Doubting the Divine in Early Modern Europe

In this book George McClure examines the intellectual tradition of challenges to religious and literary authority in the early modern era. He explores the hidden history of unbelief through the lens of Momus the Greek god of criticism and mockery. Surveying his revival in Italy France Spain Germany the Netherlands and England McClure shows how Momus became a code for religious doubt in an age when such writings remained dangerous for authors. Momus (''Blame'') emerged as a persistent and subversive critic of divine governance and at times divinity itself. As an emblem or as an epithet for agnosticism or atheism he was invoked by writers such as Leon Battista Alberti Anton Francesco Doni Giordano Bruno Luther and possibly in veiled form by Milton in his depiction of Lucifer. The critic of gods also acted in sometimes related fashion as a critic of texts leading the army of Moderns in Swift''s Battle of the Books and offering a heretical archetype for the literary critic.