1. Jean Meslier was born in Mazerny in the Ardennes to Gerard Meslier and Symphorienne Braidy, who both worked in the textile manufacturing industry.
12 Facts About Jean Meslier
1. 2.
Jean Meslier began learning Latin from a neighbourhood priest in 1678 and eventually joined the seminary; he later claimed, in the Author's Preface to his Testament, this was done to please his parents.
3.
Jean Meslier claimed to have lived like a pauper and to have donated every spare penny to the poor.
4.
When Jean Meslier died in Etrepigny, there were found in his house three copies of a 633-page octavo manuscript in which the village curate denounces organised religion as "but a castle in the air" and theology as "but ignorance of natural causes reduced to a system".
5.
Jean Meslier denied that any spiritual value could be gained from suffering, and he used the deist's argument from design against god, by showing the evils that he had permitted in this world.
6.
Jean Meslier denied the existence of the soul and dismissed the notion of free will.
7.
Jean Meslier later describes God as "a chimera" and argues that the supposition of God is not prerequisite to morality.
8.
Jean Meslier vehemently attacked social injustice and sketched out a kind of rural proto-communism.
9.
The complete Testament of Jean Meslier was published in English translation for the first time in 2009.
10.
Jean Meslier professed it, demonstrated it, arguing and quoting, sharing his reading and his reflections, and seeking confirmation from his own observations of the everyday world.
11.
Jean Meslier had spent the greater part of his life working on it.
12.
Historians argue about who was the first overt, post-Classical atheist but Jean Meslier was arguably the first to put his name to an incontrovertibly atheist document.