Term used to describe a number of disparate literary, social, and philosophical groups from the late 16th to the end of the 17th c. It was at one time claimed that libertins were rationalistic atheists who derived their philosophical doctrines from the Averroists of the School of Padua, notably Pomponazzi (1462-1525) and, later, Cremonini (1550-1630). But this view has now been widely discredited both by those who argue that Paduan Aristotelianism was not Averroist in nature and by those who, like Lucien Febvre, claim that the 16th c. was ‘un siècle qui veut croire’ and that the notion of God was indispensable to the operation of its systems of thought.
The word libertin emerged in the late 16th c. as a term of abuse directed at those who rejected traditional authority and were indifferent or irreverent in matters of religion. By 1620 it was associated with a broad group of 16th-c. radical thinkers, including Pomponazzi, Cardano (1501-76), Bruno (1548-1600), and Campanella (1568-1639), many of whom were to be linked subsequently with the authorship of the notorious Traité des trois imposteurs (i.e. Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed). Montaigne's brand of Pyrrhonian scepticism was also an important factor influencing its development. In France, the association with scandalous religious opinion was extended to include a debauched, hedonistic way of life which was the outward expression of an indifference towards, or denial of, the afterlife: this is the version of libertinage against which Garasse fulminated in his Doctrine curieuse des beaux-esprits de ce temps (1623) and which Mersenne impugns in his Impiété des déistes, athées et libertins de ce temps (1624). These attacks were stimulated not only by the writings of Vanini, who was executed in Toulouse in 1619 for spreading allegedly materialistic doctrines, but also by the behaviour of a free-living group of noblemen in Paris whose acknowledged leader was the Protestant poet Théophile de Viau.
Various literary works are associated with this group: the collection of anonymous bawdy poetry extolling the pleasures of the flesh, implicitly produced for a dissolute male tavern audience, entitled Le Parnasse satirique; Sorel's Francion (1623), a novel celebrating the immoral and feckless life-style and the irresponsible ‘nouvelle philosophie’ of its eponymous hero, a poor French nobleman; and Théophile's poetry, in which are found hints of Lucretian atomism, a description of death as the end of all things, a celebration of sensuality, and, aesthetically, a linking of freedom of thought with freedom of form. Théophile suffered imprisonment and trial in 1623-5; his fate heralded a greater circumspection in libertin circles, which was accentuated further by the stricter regime of Richelieu (1630-42).
Another manifestation of libertinage flourished even in that period: the so-called ‘libertinage érudit’ of the group of philosophers, scholars, and writers which included Gassendi, Diodati, Naudé, Mersenne, and Patin. This developed out of the learned meetings which were presided over by the Dupuy brothers in Paris. Many of the members of this group shared a passionate commitment to the free exchange of scientific and cultural information at a time when outside France the effects of the Roman Index of forbidden books and the Inquisition were felt strongly. For this reason, and also because a number of the group were themselves in religious orders, great discretion was shown in their discussion of the new empirical theories of Bacon, Copernican and Galilean astronomy, Epicurean materialism, mechanical philosophy, and the ideas of 16th-c. radical Italian philosophers. It may well be that certain members of this group were free-thinkers; but it now seems implausible that the group as a whole shared these convictions, even if their discretion is taken to indicate that they knew that their discussions were potentially subversive to traditional beliefs.
A number of literary figures are associated with this coterie: La Mothe le Vayer, whose Dialogues faits à l'imitation des anciens of 1630-1 express a sceptical view of theology;
After 1661, and especially after the Tartuffe affair of 1664-9, discussion of libertinage becomes much more circumspect in the new, increasingly repressive atmosphere of absolutism; the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes of 1685 had a yet more drastic effect, as did the persecution of other heterodox religious practices (such as Jansenism and Quietism). This did not bring to an end intellectual enquiry coloured by free-thought. The clandestine manuscript Theophrastus redivivus of 1659, together with the early deist writing of Foigny, testifies to its continuance; but the expression of materialist beliefs takes on a more muted, melancholic, and urbane form, as in the works of Deshoulières, Saint-Évremond, and Chaulieu. By the end of the century the term libertin had become detached from the nexus of connotations which it possessed in 1620; atheism was no longer socially shocking, provided that discretion was shown in its expression; and to express belief in the new astronomy was no longer scandalous. It is therefore not surprising that the term lost much of its colour and slipped eventually, by the middle of the 18th c., to designating mere rakes and debauchees.
[Ian Maclean]
Bibliography
- J. S. Spink, French Free Thought from Gassendi to Voltaire (1959)
- A. Adam, Les Libertins au XVIIe siècle (1964)
