Unbelievers. Alec Ryrie

add that, if they wanted, he could present the opposite case as well. The king, who already had quite enough problems with religious extremists, was furious, but there is no reason to think that du Perron was a secret atheist. He explained, backpedalling frantically, that he was merely hoping ‘to demonstrate his wit’ – and nothing was wittier than a knowing flirtation with atheism.[58] That flirtation did not, in itself, significantly threaten Europe’s long marriage to the old faith. Only if the marriage itself ran into trouble might it become dangerous.

      The cynicism and mockery of Renaissance humanists did not mark the start of a high road to modern atheism, any more than the anger of medieval blasphemers or the professional disdain of learned physicians. Self-limiting and by definition marginal, these atheisms were irritants, in equilibrium with the faith rather than destabilising it. If the Renaissance contained a serious threat to Christendom, it was of a subtler kind.

      Machiavelli’s open fascination with Lucretius’ doctrine of chance was very unusual. Most Renaissance scholars treated Lucretius the way medieval theologians had treated Aristotle: they took what they could use and left the rest. The historian Ada Palmer has recently examined all fifty-two extant fifteenth-century manuscripts of Lucretius’ poem. Machiavelli’s is quite unlike any of the others. The sections of the poem which deny the immortality of the soul and assert that the world is governed by chance were sedulously ignored by most fifteenth-century commentators. More than 90 per cent of the notes Palmer has found comment either on Lucretius’ style and language, or on incidental historical information in the poem. Most of the rest focus on Lucretius’ moral philosophy or medical opinions. Aside from Machiavelli’s, only five of the manuscripts pay more than the most passing attention to Lucretius’ dangerous ideas, one of them only briefly, the other four in order firmly to mark them as errors.[59] Most Renaissance readers believed, or wanted to believe, that Epicureanism could be house-trained.

      It did not quite work. Renaissance scholars were keen to learn from the ancients’ exemplary lives as well as their exemplary Latin (indeed, they were convinced the two were connected). Surely – so the argument went – Christians should be spurred to new heights of righteousness by the shameful thought that these mere pagans had outstripped them in virtue? It was an innocent rhetorical ploy, its double edge quite unintended. Christianity was, in this view, simply the consummation of all that was best about ancient philosophy. The greatest of the Renaissance’s house-trainers, the Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus, included in his Colloquies a self-styled Epicurean who claimed that ‘there are no people more Epicurean than godly Christians’: for Epicureans held that the purpose of human life is the pursuit of happiness, and as everyone knows, true happiness is to be found in virtue. It was an over-tidy view of Epicureanism – Lucretius’ work has rather more sex in it than Erasmus’ – but also a singular view of Christianity. Erasmus united Renaissance philosophy with his homeland’s tradition of practical devotion, and a dash of German mysticism, to conclude that the heart of Christianity was its ethics. Christian theology conventionally emphasises that human sin is pervasive and that sinners must be saved by God’s grace. Erasmus, who was suspicious of too much theology, wanted his readers to strive not to be sinners at all. Christians had traditionally thrown themselves on Jesus Christ’s mercy, as their Saviour. Now they were being urged to imitate him, as their exemplar.[60]

      So far, this was no more than a shift of emphasis. Erasmus remained a faithful, if provocative, Catholic Christian. But the implications were unsettling. If Christianity was supremely about ethics, and if ancient pagans had been outstandingly virtuous, did that mean unbelievers could achieve true godliness? Christ might be the ideal example, but did that mean he was necessarily essential? Could reason and the God-given natural law implanted in every human soul not bring us to the same destination? In which case, should Christians concentrate less on the devotional and sacramental life of the Church and more on cultivating the kinds of virtues which pagans and Christians might share? Erasmus and his colleagues were in no sense trying to ask such provocative questions. They were trying to purify Christianity, not undermine it. That is what, in the centuries to come, would make their approach so dangerous.