Pierre Bayle

Timeline

1. 1647–1675Geneva · GenevaBorn into a pastor's family, he entered the Jesuit college at Toulouse in 1669 and at one point converted to Catholicism; seventeen months later he returned to Calvinism, fled to Geneva to study Cartesian philosophy, then sneaked back into France to work as a tutor under an assumed name.
2. 1675–1681Sedan · ArdennesOn the recommendation of Pierre Jurieu, he became professor of philosophy at the Protestant academy at Sedan, teaching logic, ethics, metaphysics, and natural philosophy. In 1681 Louis XIV closed the academy, and Bayle immediately went into exile.
3. 1681–1693Rotterdam · HollandHe took up a post as professor of philosophy and history at a famous school in Rotterdam, publishing Thoughts on the Comets in 1682, criticizing superstition about comets as omens and proposing the possibility of a "virtuous atheist." He later fell out with Jurieu and was stripped of his chair in 1693.
4. 1693–1706Rotterdam · HollandHe devoted himself to compiling the two-volume Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697, enlarged 1702), using entries with double footnotes to examine historical facts and doctrinal contradictions, emphasizing the distinction between opinion and superstition, and it became a staple on the desks of eighteenth-century Enlightenment scholars.