Meslier, Jean

MESLIER, JEAN. - Neither the precise year of his birth nor that of his death is known, but he certainly lived between 1664 and 1733. Curate of Etrépigny in the Ardennes, his name has been handed down by Voltaire in a writing entitled Extrait du testament de J. M., which is a violent diatribe against the Catholic religion, in which the deceased curate declared that he had lost his faith.

He gave the reasons for his own unbelief, consisting in the fact that in the Gospels he had ascertained the existence of contradictions that he could not explain and that had upset his mind. For M., Catholicism is contrary to nature because it exalts suffering, and contrary to reason because it would be founded only on faith. For M., a complete atheist, religion is an imposture. Later, in 1768, Voltaire, in the Evangile de la raison, under the title Sentiments du curé M., gave a second version of the famous testament quite different from the first. But by now the majority of critics agree on the non-authenticity of the writing attributed to M. and think that Voltaire alone was its author. D'Holbach too drew inspiration from this writing to compose in 1772 the Bon sens du curé M.

Bruno Brunello