Pierre Bayle

Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) was a French Huguenot philosopher, the son of a Calvinist minister. He converted to Catholicism at Toulouse in 1669, soon returned to Calvinism and fled to Geneva, then held the chair of philosophy at the Protestant Academy of Sedan from 1675.

In 1681 he fled to the Dutch Republic, becoming professor of philosophy and history at Rotterdam, where he lost the chair in 1693. His Historical and Critical Dictionary, published from 1697, deployed skepticism in defence of toleration and shaped the Enlightenment. He died in Rotterdam in 1706.