Lentorama 2023: It Happened on Holy Saturday

Day 28: Don't lose your head

Kazimierz Łyszczyński was a minor Polish noble who was also a philosopher and soldier. You would expect the military service to be the danger to his life, but you'd be wrong.

Łyszczyński spent some time studying with the Jesuits, but had left the order by the time he picked up the book Theologia Naturalis, which attempted to prove the existence of divinity. Łyszczyński, finding the arguments complicated and not particularly convincing, took to writing notes in the margin mocking the arguments, including one that said "therefore God does not exist."

Which would have been a reasonable private joke, but when a local nuncio found the book and the comment, he found a way out of having to repay Łyszczyński a significant debt. The nuncio took the book to the bishop of Poznan, claiming it as evidence that Łyszczyński was an atheist. Not helping matters was that the nuncio also had a hand-written draft of a book Łyszczyński was working on that described reality from an atheistic perspective.

So perhaps that margin note wasn't that much of a joke.

Łyszczyński was accused and went on trial, during which he claimed that his book was only part of the work, that was supposed to include the winning rebuttal of a Catholic. He stated that he'd stopped writing the work on the advice of a priest, which in hindsight seems like pretty bad advice.

Łyszczyński was found guilty and executed on Saturday, March 30, 1689. There is some doubt that Łyszczyński was an actual atheist, and over time his killing was seen by some as a case of legalized religious murder. That would change a bit during communist times, as the regime would tout Łyszczyński as a martyr to atheism. The true depths of his feelings will likely never be known, as almost nothing remains of his original writings or the trial transcript.