati ... ). I truly think that nothing is not driven by the sun, the moon and the stars, along with the four elements (sole, luna et stellis, cum quatuor elementis). Nevertheless, if you ask me who made these things, since no one is their author (nullus est author de iis), I do not know how I would respond to you. But there are astronomers (...) such as Plato and Aristotle, and if you read them you will practically perceive the truth (sunt aliqui astronomi (...) sicut Plato, Aristoteles quos, si leges, percipas proprius veritatem).[454] (*)

(*) In his Scrutelio atheismi, Spizelius attributed to his contemporary, Theodore Simon, the following credo: “I believe in three things: the heavens, the earth and the celestial form. The earth is the nourishing mother of all things and the celestial form contains all thought and all speech [parole]. Thus eat, drink and partake of pleasure, because God is nothing other.”[455]

Quintin Thierry And His Friends

Around 1525, while Eloi the Roofer was justifying the search for pleasure and the enjoyments of existence in Antwerp, Coppin of Lille — known through Calvin’s surly allusions[456] — professed a similar teaching in his hometown. Not far from there, in Tournai, a tailor named Quintin Thierry (or Thiefry) left his trade and his city to go to France where there spread a spiritual state that was both detached from Catholic dogma and reticent with respect to Lutheranism. In any case, Quintin and a companion, Bertrand of the Mills, hardly had difficulty rallying sympathy. Antoine Pocques of Lille and Claude Perceval, no doubt originally from Rouen, seconded Quintin after the death of Bertrand of the Mills. In Paris, Quintin confronted Calvin, who later was infatuated with having him “repeat this gossip” in his lampoon. Many artisans in the capitol shared the Tournaisians’ opinions.

For his part, Pocques went to Strasbourg where, using the double language of devotion, he deceived the Lutherian Bucer and obtained from him letters of recommendation for the Reformers of other countries. Nevertheless, this same Bucer had in 1538 put on her guard Queen Marguerite of Navarre, the author of the gallant tales of the Heptameron, who — at her court in Nerac — sheltered the innovators who were threatened by the politics of her brother, Francois I, whatever their opinions were.

Pocques pushed insolence and provocation to the point of clashing with Calvin, but he, more mistrustful than Bucer, accorded him no recommendations.

On the other hand, the court of Navarre was favorable to the discourse that gave to ordinary terrestrial pleasures, willingly practiced in this strata of society, the best of heaven’s reasons. Did not one impute the redaction of [Marguerite] Porete’s book The Mirror of Simple Souls to the “Marguerite of the daisies [marguerites]”?

Describing the court at Nerac, Jundt remarked: “One speaks a lot there, it is true, of inward piety, but one gaily surrenders to the pleasures of life.”[457]

In 1543, Pocques and Quintin received an eager welcome at the court of Marguerite. There they developed the idea that there was no sin in devoting oneself to the ecstasies of love and that following the liberties of nature resulted precisely from the presence in each person of a God of universal goodness.

When Calvin’s accusations — enclosed within his treatise Against the Fantastic and Furious Sect of the Libertines who call themselves Spiritualists — were made in Nerac, they only aroused scorn and reprobation. Marguerite would express quite clearly the contempt in which she held this text directed “against herself and against her servants.”[458] She let the author know that she did not desire to have near her such a contemptible man.

His insistence alarmed Marguerite, whose sympathies for people persecuted by her brother placed her in a difficult situation. It suited her to avoid the thunderbolts of Geneva more than those of Rome.

Pocques and Quintin returned to the Netherlands, where Calvin’s henchmen — Vallerand-Poulain and his friends — had not ceased their activities. On 13 September 1542, in Valenciennes, Hugues Lescantelier, a brewer from Maire-lez-Tournai, and Caso Hocq were decapitated for supporting a “new sect called ‘libertine.’”

Lescantelier had proclaimed his state of impeccability, while Hocq — rediscovering the theses of primitive Christianity — explained that the Christ did not die on the cross, but that he had simply abandoned his human appearance, which he took on to manifest himself on earth.

In 1546, Quintin — denounced by Calvin to the Catholic authorities of Tournai, who drew their accusations from the lampoon — was arrested with many of his partisans, who were shoemakers, woodworkers and other artisans. Apprehended thanks to Calvin, Quintin would be hanged and burned because he had rallied many gentlemen from the city to his sect. Three of his friends perished by the sword.

Quintin shared with Jacob Gruet a contempt for so-called apostles. Calvin was indignant: Quintin “made sarcastic remarks about each of the apostles so as to render them contemptible. And so he called Saint Paul ‘broken pot,’ Saint John ‘young fool,’ Saint Peter a denier of God and Saint Matthew a usurer.”[459]

Quintin rejected all forms of the Church, the rituals and the sacraments. God, by dying on the cross after his descent to earth, thus signified that he had abolished sin. From then on, one need only follow one’s inclinations without being preoccupied with anything else. Quintin and his followers celebrated amorous passion, which offended Calvin with an intensity that said a great deal about his own conceptions about the matter: “These unfortunates profane marriage, mixing men with women like brute beasts, wherever their concupiscence leads them. (...) They color this brutal pollution with the name of spiritual marriage: they call ‘spiritual movement’ the furious impetuosity that pushes and enflames a man like a bull and a woman like a dog (...). They also make a similar confusion with their goods, saying that it is in accordance with the communion of the saints that no one possesses anything as his own, but that each takes what he would have.”[460]

“Around 1546, their doctrine was taught in Rouen by an old Cordelier, who counted among his proselytes several ladies from noble families. He was put in prison the following year as a Reformer. Calvin, to whom his writings were communicated, would refute them in an epistle addressed to the Reformed community of Rouen. Set free, the Cordelier published in response The Shield of Defense, to which Farel would oppose The Sword of Speech in 1550. In France, the last vestiges of the Spiritual Libertines met in Le Nivernais, Corbigny; in 1559 Calvin wrote to the Reformers of this town to put them on their guard against the heretics’ schemes. Several rare clues still mentioned the presence of these heretics in the towns along the Rhine beyond Strasbourg. In a letter to Rodolphe Walther, one of the theologians of Zurich, Viret reported the existence of the sect in Lower Germany in 1544 and Calvin, in the same year, let it be understood that the heresy had partisans in Cologne. In 1545, the Walloon community of Wesel would declare in its confession of faith that it rejected, among other errors, those of the Libertines.”[461]