by Jason Stotts
The Guardian has an article up right now called “Descartes was ‘Poisoned by Catholic Priest’” about how Descartes might have been murdered for political reasons. Prof. Theodor Ebert of the University of Erlangen argues that there is evidence that Descartes was poisoned by arsenic, based on a letter that his doctor wrote that cited evidence inconsistent with the official claim of pneumonia.
Ebert believes that Jacques Viogué, a missionary working in Stockholm, administered the poison because he feared Descartes’s radical theological ideas would derail an expected conversion to Catholicism by the monarch of protestant Sweden. “Viogué knew of Queen Christina’s Catholic tendencies. It is very likely that he saw in Descartes an obstacle to the Queen’s conversion to the Catholic faith,” Ebert told Le Nouvel Observateur newspaper.
This is very interesting news, if it’s true, and I look forward to learning more about it.
Unfortunately, it’s just one more instance of the irrationality of faith trying to suppress ideas. It is high time that we shed all ancient mysticism and treats myths (like that of Jesus, Muhammad, Abraham, Krishna, and all of the others) as the fictions they are.