Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

Despite the poor timing, Descartes still pleads his case with Servien.

He asks him to request that Prince William, who was responsible for

appointing the Rector of the University, to prevent Calvinist theologians

from making a judgment on the orthodoxy of a French Catholic. He also

spells out the political implications of the case.

Iamcertain that the curators will not accept that, after the French have spilled so much

of their blood in helping them to dislodge the Spanish Inquisition from here, a French-

man, who also formerly carried arms in the same cause, would be subjected today to

an Inquisition of [Calvinist] Ministers from Holland....Iclaim that the theologians

have no right to examine what I wrote in their ecclesiastical assemblies, that is, in their

theology faculties, consistories, classes and synods. My reason is that there is nothing

to be found in all my writings that is relevant to the religious controversies between

them and us. As regards issues that involve the Christian religion in general – such

as the existence of God, which I dealt with – the freedom which they owe me in

this country, because the [French] King gives them a similar freedom in France,

requires them to leave any decision about those matters to the superiors of our own

Church. (v.–)

As supporting evidence of his willingness to be judged by Catholic theolo-

gians, Descartes claims disingenuously that he had left theMeditations–

which was the main target of Calvinist attacks – in the hands of the

Sorbonne theologians for more than a year before its publication, and

that they had found nothing objectionable to faith or morals in it. It was

true that he had submitted it to their judgment, but they had not reported

anything at all about its contents, favourable or otherwise.

This request to Servien fell on deaf ears, for obvious reasons. However,

the curators replied onMay, and informed Descartes that they had

explicitly forbidden their professors to speak of him in future in their

lectures or disputations. They also requested the complainant, for his part,

to refrain from proposing the views that, allegedly, had been attacked by the

Leiden theologians. This hardly satisfied Descartes. He tried once more

to clarify his position.He could not refrain from repeating the views

that had been attacked by the Leiden theologians, since he had never

expressed them in the first place. The reason for his concern was, as he

had explained earlier, that these theologians exercised a public authority in

Holland, and therefore he could not simply ignore their public statements

as ‘ridiculous calumnies’ (v.). In fact, Descartes worried that there was

a wider conspiracy against him, involving the other professors of theology

at Leiden, namely, Spanheim and Empereur.He continued to insist that