Atheist Priest who changed the fate of Europe. History of Atheism.

According to The Cambridge History of Atheism, the French philosopher Mersenne, writing in 1623, estimated that there were up to 50,000 atheists in Paris alone. Around 1617, the Spanish ambassador estimated that there were about 900,000 atheists living in England. But who were all these people? And who can we recognize as the first documented atheist in history? Could it be a French atheist priest who enormously influenced Voltaire, Hume, D’Holbach, Diderot, and others?

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Bibliography:
The Cambridge History of Atheism edited by Stephen Bullivant & Michael Ruse. Cambridge University Press (2021).
Stephens, Mitchell. 2014. Imagine There's No Heaven: How Atheism Helped Create the Modern World. St. Martin's Press
Alec Ryrie. 2019. UNBELIEVERS: An Emotional History of Doubt
Michael Hunter. 2023. Atheists and Atheism Before the Enlightenment.
Nick Spencer. 2014. Atheists: The Origin of the Species.
Jennifer Michael Hecht. 2004. Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson.
Gordon Melton. 2011. Unbelief (Religious Skepticism, Atheism, Humanism, Naturalism, Secularism, Rationalism, Irreligion, Agnosticism, and Related Perspectives)
Michael J. Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987
Michael Hunter and David Wootton, eds., “Introduction” to Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992)
David Berman, A History of Atheism in Britain: From Hobbes to Russell (London: Croom Helm, 1988)
Meslier, Jean. Superstition in All Ages. Trans. by Anna Knoop. New York: Truth Seeker Company, 1950.
Testament: Memoir of the Thoughts and Sentiments of Jean Meslier. Trans. by Michael Shreve. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009.


Candidates:
Francois Rabelais (1494 – 1553)
Bonaventure Deperrier (1501 - 1544)
Etienne Dolet (1509 - 1546)
Jacques Gruet (died 1547)
Paolo Sarpi (1552 - 1623)
Giulio Vanini (1585-1619)
Kazimir Lyshchinsky (1634-1689)
Kazimierz Łyszczyński
Matthias Knutzen (b. 1646 – death unknown)
Jean Meslier (1664-1729)