Sentence handed down by Duval de Soicourt

On 20 February 1766, Duval de Soicourt and two other local judges handed down the sentence. Jean-François Lefebvre, chevalier de La Barre, was declared convicted of singing impious and blasphemous songs against God, profaning the sign of the cross, refusing signs of respect to the Holy Sacrament carried in procession by the priory of Saint-Pierre, showing adoration to foul books in his room, mocking the consecration of wine, and proposing to bless the cruets with impure words. The court ordered the ordinary and extraordinary question—torture—applied before execution to reveal accomplices, and that the Philosophical Dictionary be thrown by the executioner on the same pyre as his body.