Bonaventure Des PériersArticle Free Pass Bonaventure Des
Périers, (born c. 1500, Arnay-le-duc, France?—died c. 1544,
Lyon), French storyteller and humanist who attained notoriety as
a freethinker. In 1533 or 1534 Des Périers visited Lyon, then
the most enlightened town of France and a refuge for many
liberal scholars. He assisted Pierre-Robert Olivétan and Jacques
Lefèvre d’Étaples in the preparation of the vernacular version
of the Old Testament and Étienne Dolet in the Commentarii
linguae Latinae. Margaret of Angoulême, queen of Navarre, made
him her valet de chambre in 1536. He acted as her secretary and
transcribed her Heptaméron; some maintain that he in fact wrote
the work. The free discussions permitted at Margaret’s court
encouraged a license of thought as displeasing to the Calvinists
as to the Roman Catholics; it became skepticism in Des Périers’s
Cymbalum Mundi (1538; Cymbalum Mundi: Four Very Ancient Joyous
and Facetious Dialogues), a brilliant and violent attack upon
Christianity. The allegorical