Jean Meslier

Jean Meslier (Mazerny, 1664 - Étrépigny, 1729) was a Catholic priest from the Ardennes who, at his death, left behind a lengthy manuscript denying the existence of God and attacking religion, the monarchy and social inequality. He lived during the French Enlightenment, yet his work stayed hidden for decades. Today he is seen as one of the first thinkers in the West to defend atheism openly and at length, which is why he holds a place in the history of free thought.

The son of a small local textile producer, he studied at his parish school and later at the seminary. On 7 January 1689 he was appointed parish priest of Étrépigny, a post he held until his death. Outwardly he was a quiet cleric, though he publicly clashed with the local lord, Anthoine de Touilly, over his treatment of the peasants, and later with his ecclesiastical superiors. After that he kept his views to himself until his manuscript came to light.

That manuscript, known as the Testament, reviews the arguments for God's existence, especially those of Fénelon, and finds none of them conclusive. Meslier proposes a materialist view in which matter is eternal, thought depends on the body and the soul is mortal. For him, suffering in the world cannot be reconciled with a good God, and religions are tools the elite uses to secure obedience. He also imagined rural communes in which goods would be shared.

The work circulated in abridged form. In 1762 Voltaire published an expurgated version that softened the atheism and made the author seem a deist. The first serious biography came only with Maurice Dommanget in 1965. His influence can be traced in French anticlericalism and in modern writers such as Michel Onfray, who calls him the first atheist philosopher to write a full text in defence of atheism.