Everything about Tienne Dolet totally explained
Étienne Dolet (
August 3,
1509 –
August 3,
1546) was a
French scholar,
translator and
printer.
He was born at
Orléans. A doubtful tradition makes him the illegitimate son of
Francis I; but it's evident that he was at least connected with some family of rank and wealth.
From Orléans he was taken to
Paris about 1521, and after studying under
Nicolas Bérauld, the teacher of
Coligny, he proceeded in 1526 to
Padua. The death of his friend and master,
Simon de Villanova, led him, in 1530, to accept the post of secretary to
Jean de Langeac,
bishop of Limoges and French ambassador to the republic of
Venice; he contrived, however, to attend the lectures of the Venetian scholar
Battista Egnazio, and found time to write
Latin love poems to a Venetian woman named Elena.
Returning to France soon afterwards he proceeded to
Toulouse to study
law; but there he soon became involved in the violent disputes between the different nations of the university, was thrown into prison, and finally banished by a decree of the
parlement. He entered the lists against
Erasmus in the famous
Ciceronian controversy, 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 during ten years any works in Latin,
Greek,
Italian or
French, which were the product of his own pen or had received his supervision; and accordingly, on his release from an imprisonment occasioned by his
homicide of a painter named Compaing, he began at Lyon his typographical and editorial labours.
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 labours were interrupted by his enemies, who succeeded in imprisoning him (1542) on the charge of
atheism.
After imprisonment for fifteen months, Dolet was released by the advocacy of
Pierre Duchatel,
Bishop of Tulle. He escaped from a second imprisonment (1544) by his own ingenuity, but, venturing back from
Piedmont, whence he'd fled in order to print at Lyon the letters by which he appealed for justice to the king of France, the queen of
Navarre and the
parlement of Paris, he was again arrested, and branded as a relapsed atheist by the theological faculty of the
Sorbonne. On 3 August 1546 (his 37th birthday), he was strangled and burned in the
Place Maubert. On his way there he's said to have composed the punning pentameter
Non dolet ipse Dolet, sed pia turba dolet.
Whether Dolet is to be classed with the representatives of
Protestantism or with the advocates of anti-Christian
rationalism has been frequently disputed; by the principal Protestants of his own time he wasn't recognized, and by
Calvin he's formally condemned, along with
Agrippa and his master
Villanova, as having uttered execrable blasphemies against the
Son of God; but, to judge by the religious character of a large number of the books which he translated or published, these condemnations seem altogether misplaced. His repeated advocacy of the reading of the
Scriptures in the vulgar tongue is especially noticeable.
The trial of Dolet was published (1836) by A.H. Taillandier from the registers of the
parlement of Paris.
A statue of Dolet was erected on the Place Maubert in 1889.
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