Treatise of the Three Impostors

[1] Fabrications of the text eventually begin clandestine circulation, with a notable French underground edition Traité sur les trois imposteurs first appearing in 1719.

The Traité sur les trois imposteurs has been reckoned the most important example of the underground literature in French of the period.

[22] The creators of the book have been identified by documentary evidence as Jean Rousset de Missy and the bookseller Charles Levier.

[25] The content of the Traité has been traced primarily to Spinoza, but with subsequent additions drawn from the ideas of Pierre Charron, Thomas Hobbes, François de La Mothe Le Vayer, Gabriel Naudé and Lucilio Vanini.

An account based on the testimony of the brother of the publisher Caspar Fritsch, an associate of Marchand, has Levier in 1711 borrowing the original text from Benjamin Furly.