Abstract: Theophrastus redivivus (1659) is perhaps the most important clandestine philosophical manuscript of the seventeenth century. Composed of excerpts from ancient and Renaissance sources, it offers the first known example of a manifestly atheistic philosophy, and its authorship has always been a mystery. A massive body of bibliographical and textual comparisons seems to point to Guy Patin, one of the most famous scholarly libertines of the time, as being the author (or compiler) of the treatise.
