Talk:Jean Meslier

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• I've recently read Meslier's Testament, and question the authenticiy of the attributed quote. I don't recall him saying that, and it seems out of character. In The Testament, he consistently defines his political ideal in terms of the enlightened despot.
  • Pazouzou 18:04, 8 December 2005 (UTC) I've always this was written by Denis Diderot, the encyclopedist.
    • The Oxford dictionary of quotations says

I remember, on this matter, the wish made once by an ignorant, uneducated man…He said he wished…that all the great men in the world and all the nobility could be hanged, and strangled with the guts of priests. For myself…I wish I could have the strength of Hercules to purge the world of all vice and sin, and to have the pleasure of destroying all those monsters of error and sin [priests] who make all the peoples of the world groan so pitiably.

Testament (ed. R. Charles, 1864) vol. 1, ch. 2

A lot of the versions of the testaments published like the one on Gutenberg are apparently only part of the larger testament which was in three seperate manuscripts. MeltBanana

It depends on which version you read. Voltaire's version is heavily edited. I have read a German translation based on Meslier's original text and there something rather close to the quote does indeed appear in chapter 2. I attempt to translate from German to English, maybe someone who has access to the French original can do a better job: "This reminds me of the wish that was once uttered by a man who neither knew science nor had education, but who obviously was not lacking judgment for appraising correctly all the obscene grievances and despicable despotisms which I am incriminating here; his wish and the manner in which he expressed his thought show that he was quite sharp-witted and had penetrated deep enough into this abominable mystery of malice of which I am talking, as he recognized so well the initiator and promoter. He wished that all the great and noble of the earth be hanged and strangled with the guts of the priests. This expression will not fail to appear brute, uncouth and shocking, but one will have to admit that it is frank and naive; it is brief but expressive, as it says enough with few words what such people deserve." Now, one may speculate whether Meslier actually referred to himself with this attribution, as he does not quote a source. He does, however, in a footnote cite two examples where kings killed all priests in their kingdom. --Stefan heinzmann 13:03, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

• Durant (Story of Civilization, vol. 9, p.611) gives the years of Meslier's life as 1678-1733. --cxl9

This guy became a priest at the age of 11? Andrew Levine 21:46, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Authorship question

The preface to the Project Gutenberg e-text of a 1900ish English translation of Le bon sens claims that it was written by Baron d'Holbach and not by Meslier. I'm looking into this while cleaning up the Wikiquote article on Holbach, which contains a number of quotes from this translation, and I'm wondering whether the quotes are correctly attributed. Since I'm not involved in this field, I have to ask, what is the current scholarship on this question? 121a0012 03:12, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

d'Holbach didn't publish anything openly under his own name in his lifetime, including "Good Sense". --Dannyno 12:06, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Le bon sens was indeed written by d'Holbach, and the text is not actually that of Meslier, but rather d'Holbach's formulation of Meslier's points in his own words. It is certainly not a source for quotations you can attribute to Meslier. If you want to quote Meslier, you will have to go back to his own text, not d'Holbach's, and even Voltaire's version is questionable in this respect, altough it is closer to the original. The problem is that Meslier's own prose is quite heavy-going and repetitive. Voltaire called it the style of a coach horse. --Stefan heinzmann 13:16, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Is this not a translation of Meslier? http://www.marxists.org/history/france/revolution/meslier/1729/testament.htm (12th May 2008)

[edit] Quote

The well-known quote:

"I would like, and this would be the last and most ardent of my wishes, I would like the last of the kings to be strangled by the guts of the last priest"

is often attributed to Meslier; it does not appear in his Testament, however, and is completely atypical of his style.

This is not quite true, because in his "Testament" Meslier actually refers to a man who

"wished that all the bigwigs of the earth and all noblemen should be hanged and strangled with the bowels of the priests."

(ch. II, my transl. from the German transl., 1st ed. 1976, which is based on the critical French complete edition, 1970-1972)

In German:

"Dies erinnert mich an den Wunsch, den ein Mann einmal äußerte, (...). Er wünschte, dass all die Großen der Erde und alle Adligen mit den Gedärmen der Priester erhängt und erwürgt werden sollten."

(Meslier, Jean. Das Testament des Abbé Meslier: Die Grundschrift der modernen Religionskritik. Ed. Hartmut Krauss. 2nd ed. Osnabrück: Hintergrund, 2005 [Reprint of the 1st ed., Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1976]. ch. II, p. 74)

Editorius 20:29, 1 October 2007 (UTC)