The People’s Atheist

One Sunday in 1716, in the small Ardennes village of Étrépigny in northeastern France, a parish priest climbed into the pulpit to perform one of those habitual, ordinary gestures. Like many country priests under the Ancien Régime, Jean Meslier was expected, during Mass, to commend the local lord to the prayers of the faithful. But this lord, Antoine de Toully, was known in the village for mistreating the poor and robbing orphans. Meslier knew it. His parishioners knew it too. But silence prevailed. Instead of covering up the injustice, the priest subtly turned the ritual inside out. He obeyed, and did indeed pray for the local lord, but he invited the faithful to pray for him not in order to celebrate his authority, but so that he might atone for the injustices he inflicted on the poor.