Spinoza’s Religion

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Patin, but seems unaware that the passage is, in fact, Hippocratic. Mori responds by suggesting recourse to a possible precautionary rhetorical device by Patin himself. Nathan, instead, proposes two critical observations: (1) TR does not use Patin’s own copy of Jean Bodin’s Colloquium Heptaplomeres; and (2) TR quotes a passage from Joseph Justus Scaliger tacitly inserted in a text by Patin, but attributes it to Patin himself. Mori counters by observing that most of the quotations from Bodin’s Colloquium are to be found in the third treatise (which is the most “Naudean” part of the manuscript) and argues that seventeenth-century authors had a very different conception of literary property than today. In the conclusion, Mori expands the intellectual authorship of TR to include Patin’s “secret” friends, Naudé and Gassendi. The trio’s intellectual fellowship is attested by a 1648 famous letter from Patin, to which Mori devotes much attention. In it, indeed, Patin states that the three reunited friends, freed from all scruples, “tyrants of the consciences,” would have spoken “strongly freely,” thus arriving “really close to the sanctuary” (264–5). Patin also adds—humbly—that he would only “throw dust on the writing of these two great men,” a metaphor used to indicate that his task would only be to fix (on paper?) the thoughts of his two most illustrious friends (274). Mori’s volume is accompanied by two large appendices. Appendix I (285–325) offers a summary scheme of the concordances between TR and Patin’s texts, which amount to 135. Appendix II (329–81) offers a “material history” of TR, which reconstructs the history of the four manuscripts of TR. Mori believes to have identified the “archetypal” manuscript, and some clues seem to confirm his hypothesis (335–6). In the following pages, finally, he examines the manuscript’s trajectory, highlighting the role played by father René-Joseph de Tournemine, “éminence grise” of the French Jesuits (357). Mori’s Athéisme et dissimulation is robust, evocative and well-written. The research is extensive and certainly indicative of the level of detail with which the author has examined an impressive amount of printed and manuscript sources ancillary to his project. Furthermore, Mori’s focus shifts seamlessly between historical, philological, philosophical and literary investigations, with an ease that impresses the reader. This is an important book, because it illuminates the intellectual context in which TR was conceived and, in doing so, contributes an important, missing component to the history of modern atheism and, more broadly, to European intellectual history.