Etienne Dolet, born in Orleans in 1509, was a French scholar, translator and printer whose humanist convictions put him on a collision course with the French Inquisition. Educated at Padua and Toulouse, he built a reputation as a gifted orator and a defiant critic of religious orthodoxy. His publications in Lyon drew the close attention of inquisitorial authorities, and after several periods of imprisonment, the combined forces of the parlement of Paris, the Inquisition, and the Sorbonne secured his conviction for heresy, blasphemy and sedition.
On 3 August 1546, his 37th birthday, Dolet was hanged and burned alongside his books on the Place Maubert in Paris. He is remembered today as a martyr for freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
