Dictionnaire Historique et Critique

The Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (in English, the Historical and Critical Dictionary) was a French

Grand Dictionaire historique (1674),^[1]

a previous encyclopedia, and these notes ultimately developed into his own Dictionnaire.

The first edition of Bayle's dictionary, published in 1697, comprised two volumes, each with two parts, so that it appeared as four physical books (A–B, C–G, H–O, and P–Z). In the second edition of 1702, it was enlarged to three volumes (A–D, E–M, and N–Z). An English translation was first published in 1709.[2]

The overwhelming majority of the entries were devoted to individual people, whether historical or mythical, but some articles treated religious beliefs and philosophies.

footnotes

, or they were slipped into articles on seemingly uncontroversial topics.

The rigor and skeptical approach demonstrated in the Dictionary influenced many thinkers of the

Protestant Pierre Jurieu

.

References

^ H. H. M. van Lieshout, The Making of Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire historique et critique with a CD-ROM containing the Dictionnaire's Library and References between Articles, trans. Lynne Richards (Amsterdam: APA-Holland UP, 2001), 2.
^ See: "A List of the Many Editions of the Dictionary".
^ Paul Burrell, "Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire historique et critique," in Notable Encyclopedias of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Frank A. Kafker (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1981).
^ See: "Short Summary at PhilosophyPages.com".
^ See: "A Lengthy Analysis at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy".