DOLET, ÉTIENNE. - Born in Orléans on Aug. 3, 1509, he studied in Paris and Padua. In Toulouse, where he had gone to complete his studies, he was imprisoned for his non-Catholic behavior; once released, he moved to Lyon, where in 1535 he published his anti-Ciceronian and anti-Erasmian work: Dialogus de imitatione Ciceroniana adversus Desiderium Erasmum Roterodamum pro Christophoro Longolio.
His principal work, of no negligible value in the history of modern philology, is: Commentariorum linguae Latinae tomus primus (Lyon 1536), followed by a tomus secundus (ibid. 1538); in 1538 he obtained a printer's license: from his press came the boldest works of the time (Rabelais, Marot, various Calvinists); for this he had to flee to Piedmont; having returned to France in 1544, he was tried and condemned to the stake: he suffered the penalty in Paris on Aug. 3, 1546. Violent and sensitive, reckless and wary, he is among the most enigmatic figures of the French sixteenth century: he killed the painter Compaing with dagger blows in a brawl (Lyon, Dec. 1536), yet he felt himself a champion and defender of the true religion, opposing to the Christianity of the inquisitors the Christ of the justice of charity and peace; he is considered an atheist by some of his contemporaries (among others by Calvin), yet in 1535 he violently accused Erasmus himself of atheism; he favored the Protestant revolution, but at the same time he described Lutheranism as an impious sect. He wished to feel himself above the fray, mocking the folly of the Lutherans who endangered their own lives for what he called a ridiculous heading, but he was in all probability psychologically defective.