Pierre BaylePierre Bayle (French: [bɛl]; 18 November 1647 – 28 December 1706)[3] was a French philosopher, author, and lexicographer. A Huguenot, Bayle fled to the Dutch Republic in 1681 because of religious persecution in France. He is best known for his Historcal and Critical Dictionary, whose publication began in 1697.[3] Bayle was a notable advocate of religious toleration, and his skeptical philosophy had a significant influence on the subsequent growth and development of the European Age of Enlightenment. Bayle is commonly regarded as a forerunner of the Encyclopédistes of the mid-18th century. Bayle was born at Carla-le-Comte[3] (later renamed Carla-Bayle in his honour), near Pamiers, Ariège, France. He was educated by his father, a Calvinist minister, and at an academy at Puylaurens. In 1669, he entered a Jesuit college at Toulouse and became a Roman Catholic a month later. After seventeen months, he returned to Calvinism and fled to Geneva, where he learned about the teachings of René Descartes. He returned to France and went to Paris, where for some years he worked under the name of Bèle as a tutor for various families. In 1675, he was appointed to the chair of philosophy at the Protestant Academy of Sedan.[3] In 1681, the university at Sedan was suppressed by the government in action against Protestants. Just before that event, Bayle had fled to the Dutch Republic, where he almost immediately was appointed professor of philosophy and history at the École Illustre in Rotterdam.[3] He taught for many years but became embroiled in a long, internal quarrel in the college that resulted in Bayle being deprived of his chair in 1693. Bayle remained in Rotterdam until his death on 28 December 1706.[3] He was buried in Rotterdam in the "Walloon church", where Pierre Jurieu would also be buried seven years later. After the demolition of this church in 1922, the graves were relocated to the Crooswijk General Cemetery in Rotterdam. A memorial stone shows that Pierre Bayle is in these graves. Read More Read Less