[128] Prof. Stapfer, Rabelais, sa personne, son génie, son œuvre, 1889, pp. 365–68. Cp. the Notice of Bibliophile Jacob, ed. 1841 of Rabelais, pp. lvii-lviii; and Perrens, Les Libertins, p. 39. In his youth he affirmed the doctrine. Stapfer, p. 23. [↑]
[129] Cp. René Millet, Rabelais, 1892, pp. 172–80. [↑]
[130] Liv. iii, ch. xxxvi. [↑]
[131] The description of him by one French biographer, M. Boulmier (Estienne Dolet, 1857), as “le Christ de la pensée libre” is a gross extravagance. Dolet was substantially orthodox, and even anti-Protestant, though he denounced the cruel usage of Protestants. [↑]
[132] Wallace (Antitrinitarian Biography, 1850, ii. 2) asserts that Dolet “not only became a convert to the opinions of Servetus, but a zealous propagator of them.” For this there is not a shadow of evidence. [↑]
[133] Cp. Voltaire, Lettres sur Rabelais, etc. i. [↑]
[134] Cp. author’s art. above cited; R. C. Christie, Étienne Dolet, 2nd ed. 1890, p. 100; Octave Galtier, Étienne Dolet (N.D.), pp. 66, 94, etc. [↑]
[135] Christie, as cited, pp. 50–58, 105–106; Galtier, p. 26 sq. [↑]
[136] It is to this that Rabelais alludes (ii, 5) when he tells how at Toulouse they “stuck not to burn their regents alive like red herrings.” [↑]