The Atheist's Bible: The Most Dangerous Book That Never Existed - Softcover

Minois, Georges

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226821064 ISBN 13: 9780226821061

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2022

Synopsis

A comprehensive biography of the Treatise of the Three Impostors, a controversial nonexistent medieval book.

Like a lot of good stories, this one begins with a rumor: in 1239, Pope Gregory IX accused Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor, of heresy. Without disclosing evidence of any kind, Gregory announced that Frederick had written a supremely blasphemous book—De tribus impostoribus, or the Treatise of the Three Impostors—in which Frederick denounced Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad as impostors. Of course, Frederick denied the charge, and over the following centuries the story played out across Europe, with libertines, freethinkers, and other “strong minds” seeking a copy of the scandalous text. The fascination persisted until finally, in the eighteenth century, someone brought the purported work into actual existence—in not one but two versions, Latin and French.

Although historians have debated the origins and influences of this nonexistent book, there has not been a comprehensive biography of the Treatise of the Three Impostors. In The Atheist’s Bible, the eminent historian Georges Minois tracks the course of the book from its origins in 1239 to its most salient episodes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, introducing readers to the colorful individuals obsessed with possessing the legendary work—and the equally obsessive passion of those who wanted to punish people who sought it. Minois’s compelling account sheds much-needed light on the power of atheism, the threat of blasphemy, and the persistence of free thought during a time when the outspoken risked being burned at the stake.

About this title

About the Authors

Georges Minois is the author of History of Old Age: From Antiquity to the Renaissance and History of Suicide: Voluntary Death in Western Culture, the former published by the University of Chicago Press.

Lys Ann Weiss is an independent scholar in medieval studies who works in book publishing as an editor, indexer, and translator.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226821064
• ISBN 13: 9780226821061
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 261