"The philosopher, history critic, and religious inquirer Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), a Huguenot refugee who fled France's religious tyranny, was one of the most misunderstood thinkers of his, or any, age. He piqued and puzzled not only his contemporary but also modern scholars.

Though admired by Diderot and Voltaire, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, Frederick the Great and David Hume, his preoccupation with Christian dogmatists produced as much confusion as his condemnation of state and clerical persecution (eventually) produced admiration. He distinguished between good religious dogma and good citizens, insisting that the former does not necessarily produce the latter, an insight that scandalized many who thought him an atheist.

This work is an historiographical analysis of Bayle's view of the Reformation and the Europeans it affected."--BOOK JACKET.