Dolet, Étienne (1509-46). Printer and humanist scholar who, after studying in Paris, Padua, and Toulouse, began his career as correcteur for the printer Sebastian Gryphius at Lyon in 1534. Having established his own press there four years later, he produced more than 80 volumes, including works by several classical authors, Marot, Rabelais, Calvin, and himself. Twice condemned to death (in 1536 and 1542), he twice received a royal pardon, but was finally burned at the stake for heresy in Paris in 1546.
He contributed significantly to the growth of humanism through his encouragement of neo-Latin poets in Lyon, his printing and editing of classical works, and his own writings. These include the virulently anti-Erasmian Dialogus de imitatione ciceroniana (1535), his monumental Commentarii linguae latinae (1536-8), and his Cato christianus (1542), suspected of heterodoxy. He was also active as a translator, publishing La Manière de bien traduire in 1540 as a prelude to a series of translations: Cicero's Epistolae ad familiares (1542) and Tusculan Disputations (1543), and the pseudo-Platonic dialogues Axiochus and Hipparchus (1544). Dolet was a vain, irascible, and difficult man, but a passionate and evangelically minded scholar; his scepticism, regarded as heretical, reflected his constant concern to promulgate the ideas of classical authors.
[Nicholas Mann]
