c CUNYB/Clarke     December, :

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The French Liar’s Monkey

and the Utrecht Controversy

Descartes has no reason to object when he is compared with Vanini, because he

does exactly the same as him in everything.

A

to his own account, Descartes had gone ‘to war’ with

the French Jesuits in. While that controversy was still active,

he opened hostilities on a second front two years later with the rector of

Utrecht University, Gisbertus Voetius (–) and, eventually, with

the Utrecht city council. At the height of this controversy, Regius was

described in a student’s Latin rhyme as the ‘French liar’s monkey’. The

‘French liar’ himself, Descartes, was characterized by a somewhat reluc-

tant critic as follows: ‘The man lacks all modesty, is proud, supercilious,

scandalous and quarrelsome.’The unusually sharp language used by both

sides, even when judged by the standards that prevailed at that time, shows

the depth of the rift involved.

As usual, Descartes offered a benign and self-serving interpretation of

his motivation. ‘All I ask for is peace...butIsee that, to obtain it, I have

to wage war a little.’It is hardly credible however that, while living in

comparative solitude in a rented castle at Endegeest (in the province of

Holland), he had to engage in public controversy with influential Dutch

theologians in another province (Utrecht) in order to protect his tran-

quillity. It is much more likely that he blundered into this theological

and political minefield by making careless comments about Voetius in an

appendix to the second edition of theMeditations, which was published in

Amsterdam. Admittedly, the appendix, entitledA Letter to Father Dinet,

avoided any explicit mention of the name of the university or of the rec-

tor involved.However, this pretence at official anonymity hardly pre-

vented the participants from recognizing themselves in Descartes’ very

public and nasty criticism. For example, this is how he describes the

