A World Lit Only by Fire

by William Manchester

Lefèvre was one of Marguerite’s successes. She also had her failures, notably Bonaventure Desperiers and Étienne Dolet. Both were given her best efforts; nevertheless both died violently in Lyons. Desperiers had been guilty only of bad timing; had he published his Cymbalum mundi before Luther challenged Rome, the Curia would have ignored it. Written in Latin and addressed to fellow humanists, it noted the flagrant contradictions in the Bible, deplored the persecution of heretics, and mocked miracles. There was nothing new here. The satires of Erasmus and the German heretics, making the same points, had been more caustic. But in the new age of intolerance, Cymbalum was denounced by both sides—the Catholic witchhunters in the Sorbonne and the Protestant Calvin. Then it was publicly burned by the official hangman of Paris. Desperiers became too hot even for Marguerite; she was forced to banish him from Nérac. She sent him money, but the pressure was too much for him. On the run, threatened and hounded, he died, reportedly by his own hand. Dolet, on the other hand, courted death. A printer as well as a Ciceronian scholar, he clandestinely published books on the Index Expurgatorius until he was summoned before the Inquisition, found guilty, and, despite Marguerite’s attempts to intervene, burned alive.