Isaac La Peyrère, or Pereira, was born in Bordeaux, France, a Calvinist of Portuguese New Christian, or converted Jewish, background. He became the Prince of Condé's secretary. Apparently he was friendly with leading Parisian avant-garde intellectuals such as Pierre Gassendi, François de La Mothe Le Vayer, Hugo Grotius, Guy Patin (1601–1672), and Ménage. La Peyrère's first book, Du rappel des juifs (1643), deals with the conversion of the Jews, their potential return to Palestine, and the beginning of the Messianic Age. In 1644 he went to Denmark and gathered there the material for his Relation de l'Islande (1663) and Relation du Groenland (1647), both written as letters to La Mothe Le Vayer. His most famous works, the Prae-Adamitae and the Systema Theologicum ex Prae-Adamitarum Hypothesi, apparently written by 1643, were published in Amsterdam in 1655. Queen Christina of...