Etienne Dolet (Orleans, August 3rd 1509 - Paris, August 3rd 1546) is a writer, poet, printer and Humaniste French.
A doubtful tradition makes of him the illegitimate son of François I {{er}}, but it is certain that it is resulting from a family of high ranking. He lives with Orleans until the twelve years age, then share in 1521 for Paris where he studies during five years near Nicolas Bérauld, professor of Coligny.
In 1526, it goes to Padoue. The death of its Master and friendly Simon de Villanova leads it to accept in 1530 the post of secretary of Jean de Langeac, bishop of Limoges and ambassador of France to the Venetian republic . It was however arranged to assist with the conferences of the Venetian Master Battista Egnazio and found time to write poems of love in Latin to Venetian of the name of Elena.
On its return in France, he studies the right and the jurisprudence at the university of Toulouse, but he is implied, by his turbulent mood, in violent arguments between groups of students. He is imprisoned and finally banished by a decree of the Parliament in 1534.
In 1535, it takes part in the lists against Érasme in the business of the controversy on Cicéron and, thanks to the printer Sebastien Gryphe, publishes the Dialogus of imitatione Ciceroniana , followed by two volumes of the Commentariorum linguae Latinae . This work is dedicated to François I {{er}}, which grants to him for ten years the privilege to print any work in Latin, Greek, Italian or French, of his feather or under its supervision. It obtains also a grace at the time of the accidental homicide on December 31st, 1536 of the painter Compaing who, says he, wanted to assassinate it. It went to be established printer with Lyon.
It can be thus put at work and it publishes Galien, Rabelais, Marot. He is not unaware of the dangers to which he exposes himself because of Bigoterie of his time. That is seen not only by the tone of its texts, but also by the fact that it initially tried to reconcile its adversaries by publishing a Christianus Caton, in which it made its profession of faith. This catholicity of frontage, in spite of its ultra-cicéronisme, shows through in the works left its presses, antiques and modern, religious or laic, since the New Testament in Latin to the texts of Rabelais.
But before its authorization to print does not expire, it attracts itself in Lyon of new difficulties by its satirical character and the publication of works sullied with heresy. Its work is stopped by its enemies who make it imprison in 1542 under the charge of Athéisme.
After a first stay in fifteen month old prison, it is slackened thanks to the intervention of the bishop of Tulle Pierre Duchatel. Imprisoned one second time in 1544, it escapes by its own means and takes refuge in the Piedmont.
But it returns imprudently in France by thinking that it could print with Lyon letters to call some with the justice of king de France, the queen of Navarre and Parliament of Paris. It again is stopped and judged atheistic escaped prisoner by the faculty of theology of the Sorbonne.
François Ier, who had initially protected it, having given up it, it was brought from Lyon in Paris to undergo the torment there. The August 3rd 1546, it is tortured, strangled and burned with its books on the Place Maubert. It would have composed this Pentamètre on the way of roughing-hew: Not dolet ipse Dolet, sed pia turba dolet (“It is not Dolet itself which is afflicted, but the virtuous multitude”).
Its crime was, according to the ones, to have professed the Matérialisme and atheism, according to the others, to be itself shown favorable to the opinions of Martin Luther.
It also left Latin and French poetries, French translations, of some writings of Plato and Cicéron, lampoons of circumstance, including two on its imprisonment, Intitulés: the First and the Second Hell of And. Dolet, 1544, and another where he asks that it be permissible to read the Writing in vulgar language, and who was flaring.
| Random links: | Ali Khamenei | The Ballade of Dalton | Monique Richard | Lake Bütgenbach | Plato |