The Deathbed Scene Wars

In the 1600s and 1700s many intellectuals rejected Christianity or Judaism and adopted positions toward religion rooted in abstract philosophy. Spinoza, for example, who thought that God was the universe and thus always acted according to the universe's laws. Others were what we could call deists. These ideas were often attacked by contemporaries as "atheism."

I just learned, from Jonathan Israel's The Radical Enlightenment, that public fights often broke out about how these men died. "Freethinkers' deathbed scenes, accordingly, were of great significance and generally bitterly contested." It was widely believed that these rebels would recant and embrace traditional relgion on their deathbeds, and stories that they had were widely told. These stories were then vehemently denounced by the philosophers' friends in flame wars that sometimes went on for years. When Spinoza died, according to his first biographer, he instructed that no clergyman be allowed into the house, lest such a person spread a false story of deathbed conversion. Didn't matter, such stories were spread anyway, although I suppose they were less convincing when all the people who had been there agreed on a different version. 

While he was alive, the most famous and widely read thing that Adam Smith had written was his account of the death of David Hume, another freethinker denounced as an atheist. Like Spinoza, Hume managed just fine without traditional relgion; Smith described him as "cheerful to the end."

I find this to be a fascinating glimpse into what many people believe about others.