“Scorning both god and his ministers”: At the Origins of Marlowe’s Atheism

In this article, I will focus on the documents denouncing Marlowe’s subversive views on religion. In so doing, I will show how – far from being the mere result of a brilliant (if impudent) outcast, or the allegations of dubious government informers – those documents reported views, which were rooted in the theses debated in religious and political texts which circulated widely in late-16th-century Europe, as well as in the early philosophical opposition to Christianity. At the same time, I will highlight how some of those same ‘subversive’ views can be also found between the lines of Marlowe’s plays. By focusing on the Tamburlaine plays, The Jew of Malta, and The Massacre at Paris, in particular, I will thus argue that, if Marlowe may be deemed subversive, it is because in his dramas he carried out the attempt – this one truly impudent – to reveal to many one of the fundamental arcana imperii: that is, that religions had nothing to do with truth, and their only function was to keep peoples together.