MESLIER, Jean.

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Le Testament de Jean Meslier, First complete edition of Meslier's Testament, "the most singular phenomenon ever seen among all the meteors fatal to the Christian religion" (Voltaire). Jean Meslier (1664-1729), a Catholic country priest from the Champagne-Ardenne region of France, lived a relatively uneventful life. After his death, three copies of a 633-page manuscript in his handwriting were found in his house. Entitled Mémoire des Pensées et Sentiments de J[ean] M[eslier] Cu[ré] d'Estrep[igny] et de Bal[aives], his text refutes everything he had spent a lifetime preaching and is one of the first explicitly atheistic writings in a Christian context. The three copies were sent to French officials, most notably to Germain Louis Chauvelin, the Keeper of the Seals, and before long there were more than 100 manuscript copies in Paris, selling for 10 Louis apiece, of which a dozen examples survive. Voltaire published extracts of the Mémoire in 1762 under the title Extrait des Sentiments de Jean Meslier, later to be re-titled Testament du Curé Meslier. The Mémoire was first published in its entirety in 1864, 1970 and finally in English translation in 2009.In his text Meslier lists eight "proofs of the vanity and falsity of all Religions." It is addressed to his parishioners, whom he saw as ruthlessly exploited by the established orders of the church, monarchy and nobility.The humble priest, whom Anacharsis Cloots described at the time of the French Revolution as the first abjuring c

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