Pierre Bayle plays a singularly important role as a precursor of the philosophes (deistic or materialistic writers and thinkers of the Enlightenment). Many of his ideas, as set forth in the Dictionaire historique et critique (Historical and Critical Dictionary, 1697) and other works, were utilized to great effect by such writers as Voltaire and Denis Diderot. The French Enlightenment is difficult to fathom without taking into account Bayle's enormous impact on Diderot's encyclopedia.

The body of Bayle's works does not belong to any of the traditional classical literary genres. As an historian, theologian, philosopher, and moralist, he is what today is called too interdisciplinary to be confined to a single literary domain. Moreover, he was never an elegant stylist, in the manner of such writers as Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle and Francois de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénelon, for content and ideas mattered most to him.

In...