Claude Le Petit

Claude Le Petit (* 1638 in Beuvron-en-Auge ; † September 1, 1662 in Paris ) was a French libertine and satirical writer who was publicly burned at the stake for his writings.

life and work

Le Petit, who had committed murder in his youth and evaded persecution by spending many years abroad, published satirical writings on his return that caused him the wrath of the mighty, which is why he was on August 26, 1662 (opposition rejected on August 31) for blasphemy and lese majesty ("Crime de lèse-majesté divine et humaine"; "plusieurs feuilles écrites de sa main contre l'honneur de Dieu et de ses saints") was convicted of chopping off the right hand, strangling and public burning on the Pyre. As he enjoyed no protection, the sentence was carried out on September 1st. His friend Pierre Du Pelletier published in 1666 as a kind of salvation of honor Le Petit's translation of Augustine in verse, which was in print at the moment of his execution.

Works

• (Translator) Les Plus belles pensées de St Augustin, prince et docteur de l'Église, mises en vers françois , Paris, Loyson, 1668 (approved on October 9, 1661, with a preface by Du Pelletier of February 27, 1666, addressed to Monsieur l'abbé de La S ****).

Modern editions of satirical works

• La Chronique scandaleuse . Un Paris ridicule , ed. by René-Louis Doyon (1885–1966), Paris, La Connaissance, 1927.
• L'heure du berger. Roman , ed. by Pierre-Gustave Brunet (1805-1896), Bassac, Plein chant, 1993.
• Sonnets luxurieux & La chronique scandaleuse , Villeurbanne, URDLA, 2002 (afterword by Patrice Béghain).
• Oeuvres libertines , ed. by Thomas Pogu, Paris, Éd. Cartouche, 2012.
  • Les oeuvres libertines de Claude Le Petit, parisien brûlé le 1st septembre 1662 , ed. by Frédéric Lachèvre (1855–1943), Paris 1909–1928; Geneva, Slatkine, 1968.

literature

• Edouard Tricotel (1828–1877), Claude Le Petit. Sa fin tragique en place de Grève, à Paris, et ses ouvrages , Paris, J. Techener, 1863 (19 pages; gallica.bnf.fr ).
• Friedrich Schröder (* 1887), Claude le Petit. His life and works , diss. Rostock 1913.

Web links

• Literature by and about Claude Le Petit in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)
• Information on Claude Le Petit in the database of the Bibliothèque nationale de France . (Bio-bibliographic note with access to digitized data)
• Information on Pierre Du Pelletier in the database of the Bibliothèque nationale de France .