“until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest”
It’s a beautiful quotation, summing up almost anarchist notions of the interplay between religion and authority in perpetuating the oppression of “man”:
Man shall not be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
This revolutionary quote is often attributed to Jean Meslier. Meslier was a catholic priest who for ministered to a small community for forty years. Upon his death it was discovered he written a 633 page essay condemning religion and the church; he’d been a life long atheist.
I haven’t had a chance to read Meslier, a full translation of his Testament isn’t available online in english. You can read a review of Meslier’s life and ideas by Michel Onfray here and an abridgment of Meslier’s Testament by Voltaire here (Beware when reading Voltaire’s summary, Voltaire was a hostile commentator, Onfray’s article responds to Voltaire’s review). But if Onfray’s review is an accurate representation, I think I’m in love.
Meslier rejected the authority of the bible, according to Onfray:
Meslier affirms a rare thing during this epoch: the pollution of the source of all Christian myth. The Scriptures are not reliable. Falsified, patched together, and functioning only for political interests, established into an allegedly coherent corpus, in order to give ideological weapons to the temporal power supported by spiritual power, one can give no credit to this mythology.
He advocates a positive atheism in the place of Christianity (again from Onfray):
Meslier negates the principle of God in order to arrive at a caring morality of a joyful body, of happy existence, of peaceful relations between beings and between the sexes. His ethical concern unfolds and defines him as a political communalist. This unpublished curé invents communism, indeed, anarchism.
Meslier was clearly hostile to both church and state, but there is some doubt as to whether the quote, “Man shall not be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest”, is actually the work of this original anarchist.
Onfray argues that Meslier was decidedly non-violent and would have advocated civil disobedience in achieving his revolution:
In his library, the curé Meslier has the (La Boétie’s excellent 1548) Discourse on Voluntary Servitude in which he marks theses and ideas: A fact: power exists only with the consent of those upon whom they exercise their power; a solution: stop giving them your blessing, they will fall immediately.
Further evidence against Meslier being the source of the quote is that it does not appear in any of his surviving works. And there is another possible source, a similiar quote that can be sourced. This is by Denis Diderot:
“And his hands would plait the priest’s entrails, / For want of a rope, to strangle kings.”
It’s a line from Diderot’s poem Les Éleuthéromanes, published some time after the death of our atheistic priest. Perhaps the quote is a misattributed corruption of a later work.
Either way, I’m still in love with the atheist priest! Time to check whether Amazon has an english translation of Testament.
Related Posts:- Two hundred year old misattribution continues with “Meslier” on Amazon
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Posted: May 1st, 2008 under Musings, quotes.
Comments: 15
Comments
Comment from philip travers
Time: May 2, 2008, 7:10 pm
Very topical,and as intellectual stuff not to bad.Seeing no-one commented.what a shame.Its almost New Dawn Magazine stuff,at a cheaper price!
Comment from Kieran
Time: May 2, 2008, 7:29 pm
Eh, I don’t seem to attract many comments on any post. What’s New Dawn Magazine?
Comment from Kieran
Time: May 2, 2008, 8:09 pm
Found it. Doesn’t really strike me as my kind of publication. I tend to look up to the likes of Australian Rationalist or The Monthly. I doubt I could discuss “alternative medicines” with a straight face.
Comment from Mick
Time: May 6, 2008, 12:51 pm
Great quote! I’ll use that as my email sig for a while (with ‘tyrant’ for ‘king’).
Comment from Kieran
Time: May 6, 2008, 1:24 pm
I’ve seen it used by Anarchists with “politician” substituted for “king”. 
Comment from @ndy
Time: May 9, 2008, 4:58 am
Hi Kieren,
That slogan was revised for use in the May revolt in Paris in 1968: “Humanity won’t be happy till the last capitalist is hung with the guts of the last bureaucrat”. On religion, you may also be interested in reading Ken Knabb’s 1977 text: ‘The Realization and Suppression of Religion’, available here
Ni dieu, ni maitre,
@ndy.
Comment from Kieran
Time: May 9, 2008, 10:01 am
Thanks for dropping by, I’ll check out the Ken Knabb text.
Comment from @ndy
Time: May 9, 2008, 5:29 pm
Cheers. Feel free to edit — that sentence break pisses me off!
Comment from Kieran
Time: May 9, 2008, 7:51 pm
Comment edited. You *should* be able to edit your own comments for half a minute after posting them.
Comment from @ndy
Time: May 19, 2008, 6:19 am
Cool. Lemme know what you think about the ref. Maybe I’ll suggest you do it as a work assignment!
Comment from Dave Hall
Time: June 14, 2008, 7:00 pm
Kieran,
Interesting piece. My understanding has always been that the quote is generally mistakenly attributed to Diderot, but was in fact Meslier’s. All you say is true though, that it is not in keeping with the general thrust of his testament. The document is erratic though, and occasionally inconsistent — very human in other words. I like to think that Meslier did say this in a more rash moment, but he might not have. It isn’t to my knowledge in the testament.
I am the author of a play about Meslier’s life entitled “The Last Priest” (so I suppose I have a vested interest in the quote’s attribution). The play was put on in June last year at the King’s Head in London. You can read about it on the Guardian blog here.
The play was commissioned by a semi-retired psychiatrist who was doing a “leisurely MA” on Meslier at the time. He has been planning for some time to write the first full English translation of the testament. It’s good to know he’ll have at least one taker when he does.
Meanwhile, you can buy a copy of the script of my play here if you’re interested.
Comment from Dave Hall
Time: June 15, 2008, 1:53 am
(Rather frustratingly, I left a comment to the following effect here earlier, but it seems to have vanished - can anyone help/explain?)
My understanding was that the quote is frequently mistakenly attributed to Diderot, but that it was in fact Meslier’s. It doesn’t feature in the testament though, but I like to think that he wrote it at some point in a more extreme moment. The testament is tempestuous and rambling and I don’t think it would be beyond the bounds of his character to have said it at some point, but that’s only speculation.
I am the author of a play about Meslier (in English) entitled The Last Priest (so I suppose I have a vested interest in the attribution of the quote). It was initially put on last year, and you can read about it on the Guardian blog here. I’m currently working with the British Humanist Association on producing educational resources so that the play may be used as a stimulus for religious and citizenship studies in schools here in the UK.
The play’s producer, a semi-retired psychiatrist, who commissioned the story, has been doing a “leisurely MA” on Meslier, and is also planning to produce the first full English translation of the Testament at some point. It’s good to know he’ll have at least one taker when he does.
You can get a copy of the script of the play here if you’re interested.
Comment from Kieran
Time: June 21, 2008, 4:09 pm
Re your comment not appearing, sorry, it’s a spam filter thing. Your comment had more than one link and was thus held for approval.
I’m delighted you’ve commented on my post, I stumbled across some info about your play whilst researching this post.
I’m curious, have you ever found an English translation of Testament? All I ever come across is Voltaire’s summary/review.
Comment from Dave Hall
Time: June 22, 2008, 2:28 am
No, there isn’t a complete one. When writing the play I used a 6000 word excerpt translated by someone called Herve Gourmelon, which was a bit clunky (presumably his English is a second language). I adapted the Testament speeches in the play from that, and one other bit from another source, which was sent to me by someone who was involved in the production in the early days, so I can’t be sure how to find it again.
Gourmelon’s translation comes from the unabridged text though. I’ll email you that if you’re interested.
Comment from Kieran
Time: June 22, 2008, 10:07 am
That would be fantastic. My email address is kieranbennett at gmail dot com.
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