N° 251 3e Trimestre 2010 (Texte intégral) - Cercle Ernest Renan

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scientifique, du christianisme primitif fourniraient dorénavant les
outils de la recherche de la vérité.
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La suite disponible sur nos cahiers….
Léon X et la Fable du Christ
Enrico Tuccinardi
enrico.tuccinardi@gmail.com
Je souhaite remercier Mr. Lino Sanchez (www.christianism.com)
pour ses conseils bienveillants et ses critiques ainsi que Mr. Gys-Leo
Devic pour son inestimable aide à la traduction.
Abstract
“It has served us well, this myth of Christ.” This famous sentence
attributed to Leo X is today considered an apocryphal quotation, an
invention of the English Protestant writer, John Bale.
This article intends to show that things could very well have gone
differently. An attempt will be made to reconstruct, after almost five
centuries, the route by which this astonishing sentence, ostensibly
emanating from Leo X, could have arrived from Pietro Bembo to
John Bale, and ultimately to the world at large.
This analysis will lead the reader into the midst of the Humanism of
the first half of the Sixteenth Century, a unique period, where the
artistic and cultural Renaissance was blended with Catholicism,
finding support and encouragement in its own political centre, the
Roman Papacy. This phenomenon constituted a full-fledged
oxymoron that ultimately fomented the Protestant Reformation. And
it's there, in the very heart of Protestantism, to Melanchthon and